I know how my parents did it. They didn't! We played games with our friends in the neighborhoods or amused ourselves. I did a little more with my two girls who were into juvenile Soft Ball, Basketball, Figure Skating, ballet and piano lessons. By the time they hit High School they wanted to have a car and that required them to get a job, so they didn't have time for extracurricular stuff. They both managed to do well in life so far, so it must have not been all that important to do. On the plus side they always paid their bills and never asked for money. Once they left they took over control of their own lives. Not a bad thing really. However, to be fair to the current generation of parents, they do drag their kids to soccer, Boy and Girl Scouts, Basketball, Baseball, but it usually only requires a couple of days a week.
I think that the demands of the organizers of these activities overdo the whole thing. Expectation and pressure is too high on kids who I know from talking to my own grandkids, the kids do just to please their parents. I have a granddaughter who loves arts and crafts. She loves to paint (does very well too), she loves to just randomly make things by hand (see once made me a perfectly usable (albeit unfashionable) wallet out of duct tape and she makes some of the most fantastically tasty and wonderfully decorated cakes. But, lately she has very little time to do any of that what with high school and soccer and girl scouts. She confided to me that she would give everything up just to do what she really likes to do (with the exception of high school).
I was a competitive springboard diver from age 7.. plus I played all of my school sports and spring select soccer..
my sister was a gymnast from age 4, made the national team at 6 or 7.. and also played select soccer, but she only did a year or two of softball.
My brother didn’t specialize in one sport like we did, but he did play all of the school sports.
Sometimes our family had to split up if one of my dive meets conflicted with my sister’s Gymnastic meets out of town. I’m the oldest, so I started flying by myself around age 14 to meet them in places like Iowa after my own meet and staying with my grandparents.lol
It was hectic, but I never remember my mom being stressed out about it.
Sports have changed.. especially select sports. If I felt that my son could have made a club team next year I would have waited. I didn’t allow him to try out last year, and he’s already behind some of the other kids with their fancy foot skills. This is something he wanted and I didn’t think we could afford to wait any longer.
He also tried out for a club baseball team last June- for this Spring. He totally choked at tryouts and didn’t make the team. I feel like baseball isn’t as urgent and he can try again this year.. BUT, even though he was heartbroken at the time, I’m SO GLAD that he didn’t make the team. It would have been a nightmare to do both. He’s playing for his school this year, he’s playing up with the 9U team, so that’s good enough I think. We’re going to have a serious talk about baseball and soccer for next year.. if he wants to tryout for a Club baseball team again, and if he makes it, then he has to choose between club baseball and club soccer before he accepts the offer.
I think it’s absolutely horrible how these clubs demand so much time from these kids at this age. Our soccer club demands a year round commitment (summer and winter is training and futsal or boarded indoor teams). Plus we have tryouts twice per year.. they didn’t do that when I was young.. now you can play Spring, spend all of that money, and may not even make your same team for the Fall. That’s so crazy to me. It’s almost impossible to make the team if you just played one, I always played SAY in the Fall and Select in the Spring.. kids today don’t have that choice.
Most of all though, I refuse to force him to become a One Sport Athlete, so we’re going to juggle as best as we can. I just wish the sports like baseball and soccer would chill out a bit at the young ages. It’s not diving or gymnastics or dance where you need to be young and retire young.. they have time for baseball and soccer and everything could change once they hit puberty. It’s too scary to put all of the eggs in one basket with sports like that.
