Parents w/ kids

[vi edit]

And this probably isn't a "pro" to Bober since it's his daughter...but CC was one of the only sports where the boys & girls teams traveled together on the same bus. 😀

I dated a few girls on the CC team and made out with them on the way to & from meets.

It was like you said - a true melting pot of talent and personalities though. And everyone got along great. That just seems to be the nature of the sport. Pretty much anyone that has run CC has a similar experience to tell.

 

[CRXican]

parents with kids

LMAO

 

[Homerboy]

parents with kids

LMAO

Yeah this thread was doomed from the beginning.

 

[vi edit]

parents with kids

LMAO

i think I know what he's trying to ask. He wants input from parents with younger children rather than from parents like mine that have 30+ year old children.

 

[Homerboy]

And this probably isn't a "pro" to Bober since it's his daughter...but CC was one of the only sports where the boys & girls teams traveled together on the same bus. 😀

I dated a few girls on the CC team and made out with them on the way to & from meets.

It was like you said - a true melting pot of talent and personalities though. And everyone got along great. That just seems to be the nature of the sport. Pretty much anyone that has run CC has a similar experience to tell.

I'll say too that our track team was pretty much the same way too. Not as much as CC was as that was a smaller, closer knit group of guys (who mostly (minus me really) all ran long distance in track together too mind you so it carried over between two sports, two seasons).

All in all though, even in track it was a pretty solid melting pot of kids and personalities... lots of demographics for sure.

 

[CRXican]

I loved track in high school. I decided running sucked so I learned long jump and triple jump, that was fun.

 

[BoberFett]

I wasn't on the CC team, but I ran distance on the track team in high school, which most of the CC guys did as well so I trained with them. I wasn't the fastest, but I had respectable times for a kid with allergy induced asthma. 😛

My sport of choice during high school was soccer, I played on a traveling team for a couple years. I had played for several years in the local park & rec league and had some bad experiences with bad coaches, coaches kids, etc. and stopped playing altogether so I never got started on the high school team. I decided to give it another go though, and had a lot of fun for those couple of years. We were actually a really crappy team at first, most of us hadn't played together before, we had a couple showboaters, a skater punk, it was really a Bad News Bears situation. But we got our act together and ended up halfway decent, doing pretty well in a couple of regional tournaments. Definitely the most fun I ever had playing sports competitively. The improvement we made as a team was very rewarding.

 

[DrPizza]

It seems like you encourage it and yet the middle of your post seems like its a lot of work and discouraging.

No, I absolutely encourage that kids participate in sports - I'm just saying to limit the number of sports (per year) so they don't completely take over the family's life. I know people whose kids have played baseball in the spring, soccer in the summer, football in the fall, indoor soccer or swimming or hockey in the winter, etc. Their kids are involved in sporting activities close to 300 days per year. The families do little else. Weekends are blown by having to travel to different sporting events that the kids are playing in. With 2 kids, it takes up most of at least one of those two days. Vacations are limited, depending on who is coaching - some coaches threaten to bench players for a week if they go on vacation, etc. 10 years later, as the kids are getting ready to graduate from high school, the families all pretty much say the same thing - "where has all the time gone! It's gone by so quickly."

My kids (5 & 3) each have taken a couple sessions of swimming lessons per year (8 week session 2x/week) because my wife and I think it's a good skill to have and staying in shape is a good habit to develop. They also asked to play soccer this summer so we signed them up. They didn't have a great time because the biggest/fastest kids dominate the games so I'll only sign them up again if they ask. They've both tried gymnastics and didn't want to do it again so we won't. My daughter started dance last year and loved it so she'll get to keep doing that.

My personal feelings are that exercise and learning to play a game under the same rules as everyone else is an important skill but shouldn't dominate your life (or your ability to improvise). I personally play 1hour basketball at lunch 3x/week and loved athletics as a kid despite being terribly uncoordinated. About half our summer weeks have absolutely nothing scheduled and they just play outside/with neighborhood kids on the slip&slide which I think is great.

:thumbsup: I coached youth soccer here for quite a few years, until my kids no longer wanted to participate. I was one of the founding members of the board/incorporation/whatever legal entity we were. We used to sponsor coaching camps for new coaches. One of the big things was how do you deal with exactly what you mentioned above - big kids dominating the game. At that age level, the kids should be learning skills - and ironically, the kids who are simply more athletically developed often don't improve their skills, simply because they rely on their greater speed, size, etc., to dominate the game. As a result, they don't master a lot of the skills early on & once the other kids catch up to them in size in high school, they're no where near the standouts they once were.
Solution: extend their playing time while limiting their scoring. After they've scored 2 goals "if you score another goal, I'm pulling you out of the game. But, for every person on the team who scores a goal because you passed the ball to them, I'm giving you an extra 3 minutes." Result: teams with those couple of standout players who use the rest of their teammates crush teams with a couple of standout players who are ball hogs. Parents whose kids are a little inferior in athletic ability, but their kids are scoring goals are thrilled and recognize why the playing time is unequal - not to run up the score, but to give all the rest of the kids a better chance to score. Later result: state championships in high school.

