What’s the most extreme thing you’ve done to support your kid in their sport?
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Anonymous
Ping pong |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
| Fencing. |
Anonymous
What sport is Madison known for? |
Anonymous
TM wasn't good enough, they went to Avs? |
Anonymous
Mom of a baseball player here. That jab at “the average player” was unnecessary and wrong. My kid has always loved baseball, when he was average and when he was very good. And we’ve always found it fun to watch - it is slow and meditative, and it relaxes me to sit there a little ways off the field and watch the kids, watch the clouds, zone out. We also now make a family outing to the batting cage, and we all hit for a workout. It’s fun. The most extreme thing we’ve done? Time, money, and shifting vacations, probably. I was lectured by two other baseball parents at the end of the last fall season that if my son wanted to be truly elite he needed to be adding private lessons and workouts weekly even during the on season. That is where I drew my line - the kid was doing travel baseball and trying to fit in basketball practice for his high school team - no more. He can just be less than elite, I guess, because he still needs to pass physics and geometry, no matter how elite his pitching gets. |
Anonymous
| Not true, actually. If his pitching is elite enough to get a $1 million plus signing bonus then he probably doesn't need the physics and geometry too much. He can invest that signing bonus and live off most of the interest and payback from investments. |
Anonymous
Very similar. We are easily spending $25k per year between private lessons, travel to tournaments, team dues, camps, clinics and equipment, in that order, for a 10-year old who's good enough to be in the running to play D1 hockey someday (and yes, I am very aware that a million things could alter the current course, etc. etc.). There are plenty of folks who take a more passive approach for perfectly valid reasons, many of whom think their kid will still have a chance to play college hockey someday and everything will workout, but from talking to parents who have kids that played juniors then college hockey, I think it is close to impossible to do it any other way. I am planning to send my kid to prep school at 15 or 16 if he continues to love hockey as much as he does today, work hard and excel because there is no path to college hockey from where we live (no longer in the DC area). It's a little insane, but we're too far down the path now to do it any differently. Also, every time I start to think I'm making crazy time and financial situations, I meet another family at a spring or summer AAA tournament and realize that there really is always someone out there doing more. |
Anonymous
If this is true, you have to tell us more. |
Anonymous
Football and girls basketball off the top of my head |
Anonymous
Ha. Well, okay. But I was using “elite” in the DCUM sense, meaning really, really good, not top 25 in age in the nation or something. If your kid is in the running to be offered a $1 million signing bonus you probably know it by age 16, and that isn’t my kid. Play in college? Yes. Play D1? Perhaps. Major league? Nope. |
Anonymous
| I don’t do a lot but as a swimmer parent that means I sleep in my car during early morning practice, decipher numerous conflicting email messages just to figure out when the next practice is, and change my entire schedule at the drop of a hat just to get them to the next practice or next meet. I drive an hour then wait 3 hours for one or two events which take all of 2 minutes. |
Anonymous
I let my son's coach rail me regularly. |
Anonymous
I should probably mention my husband is his coach. |
Anonymous
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I went with my tween DD into the mountains for 8 days, hiking about 12 miles a day, staying in a tent at night, through drizzle, rain, pouring rain, hail, and...sun.
I have never camped before, never been in a tent...in fact I got a too-small tent so we had to sleep on top of our gear. I didn't know what a fly was so we had to use clothespins or something like that to put our rain ponchos over the tent. I'm also a person who has to pee at night, so there was that cold experience... I kept thinking, "get it together, (mom). You will not die in a week; you can do this..." She loved it. That was sort of the time when she just got so much more athletic than me, that I had to start outsourcing. She's currently in Minnesota learning to dog sled. I'm at home with the non-working dog and we are quite content to sit in front of the TV |