She depicts a childlike charm. Her globular eyes are full of cheerful spirit. And her manner, totally playful. Her Instagram bio reads a quote by Karen Gaffney, a TEDx Speaker and Advocate for People with Disabilities, “I have one chromosome more than you.” But more than all these inspiring elements about her, what made her turn into a viral cheerleading star is an instance where she got rejected for a cheerleading program. Emmie Tallent, 13, with Down syndrome, was evicted from the cheerleading team of her school based in Chattanooga, Tennessee. However, a few days later from this program, Emmie’s elder sister Sydnee posted a clip of her on Instagram where she showed how Emmie was performing the routine off the court, absolutely perfectly.
The video shows Emmie in a black dress dancing off the court while the other children in sports dresses are cheering in the school’s gymnasium, black and yellow pompoms flashing and bobbing in their hands. The clip depicts young Emmie performing the moves of the cheerleading squad with so much confidence that ended up inspiring many people, including her sister. Her 22-year-old sister Sydnee applauded the little one’s spirit in the video’s caption. “I aspire to have an ounce of her confidence,” she wrote. The video has crossed over three million views and over 87000 likes. Continuing her praise for Emmie, Sydnee explained in the caption how, at the same time, it was quite reasonable for the school team to not have Emmie. She writes, “The team did not have a lot of spots and even neurotypical girls (who were much better than Emmie) didn’t make it! She also can be super stubborn and not listen sometimes. Emmie’s school is super, super supportive, but there are hard decisions that have to be made sometimes. Emmie is still happy cheering with them at home games and my mom is secretly happy that she doesn’t have to drive my sister to tons of cheer stuff.” Adding to it, she said that there was great scope for Emmie to become a good cheerleader in the future, “Emmie takes gymnastics and dance and she loves it. I’m sure in the future Emmie will make cheer somewhere, but today she’s perfectly happy as she is!”
After Emmie’s clip caught the public buzz, Emmie and Sydnee’s mother, Lisa Tallent, told PEOPLE.com that the first time Emmie had been told that she was not going to be a part of the cheerleading team, Emmie couldn’t comprehend what had. “She didn’t understand even after the coach explained it and I explained it. She just kept repeating ‘I’m on the team!’" Once Emmie accepted that she wouldn’t be a part of the squad this time, Emmie began to feel torn apart. “I think it didn’t set in until about a week later when we were talking about the upcoming game and she started tearing up,” Sydnee said to PEOPLE.com. Lisa also said that Emmie had been a part of the cheerleading squad since kindergarten. She spent fourth and fifth grades in the cheerleading camp and therefore can pick up the moves and routine very quickly, which is what happened on the day of the game.
Talking about the clip she captured while Emmie was performing her moves off the stadium ground, Sydnee says, “I’ve always wanted to share Emmie’s humor and positivity with others. There are a lot of people who have no exposure or experience with people with special needs and it can make them close-minded. I wanted to give a little piece of Emmie out to the world so those people can see the joy that comes with someone with special needs.” Sydnee also said that her sister was a lesson in self-esteem and confidence for other people. The Instagram clip of this instance received tons of praising comments from people. Most of them wished Emmie well and said that it was all good as long as Emmie was happy and having fun.
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.