To the people replying “sports,” are you envisioning your children being professional athletes one day or just competitive travel athlete that gets recruited to DIII they could have gotten into anyway?

Anonymous wrote:Academics. The world needs doctors, scientists, teachers, etc, not more baseball players.

To be fair, I’d rather have more baseball players than more lawyers , lobbyists, stockbrokers, etc.

Honestly, sports

Anonymous wrote:What school give 1 hour of homework daily to young elementary kids? I’d be more concerned about that than anything else you wrote. Our pediatrician, btw, encouraged daily sports for our 6 year old. So long as it’s an activity your kid loves, it’s a great way to get them exercise and keep them mentally and physically healthy, not to mention the social aspect.

Op - we are at a parochial school. Kids are in 2nd and 4th grade. 2nd grader has maybe 20 minutes of homework a day. 4th grader has an hour.

Obviously academics. But many kids excel at both.

What school give 1 hour of homework daily to young elementary kids? I’d be more concerned about that than anything else you wrote. Our pediatrician, btw, encouraged daily sports for our 6 year old. So long as it’s an activity your kid loves, it’s a great way to get them exercise and keep them mentally and physically healthy, not to mention the social aspect.

Long term, I value academics over sports.

But at 8, I think pushing academics on kids can backfire. I would not choose a school that has that much homework at that age.

Sports

Academics. The world needs doctors, scientists, teachers, etc, not more baseball players.

We have a genius that is gifted at sports

Depends on the kid. We have one kid who we’re pushing more towards sports than academics because that seems to be where his natural talents and interests converge. He is smart but is a mediocre student, but he’s a great athlete.

His siblings are opposite. Capable of being great students but mediocre athletes.

Sports of course

My husband went to an Ivy League law school and will quickly tell you that sports has gotten him further in life than being book smart. I constantly have to tell him to rein it in with our own kids.

Academics. Being good at school means having various important skills that will take them through college and beyond. Colleges are looking more at GPA, SAT, and non-sports ECs over recruiting mainly mediocre athletes.

If you could choose one for your kid to excel at which would you choose? I feel like around here people push sports at the detriment of academics. Young kids practicing soccer or baseball 6 days a week. When do they have time to do homework?

My kids are young elementary and we do sports but they have daily homework usually 45 mins-1 hour and they have to have that done before they can do their sports. Sports practices are 2-3 times a week and a game on the weekend. We know people who supplement this with additional training on off days. And their kids are 8!