{"id":140,"date":"2019-09-24T12:31:20","date_gmt":"2019-09-24T16:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/?p=140"},"modified":"2019-10-08T21:08:49","modified_gmt":"2019-10-09T01:08:49","slug":"a-view-from-the-sidelines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/?p=140","title":{"rendered":"A View From the Sidelines."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I just spent the entire weekend at events for my children \u2013 getting\nthem ready, driving them, cheering them on, taking them home, and feeding them out\nof cycle.  At one point during the fourth\nevent of the day, a 5 pm soccer game, another mom looked over at me and asked \u201cWhy\ndo we do this again?\u201d  I must admit, I\nhave been doing this for so long now that I don\u2019t recall what I did before my\nkids took over my free time.    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why do we do this?  I ask my husband this frequently.  After all, we are not young and these activities take up a lot of time \u2013 theirs and mine.  Between tutoring, music lessons, sports practices and games, school enrichment activities, there is not much time left even when we split it up.  My parents did this when I was young.  They had 5 children.  It didn\u2019t look hard when they did it, but there was more carpooling.  We live in the city.  The kids can\u2019t really can go outside and play in the street \u2013 unfortunately our street doesn\u2019t have any children their age.  If they weren\u2019t doing this activity that takes a good deal of my time, they would just be on electronic devices and I would feel like a bad parent and all the guilt \u2013 oh my!  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When they were younger, I wanted to instill in them that physical\nactivity was good for them.  I also wanted\nthem to fall asleep when I put them to bed. \nI still want those two things.   As they have gotten older, I now want them to\nexperience some of the life lessons team sports and individual sports can\nteach.  And I want them to have a diverse\ngroup of friends \u2013 not just the people they go to school with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve tried many sports. \nFor each child.  What we know for\nsure is that our children will not go to college on sports scholarships, will\nnot go to the Olympics, and will not play professional sports.  We hope they make their high school team in\nsome athletic endeavor.  I also hope that\nthey have been exposed to a variety of things in a way that encourages them to\ntry new things.  Frisbee golf?  Why not. \nFencing?  Sure.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If they are not natural athletes, what is our goal for these\nactivities and why do we sacrifice so much of our free time in pursuit of the\nnext game\/meet\/practice?  Why?  At the end of the conversation, my husband\nand I acknowledge that we are pushing them to better themselves.  When we encounter a good coach, we encourage\nthem to get the most from that experience. \nMy son happens to play one sport well but doesn\u2019t love it.  He doesn\u2019t make the cuts for the sport he\nloves.  For about two years, my daughter\nwho has quit every sport but swimming, complained about going to practice.  I would not let her quit and I gave her\nconsequences when she was late on purpose. \nI explained that her father and I did not give her the \u2018quit\u2019 gene.  It is ok to finish the season and agree not\nto pursue it in the future, but not to quit in the middle of the season.  My son was complaining about going to\npractice one night and I heard my daughter say to him \u2013 \u201cWe have to go, we are\nnot quitters.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have watched both kids grow socially from being on\nsports.  We have had some good experiences\nand some bad experiences.  We exchange knowing\nlooks with other parents who are in the same place we are with their children \u2013\nwe are finding out way.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If they are not natural athletes, what is our goal for these activities and why do we sacrifice so much of our free time in pursuit of the next game\/meet\/practice? Why? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":148,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,1],"tags":[22,24],"class_list":["post-140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-superhero-parenting","category-uncategorized","tag-parenting","tag-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Parents-in-the-stands.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=140"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":228,"href":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions\/228"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpeclinicblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}