Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I'm not sure it's just about money. I'd like to know where the parents engaged in this arms race find the time for it.

There are all of these helicopter sorts who appear to have nothing to do but take the kids to practice, to special coaching, and to watch and critique every game. And volunteer coach!

What do these people do for a living? Some are well off sorts with time to burn. But most are middle class to affluent sorts who seem to have magically found 30 hours in a day.

Some of this is jealousy at the fact I don't have the time, nor does my spouse. But some of it is also annoyance.

This is the new reality of parenting in this country. Your kids are overscheduled from jump. And the parents are forced to figure it the fuck out.

My mother said to me years ago that she was concerned that my daughter was too overscheduled and she should just have some time to play with other kids. I told her that after playground years are over, that's just not possible. Every kid is scheduled. It's not just sports. So there is no one available to just get together and play with. You can't go up the street and ring someone's bell and get them to come out to play. They're all being trained somewhere. Whatever your kid is interested in requires a commitment that I and none of my friends could imagine when we were growing up. We just went out and played whatever sport was in season, organized our own games, saved up for equipment, etc. Playing an instrument only happened through school. Hell, everything that required some type of training pretty much happened through school. And rich kids and poor kids were on equal ground (except when it came to SAT courses, of course).

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Many of these people are making poor choices. Their kids are not good enough to get scholarships, they have perhaps too many kids, and their time might be better spent in a commercial/working endeavors which would better equip them to pay for the kids' college. I fear a lot of them will spend all these years collecting trophies that'll wind up in a dusty garage, while their kids later head off to college to collect debt, which will preclude them from participating positively in the economy.

I grasp the attraction of one's kid excelling in a sport, and that team participation schools one for later group participation in the workplace. But many of these parents go way too far, and they create an unhealthy arms race. And I think a lot of these parents need to understand, Reliving your youth through Junior is not reliving your youth. The school sports star phase of your ride through the mortal coil is Over. Assume the appropriate spectator position.

All facts. If parents invested the money they spend on sports they'd have a significant chunk of change to spend on school. And a lot of the parents I run into from my daughter's teams (or the opposing teams) are fucking nuts. Seriously.

I admit that I am more vocal when it comes to basketball because I know when the ref is screwing up. (And I'm glad my daughter played soccer, which kept me completely quiet the first 5 years because I surely didn't have the understanding of the sport to even question a call.) But my few comments are limited to really bad calls. These asshole parents are questioning coaches at games and think their kids should be playing at all times and should have the ball at all times when they're playing. They are completely delusional. I wouldn't coach a team if they paid me double what I make now.

TM