Reply to interesting study about specializing early vs not

Forum Index » Tweens and Teens

Reply to "interesting study about specializing early vs not"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is a writeup of a Science article which did a meta-analysis of articles and data on this subject. They were careful in their study design to only include people who achieved a high level v/s those who were exceptional (i.e. Olympic athletes v/s national level athletes, Nobel prize winners v/s national academy level scientists, top 10 chess players v/s "mere" grandmasters/international masters) Again, only comparisons between people who remained in their chosen field and did well. And they found that there was very little overlap between early achievers who "maxxed out" v/s those who reached elite levels but later. The other takeaway was multidisciplinary interests and focus. So essentially they came out against the East German model of channeling kids (prodigies) into a narrow mould and hyperspecializing.[/quote]

I believe it but there are exceptions, like gymnastics and figure skating, where girls need to get their triples/quads before puberty, and then the struggle is to hang on. There's no getting around early specialization in those sports, but their training is broader than it used to be. [/quote]

I was going to say my son does gymnastics, it feels impossible not to specialize because of practice requirements. You simply can't get the skills or strength without lots of practice. [/quote]

It’s not impossible. You are buying into the adult-led system that pushes it. There may be (rare) cases where a 9 year old actually chooses this but it is mostly the adults. [/quote]

By impossible I mean there is no option to casually do gymnastics and compete. Gymnastics classes are below his current skill set. I also dont know how you safety learn to fly through the air or do a lot of the skills with minimal practice.

Anyway gymnastics is the only thing my kid has ever wanted to do. He used to do baseball and swim and gymnastics but asked to stop the other stuff. But really now with the level he is at it be hard. We get gymnastics scheduled a year out (to be honest i basically know what his pravtice schedule will be for the next 7 years because its just set) but if we sign up for another sport I get a few days notice re practice or games. And if its on a day he has gymnastics we can't do it. It be amazing if other sports could provide schedules b4 sign up

I wish other sports had more set schedules.  [/quote]

Ummm if you need your kid’s schedule to be set SEVEN YEARS in advance, you may want to stop to think ….[/quote]

LOL I didnt say I needed to, just that the schedule for levels is set and doesnt ever change. But it would be nice to have a schedule before we signed up for something. For example if we could sign up for Tuesday night baseball or whatever [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics