Reply to Kid has announced she wants to be an Olympic swimmer. How to respond?

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[quote=Anonymous]We have some Olympic and national team adjacency in our family, so at times the Olympics have become a bit more normal than they actually are.

My DD definitely holds Olympics for her American Girl dolls, watches nationals for her sport, and watches the olympics with stars in her eyes. Once in a while she’ll drop a bomb like “maybe when I go to the Olympics…” and that’s when we gently reel her back in.

Things we talk about:
1) what sports she might want to do in HS
2) what the girls she knows on the national team have to do/sacrifice to have a chance
3) what compromises she’s willing to make for her sport (homeschool was a big no from her, quitting soccer and eating more protein were easy yeses!)
4) how hard her college athlete babysitters worked to get their roster spots

And most importantly 
5) the role of luck.

Olympians are regular people who happen to be really lucky. Except for Katie Ledecky or Simone Biles. They are born with the right bodies, with talent, and with the willingness to work really hard. They are born in the right place at the right time- no one on the national nordic team lives in Florida. They are born in a year with just the right amount of competition so that they are pushed to excel but not squeezed out by someone who is a tiny bit better. They luck into the right coaches or the right politics when important decisions are being made.

Most importantly: they have their best day on the day that they need to. We have dear friends who had their best days the day before a trial, or the month before, or were injured during selection camp.

We take my DD to lots of women’s collegiate sporting events so she can see the breadth of sports excellence at levels that are not the Olympics. It helps her understand how many great performances exist beyond 2 weeks every 4 years.[/quote]

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