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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The above post took a meandering mess. The point I am trying to make is that, there is a lot of things Asians can learn from Whites, including some very valid criticism on test prep, etc. and there are a lot of areas where Whites can learn from Asians like Math practice. 
 [/quote]
I agree that my preference is a more balanced approach between stereotypical Asian parenting and white parenting.  But I also don't think that extra schooling or academics are necessarily a bad thing.  With my kids, I take a very practical approach.  My kids can't control how much or how little effort other people's kids put into things.  The only thing they can control is how much effort they're going to put into something and whether the end result is worth it.  They will always encounter kids who are better with equal or lesser degrees of natural talent, because the other kid started earlier, is working harder, or is getting private coaching/tutoring.  That's life.  The solutions are to either work harder, too, or accept that you won't be the best.  [/quote]

Neither do I, in moderation. They are kids, let them follow their interests. Our jobs as parents is to help them find balance while nurturing their interests. And while I fully believe that there are kids interested in math and doing more, I seriously doubt that the majority of the kids in prep courses for the NNAT or CogAT are there because they are interested in being there. I would be surprised to find that the majority of the kids at Mathnasium asked to attend. AoPS and Russian Math sound like different types of programs and something more interesting that a academically natured kid would be interested in.

The original post asserted that people don’t get upset by the extra sports emphasis and the reality is that many parents have no interest in rec sports, never mind travel sports. And lots of people think the travel sports are over the top. There are maybe 250-300 kids in third grade who play Rec baseball in the Reston-Herndon area, guesstimating here based on the numbers in the two leagues I know of. Figure similar figures for other sports. That is not a huge number. Soccer might have more kids because it is a normal fall sport. Point being, sports are not the all encompassing activity that the OP is arguing they are. Travel sports participation is even smaller.

My concern for any child submerged in one activity is does the child want to be there? I see plenty of kids playing sports who don't want to be there. You see it in how they play and act. The kids parents will be talking about how much their kid loves to play while the kid is walking on the field or playing in the dirt or yelling at a coach.  Some kids are quiet but they are not hustling or moving away from the action. I suspect that there are a good number of kids in academic programs with the same attitude.

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