Over-Achieving Didn’t Used To Happen Year-Round

Remember getting bored when you were a kid because there was nothing to do?

If, like me, you’re old enough to remember annual periods of guilt-free aimless time when you were young, you’re old enough to be a parent whose own kids have probably never had a similar experience.

Today, most sports, music and academic programs continue during school vacations and through the summer. I guess that’s so kids are never forced to take any risky breaks from improving their exploding talents. It also ensures that we parents will continue to have a place to go where other parents are gathered, so we have consistent bragging opportunities.

But for anyone who has considered making an effort to reduce their motherbragging while spending loads of unproductive time with their children, I recommend taking the summer off. This year I decided not to fill out a single application or pay a single penny to keep my children progressing at anything.

And I’m not worried. Because come fall, I’ll simply claim that my superior parenting methods include purposely exposing my children to a few months of nothing organized, scheduled or challenging.

No one has to know how difficult it has been to have my kids around every day, especially when what they do with their time might not be considered even remotely remarkable.

Do We Want Our Kids to Win This Bad?

Day after day at youth hockey, soccer, baseball and football games across the country, coaches and parents are screaming at players, sometimes as young as five or six. Often the coaches are parents, yelling at their kids’ friends and even their own kids with equal amounts of scorn.

My son once told me that it was really intimidating to play a team if he could hear the coach yelling at his players before they even entered the dugout.  He said he always figured that the opposing team would kick their butts if their coach was a screamer.

A well-known and respected judge/dad in my town has volunteered his time coaching youth sports for years, and parents clamor to get him to choose their kids for his teams. In return, their kids can count on getting lots of wins – and getting yelled at with such outrageous ferocity that it is always the talk of the whole field.

Why is this acceptable?

What would our reaction be if a teacher screamed criticisms and threats at these same kids with the excuse that the rants were motivating and pushed the students to be winners?