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

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A Cleveland, Ohio suburb has cancelled its annual Recreation League All-Star Game for 9 to 12 year olds. In a letter to coaches, the league announced that the decades old tradition would end because certain kids were being singled out as better players than others.

             - WTAM Newsradio 1100

Man, some blogs just write themselves don’t they? I mean, seriously?

Do the children that are stunned and crushed by some peers “being singled out as being better players than others” feel the same way when “some kids are singled out as having better grades than others?” Perhaps we should do away with the honor roll and report cards too?

Look, I am generally all about fairness and preventing hurt feelings at all costs. As a once shy, unathletic, two-left footed child myself, I understand all too well how the have-nots (or “catch-nots”) can be made to feel the chilly frost of separation from the herd. Of having it be known that you aren’t “all that” in the chosen arena. I am the girl chosen last. Yeah, that kid. Nice to meet you.

Even I, however, see the merit in competition. In team spirit. In lauding the chosen few for their extra-special accomplishments, hard work, or yes, God given talents.

Why? Because real life works like that too.

Like all aging hipsters certain that “kids these days” are “going to hell in a handbasket” I fear that we are raising a nation of wimps. Entitled wimps at that.

So used will they be to kudos and certificates and a ticker-tape parade just for showing up that they will, I fear, be unable to function in any real, competitive workplace. “Just do your best” can be both a balm for the less gifted or a catch-phrase for the uncommitted. “But it’s not fair!” the battle-cry of the entitlement mentality.

Turning sports into just another “you show up, you get a sticker!” (and hell, probably a snack) endeavor is not the way to save children from hurt.

When I sucked at sports (and oh I really, really did). I learned that sports were not for me. Not in the “I’m going to be a contender!” sense anyway. Those All-Star games of old certainly culled the likes of me from the stand-out-sports-star herd and I, for one, am better for it. Realizing I was never going to make a living, or much more than a fool out of myself, in the athletic arena allowed me to hone my skills in other, more appropriate, ways.

Today my sign reads “will write for food” and I don’t think the sports world has missed me much. Imagine if I’d spent my formative years being assured I was “just as good” as anyone else, despite all evidence to the contrary? 

In truth, all this “you are all stars!” mentality probably only postpones reality for a decade or two until the overly coddled generation discovers that in the “real world’ just showing up is not enough. You have to perform - nay OUTperform others - too.

In life, like in baseball, sometimes you’re the Louisville slugger, and sometimes you’re the ball.

Rarely, in either, however, do you win it all just for showing up.

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