 

[7window]

i think I know what he's trying to ask. He wants input from parents with younger children rather than from parents like mine that have 30+ year old children.

Your imput is appreciated.

 

[Homerboy]

i think I know what he's trying to ask. He wants input from parents with younger children rather than from parents like mine that have 30+ year old children.

My parents have 30+ year old children.The same still holds true for sports back then as it does now doesn't it?

 

[vi edit]

My parents have 30+ year old children.The same still holds true for sports back then as it does now doesn't it?

I think things are taking a turn for the worse in that parents are ever increasingly trying to force more and more activities (not just sports) on children than ever before. It's almost a one-upmanship in some circles to see how many things they can cram into their poor kids life.

People can't seem to be happy just sitting around the house any more and play board games or cards or letting the kids roam the yard/neighborhood. They have to be out doing *something*.

 

[Homerboy]

I think things are taking a turn for the worse in that parents are ever increasingly trying to force more and more activities (not just sports) on children than ever before. It's almost a one-upmanship in some circles to see how many things they can cram into their poor kids life.

People can't seem to be happy just sitting around the house any more and play board games or cards or letting the kids roam the yard/neighborhood. They have to be out doing *something*.

I'll agree. And I may even be slightly guilty of this myself (to some extent). It can sometimes be like pulling teeth to get my son to agree to sign up for something. But I've learned this tends to be more out his "laziness" more than anything. Once he is there, he LOVES it and can't wait for the next day. I'm having this argument with him right now in fact in regards to fall soccer.

 

[rudder]

How important is organize sports for your kids? How serious do you take it?

Depends if you want it to help pay for college or not. 😉

Really though it depends on your children. I have three and two of them really love sports. I do not push them to play if they do not want to. I see so many parents yelling at their 6 year olds when they miss a throw or a grounder... sickening really.

 

[sourceninja]

I can honestly say that there is a work ethic developed from wrestling that I have never witnessed from anyone else.

I can tell you if someone wrestled by just watching them do any physical activity for more than 5 minutes. Wrestlers never get tired, they never quit, and they never bitch about it.

I wish I would have been put in wrestling when I was a kid.

 

[vi edit]

I can honestly say that there is a work ethic developed from wrestling that I have never witnessed from anyone else.

I can tell you if someone wrestled by just watching them do any physical activity for more than 5 minutes. Wrestlers never get tired, they never quit, and they never bitch about it.

I wish I would have been put in wrestling when I was a kid.

I think it's a survival based compensation to make up for the fact that most wrestlers were dumber than a freaking fence post. And they usually had personal hygene that would make a street bum look clean.

 

[Homerboy]

I think it's a survival based compensation to make up for the fact that most wrestlers were dumber than a freaking fence post. And they usually had personal hygene that would make a street bum look clean.

LOL. Did you ever notice how you can tell who is/was in wrestling as soon as you meet/see them? there's just a certain "vibe" and "look" about them.

 

[paulney]

My daughter is 5 years old, and does gymnastics once a week. We just want her to have fun and expel energy while learning cartwheels and bridges and what not. I don't care about serious sports at all - way to ruin your child's life and health.

 

[Homerboy]

My daughter is 5 years old, and does gymnastics once a week. We just want her to have fun and expel energy while learning cartwheels and bridges and what not. I don't care about serious sports at all - way to ruin your child's life and health.

what?

 

[PrinceofWands]

How fat are you?

Awesome shape from high school till my mid-thirties, though I've gained about 20 pounds in the last few years due to stress and lower activity. By the end of high school, however, I was 5'10", 205lbs, 28" waist, no fat on me, ran 3-5 miles a day, benched 305, etc. In other words, more than a match for most any athlete in terms of conditioning. All from being active and working out, with no organized sports.

But nice try. 😎

 

[PrinceofWands]

I think analogy is a terrible thing to live by. It's one of the worst ways to try to prove anything and only remotely useful when conveying an idea if all parties are already in agreement. You can make an analogy to fit any arguement any way, and it'll always boil down to be useless at it's base levels.

Couldn't disagree more. When trying to teach a new concept that people aren't immediately getting the best possible course is the lead-up analogy. Find something they can relate to, and start there...then work them through a series of closer and closer analogies until they can comprehend the core concept.

 

[PrinceofWands]

Bbbuuuutt he was a national debate champion!!!??!!

Come to think of it, how is debating not a competition/sport?
Is there not a winner/loser?
Why do debate then? Think of all the harmful things that can come from being on a debate team!

The purpose of debate is education...even says so in most every book/primer on it. Sure a lot of kids (most in fact) get super competitive over it. I never cared in the least about winning/losing, just presenting the most correct arguments. It led to a lot of losses that pissed off my team/coach, but it also earned me ridiculous respect and accolade, hence the awards.

