Mom’s a Good Sport
Posted
August 9, 2008 at
12:38 pm by
Kymberly
I am the mother I warned myself about.
In all those blissful early years of having children (babies, really), I had big plans to do very little. I was full of proclamations of what I would and would not do with my children as only the ill-informed and pathologically stupid can be.
Having no real world experience in parenting beyond wiping, rocking and toting my children along with my whims and wishes, I was wholly unprepared for the day that my children would turn into, well, people.
People. People with wishes. People with dreams. People with opinions. People with agendas.
People who want to do crazy things like sign up for cheerleading, soccer, piano and drum lessons all at the exact same time.
In the early days of parenting when they took lessons (or didn’t) was completely dependent on my schedule. Thus, I vowed that no child of mine would be enrolled in more than one activity at a time, semester, season or quarter as it may be. That seemed so simple. So workable. So quaint.
Now it is as if I’m looking back and remembering a simpler time when we all rode around in horseless carriages and churned our own butter for purity and fun.
My children have a variety of interests. Competing interests - both literally and figuratively. They have loved soccer forever (or at least since age five). So soccer is a shoe-in. Our daughter, however, is finally eligible for pee-wee cheerleading. Can a person deny an young female person the right to pom-poms and pyramids and not live to read about herself in a tell-all book later? I don’t think I’ll risk it. Music lessons appeared this year at the request of both children. One favors piano, the other drum. All I need is a tambourine player and a garishly painted bus and I’m halfway to Partridge Family fame! How can I say no? Do we really want to the be parents who chose to forego culture in favor of sport?
This year we let the children choose (see also: “inmates running the asylum.”) They chose to say “yes” to almost everything.
Sporting. I went to bed one night a nice, normal kind of person with a nice, normal kind of life and woke up the next morning to find myself reborn. I have become a soccer mom. In a literal sense I am also a cheer mom, and music mom too. We can’t possibly sign up for anything else as I’ve run out of room for team magnets on the rear of our vehicle. We live in the van, eat on the run, and are cagey with friends concerning plans to come for fear we might inadvertently over-book ourselves and plan a play date right in the middle of kick-off.
Weekends have gone from rest and relaxation to soccer in the early hours and cheer in the afternoon. I live in fear of my daughter showing up for cheer squad in a short skirt and soccer cleats. Weeknights often mean whisking our children off practice fields and straight off to music lessons. I don’t doubt that my son’s music teacher wonders why we think shin-guards are necessary for drummers?
Mine are thoroughly modern kids leading thoroughly active lives. They mix-it up, they make it work, and they multi-task with ease. They aren’t stars and I don’t imagine they’ll be first draft picks for anything. Why then, do we do this?
Maybe because when keeping my own score I find that there are lessons far beyond those learned on the field or at the keyboard.
They are learning that winning isn’t everything but putting forth your best effort is.
That you will win some and lose some and that it would serve you well to learn to do both with grace and ease.
That when people are counting on you, you better show up. Period. Morevoer, once you make a commitment. You stick with it. Even if it seems hard. Even if it seems futile. Even if it sucks.
That if at first you don’t succeed, you can – and should – try again.
I’ve never been a big fan of sports or overscheduled kids it’s true. But I have to believe that these life lessons will last long after all the practices, games, and music lessons have long passed.
Isn’t THAT really the ultimate parenting goal? And, if done well, a real score
Tags: activities, cheerleading, music, schedules, soccer, youth-sports |
5 Responses to “Mom’s a Good Sport”
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1. Rita said:
August 9, 2008 @ 2:33 pm
Ah, see, you’re a better (or crazier) mom than I. There are things I will not do. I have a philosophical issue with cheerleading for starters. Little Miss, eh, they’ve talked me into it, but cheerleading, absolutely not. The kids took one ice skating class and I said, screw this, it’s effing COLD in here and nixed any ice sports for them forever.
I saw the parents who run their kids to and fro with overlapping schedules and wanted no part of it. There was no time left for play or unstructured socializing, and I think those things are still really important. Kids who are in all-the-time activities are going to have no idea how to settle disagreements by themselves when there isn’t a coach or ref to handle the disputes. They won’t know how to manage their own time without mom super-scheduling for them. And I really fear that kids who are in all these back-to-back sports aren’t going to know how to TALK to each other. Some kids I know do school, zip home for homework, go to one sport, eat dinner on the way to another sport, come home, shower and go to bed. Where do they have time to learn to converse with people?
Anyway… my kids do the sports and the music and have the same benefits, but they do the same sport (taekwondo) which is year-round and you can work your schedule around IT, since it tends to be rather predictable, and they do band at their school starting in 5th grade as part of the regular curriculum. Even still, I nixed drums (won’t have a drum kit in the house), piano (no room for a piano), and strings (don’t want to start private violin lessons in 3′d grade). I’m just not that kind of a mom.
2. SHS said:
August 9, 2008 @ 2:58 pm
Rita,
I totally agree about cheerleading…I won’t say too much except I would never have let my daughter participate in it.
I think exposing your kids to various sports, activities is great. But as the parent, you need to know when to say enough. It is your job to keep them from becoming overscheduled. And while they are being exposed to alot of things, do they know what it means to stick with something long enough to reap the benefits.
3. Fear and Parenting in Las Vegas said:
August 10, 2008 @ 9:06 am
Thanks for the cautionary tale. Our 4YO is in ballet and wants to do soccer, too. We’ve put that on hold for a year. I can’t wait to see how we’re going to juggle her little bro’s stuff when he comes of age.
4. Mary Beth said:
August 11, 2008 @ 10:55 am
Sometimes when you sign up for these things, you don’t know how they will overlap. It all works out and makes for some fun times with your kids and other families. We have done drama, soccer, ballet, softball, baseball, tennis, football and basketball. When my kids got older they played on travel teams and while this is very expensive, it is some of the most fun memories! We now are done to our last child, just entering high school and doing two sports. It seems so quiet around here…..
5. Kymberly said:
August 11, 2008 @ 4:08 pm
YOU ALL ARE RIGHT!!!
These people are Cra-zee. I mean certifiable.
Oh my DD is having a ball, I however, am about to have my head explode. Seriously. (See Cra-zee) above.
All sports are not created equal. We have baseball friends. Softball friends. Basketball friends. Football friends. Our kids live, eat, breathe soccer.
I have never, ever experienced the kind of crazy competitiveness that comes up in cheerleading. (Pee wee mind you. Little teeny tiny kids with no discernable rhythm. In cute uniforms!) and people are willing to rant and rave and cry over it.
Seriously. Save yourselves. It’s too late for me but RUN!