Tarkblog

We don’t have kids. But that doesn’t mean I can’t make a few observations about them.

Namely, kids and sports. In a nutshell, I think sports are great, and I think kids who get into them are doing themselves a great service for their future. However, I don’t the drive that some people seem to have to make their kids athletic machines.

Is there a balance as to how far you push your kids to be good at a sport? That is, do you let them play various things when they’re little and try and stumble into something they’re good at? If they’re not good at anything or don’t like it, do you let them just not do it? Or do you push push push until they just become good?

I watch others do nothing but push. They end up with kids who are amazingly good at the sports they play, at the cost of having 5-6 hours of practice or conditioning daily non-stop for years. Their lives turn into the sport, racing to competitions, finding sponsors, and running parent associations.

Is it all vicarious living? Is it a just a drive to want your kids to succeed in what they do? Is it unhealthy? I don’t know. I can only comment on what I see.

But it sure scares me. I would rather my kid be smart than an athlete. I’d push for study time over practice time. But maybe that’s just how I was raised; with little interest in sports and more interest in academics and technology.

It seems that everyone I’m around who has kids is always racing to the next activity. For the older kids it’s generally just one sport, but highly focused and lots of practice. For the younger kids, it’s two or three different sports, plus musical instrument practices, choir, and other clubs.

When is there time to just be a kid? Time to wonder off and get into trouble but have it be okay because nobody ends up finding out?

I sure hope I can learn from what I see so I know what NOT to do to my kids.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 1st, 2007 at 4:26 pm and is filed under Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.