Oh, and I never said I was a champion...I said award winner. We placed mid to low at nationals both times.

 

[PrinceofWands]

PrinceOfWands,

Your blind obedience to the ideas of psychology have left you blind to the world you live in.

You need to view the world from more than a psycological perspective. That is what you can learn from Munger. FWIW: He is on the board of berkshire Hathaway and one of Warren Buffett's closest friends. Both grew up in Omaha. Many consider him to be a modern day phiolosopher. I do. The guy is genious once you start to udnerstand how he thinks. The thing is, he is somehat trasparent about his thought process. It's more important to build the mental lattice work he talks about. Psycology is jsut one mental model worth understanding. Munger says he has about 90 mental models that he uses when thinking about how things work.

Also, regarding wars and blind obedience. Remember that positive outcomes to an event don't mean that they are morally correct.

As I have said NUMEROUS times, I don't restrict my views. My first degree was history/poli-sci, and I still don't have a psych degree (though I will eventually). Psychology simply forms an integral basis of most other disciplines, so is ALWAYS relevant. Not singularly, but relevant. I combine it, however, with all of the disciplines I have studied in order to arrive at a final opinion.

 

[GCS]

That's where my age issue comes into play. I don't think a lot of that really imprints on kids under the age of 8 or 10. After that the benefits start to become much more tangible and productive. But that's just my opinion.

Wrong.

I am a parent and a coach and ref ... this all starts with the parents and the league/group you are involved with for that sport.

My son is 8 (as of this month) and started playing in a local soccer league when he was 4 (2 seasons a year Fall and Spring). I started coaching his second season in the league. My daughter (soon to be 11 ... YIKES!!) plays as well but only 1 season a year.

As a parent I think it is great so long as the child is interested and the league/group you are involved in is not too competitive. The soccer club we are in keeps no scores, does no trophies, and is not pushy in any way on the REC level. They do have a Travel program that is competitive but not fanatically so.

What my kids have learned from this is that you have to work together as a team and sportsmanship. While there are some "overly competitive" parents in the league most of it is very happy go lucky and supportive of the kids.

As a coach I think it is very important as well ... all the kids I coach (not just my own) learn basic soccer skills (it's all I have LOL) but more importantly they learn teamwork, responsibility, and sportsmanship. My teams are always well behaved, work hard, and most importantly have a lot of fun out there. The kids keep score on their own which you just cannot stop but if they get caught teasing or bragging I pull them from the game. That's not what it is about. Some parents don't like it when I do this but most are very happy about it and typically I get 1/2 - 3/4 of the same kids back each season (the remainder usually move up to the Advanced Teams or Travel).

What does suck is the scheduling. We only practice once a week ( x 2 since I have 2 kids in 2 different age groups). Then there is 1 game per Sat for 7 weeks for each kid. The Sat games are all at the same field but tend to be spread apart (anywhere from 1 hour to 3 hours in between games) so in season our Saturdays are kind shot. Fortunately we live about 15 mins from where we play and practice so its not too bad.

I can tell you that there are many kids that do TOO MUCH (ie play something all year round - soccer, baseball, football, basketball etc etc) and that is ridiculous and does tend to be about getting the kid all over the place and no family time. We will never be this way. Also some sports (can you say Football) are so ridiculously competitive than arguments routinely breakout in the stands, coaches scream and yell, many kids ride the bench for the whole season in favor of the stars, and worse yet many kids get downright abused on the field physically, mentally, and emotionally. This is what I have a problem with in league sports.

For anyone to bash league sports "unilaterally" is wrong. Are there bad leagues, bad people ... yes. But there are some good ones out there as well and you have to find the ones that work for you (locality and philosophy wise).

I think in the right organization it is very good and important for the kids ... in the wrong one ... no it is not.

Greg

 

[PrinceofWands]

Sounds like a perfect candidate for Cross Country 🙂

I transitioned from football to cross country my Jr. Year. Cross Country is as nerd friendly as sports get. Nearly any team I've been around would accept anyone no matter how good they were and supported them. We also had the highest GPA's of any other team in school. My wife was a cross country runner too. We both were on our schools "scholastic bowl" teams as well. We're both geeks.

EDIT: CC also requires the least amount of coordination of any major athletics. You just have to be able to run without falling over. And it's also the most friendly to those that have no real athletic ability. It's one of the few things that you just get better at each time you practice. It's a sport where the hardest working really can excel rather than the most gifted.

Totally agree.

 

[Homerboy]

The purpose of debate is education...even says so in most every book/primer on it. Sure a lot of kids (most in fact) get super competitive over it. I never cared in the least about winning/losing, just presenting the most correct arguments. It led to a lot of losses that pissed off my team/coach, but it also earned me ridiculous respect and accolade, hence the awards.

Oh, and I never said I was a champion...I said award winner. We placed mid to low at nationals both times.

Last I checked, education was not about awards or accolades correct?
So you didn't care about winning or losing, but apparently cared, and are proud of the awards and acolades?