Here is the link I hope it works.
http://www.mghca.com/news_article/show/ ... _id=113956
Doctors Article from The MGHCA web site
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greybeard58
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InigoMontoya
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Your Kid and My Kid are Never Going to Be the President
We are forcing our kids to go to school for six and a half hours a day, and I'll give 2-to-1 odds on my pension that your kid will not be president, and I don't even know your kid.
Further, your daughter is not going to be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, so why is she being abused by participating in DECA? Weekend competitions, projects, case studies, wasting time and money on trips to Washington DC, New York, LA???
Let a kid be a kid.
We are forcing our kids to go to school for six and a half hours a day, and I'll give 2-to-1 odds on my pension that your kid will not be president, and I don't even know your kid.
Further, your daughter is not going to be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, so why is she being abused by participating in DECA? Weekend competitions, projects, case studies, wasting time and money on trips to Washington DC, New York, LA???
Let a kid be a kid.
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luckyEPDad
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What is radical about the article? That our culture places too much importance on sport, which is supposed to be played for fun, and turned it into a measure of one's worth? That is truth, undeniable truth.
I tried so very hard to direct my daughter to low key intramural style sports. Leagues where they don't keep score and you get a trophy for participating. That worked for a few years, but each season she noticed more and more of her athletically gifted friends switching over to travel teams. It became important, in her mind, that she play on one of those teams too. Soccer and softball community leagues weren't fun anymore. So I did some homework, watched a few travel games and attended some meetings and decided that at least in Eden Prairie hockey was the least screwed up of the major sports. My daughter became a hockey player.
The first few years, as a U6 and U8, where great. Everyone played at the same level, the games were fun, and the coaches made learning basic skills fun. She made a lot of new friends and I got a sore arm from patting myself on the back. And then came tryouts and the world changed.
When I first put my daughter in skates, on the ice, she cried. That was the last time she cried at hockey until the rosters were posted after her first tryout. She was on the B team with girls that could barely skate. It was humiliating. She felt abandoned. What had she done wrong? Why was she being punished? Once again we got lucky and her coach was a great guy who focused on learning basic skills while having fun. My daughter learned to love her new teammates, but I don't think she ever believed me when I told her there was no shame in being on the B team, that her old coach would've probably taken her if the numbers worked out, and that if she worked hard she would get better, find her own level, and that level might be the A team next year.
Next year her level was the A team. And the year after that it was B again. It got harder to sell the message that being a bubble player in Eden Prairie, at least at her age group, meant she was a pretty good player. To her the difference between the weakest players in A and the best players in B was a huge chasm, and she was on the wrong side of that chasm most of the time. It didn't help that the A players received perks that were denied to the B players. An extra official for A games means that B games, and thus B players, aren't important. B players must not skate hard because the ice is resurfaced more often for A players. Stupid little things that seem so minor, yet each sent the message "You are not good enough."
Lucky for me my daughter is resilient. Every October she came back to face having her dreams crushed. Each year she'd make it all the way through tryouts only to get cut at the very end. Eventually she started making the cut and eventually she became a varsity hockey player. She loves her team and they love her back. Everything is turning out great.
The thing is, it could so easily have gone the other way. She is still a bubble player. She works so hard that her teammates feel the need to comment on her dedication, but she is still one of the weaker players on a really good hockey team. The process could've crushed her, but it made her strong. You can call that a great learning opportunity, but I have to wonder why it has to be so. She has plenty of opportunity to overcome obstacles at school, making friends, being a teenage girl. Did she really need a 12 year odyssey to have fun playing a game?
Our society is pretty screwed up when it comes to sports. Lebron James is treated like a god, but how do his real contributions compare to the doctor who wrote this article? Why is there a parade when your team wins a championship? How does that change anything? Why is it celebrated?
I think that is the message of the article. Not that your son/daughter has no chance to become a professional athlete, and that they should forget those dreams and move on to something else. The real message, at least for me, is why are dreams of being a professional athlete so pervasive? Why do they live longer than dreams of being a cowboy or an astronaut? And why do we spend so much money on sports dreams?
I tried so very hard to direct my daughter to low key intramural style sports. Leagues where they don't keep score and you get a trophy for participating. That worked for a few years, but each season she noticed more and more of her athletically gifted friends switching over to travel teams. It became important, in her mind, that she play on one of those teams too. Soccer and softball community leagues weren't fun anymore. So I did some homework, watched a few travel games and attended some meetings and decided that at least in Eden Prairie hockey was the least screwed up of the major sports. My daughter became a hockey player.
The first few years, as a U6 and U8, where great. Everyone played at the same level, the games were fun, and the coaches made learning basic skills fun. She made a lot of new friends and I got a sore arm from patting myself on the back. And then came tryouts and the world changed.
When I first put my daughter in skates, on the ice, she cried. That was the last time she cried at hockey until the rosters were posted after her first tryout. She was on the B team with girls that could barely skate. It was humiliating. She felt abandoned. What had she done wrong? Why was she being punished? Once again we got lucky and her coach was a great guy who focused on learning basic skills while having fun. My daughter learned to love her new teammates, but I don't think she ever believed me when I told her there was no shame in being on the B team, that her old coach would've probably taken her if the numbers worked out, and that if she worked hard she would get better, find her own level, and that level might be the A team next year.
Next year her level was the A team. And the year after that it was B again. It got harder to sell the message that being a bubble player in Eden Prairie, at least at her age group, meant she was a pretty good player. To her the difference between the weakest players in A and the best players in B was a huge chasm, and she was on the wrong side of that chasm most of the time. It didn't help that the A players received perks that were denied to the B players. An extra official for A games means that B games, and thus B players, aren't important. B players must not skate hard because the ice is resurfaced more often for A players. Stupid little things that seem so minor, yet each sent the message "You are not good enough."
Lucky for me my daughter is resilient. Every October she came back to face having her dreams crushed. Each year she'd make it all the way through tryouts only to get cut at the very end. Eventually she started making the cut and eventually she became a varsity hockey player. She loves her team and they love her back. Everything is turning out great.
The thing is, it could so easily have gone the other way. She is still a bubble player. She works so hard that her teammates feel the need to comment on her dedication, but she is still one of the weaker players on a really good hockey team. The process could've crushed her, but it made her strong. You can call that a great learning opportunity, but I have to wonder why it has to be so. She has plenty of opportunity to overcome obstacles at school, making friends, being a teenage girl. Did she really need a 12 year odyssey to have fun playing a game?
Our society is pretty screwed up when it comes to sports. Lebron James is treated like a god, but how do his real contributions compare to the doctor who wrote this article? Why is there a parade when your team wins a championship? How does that change anything? Why is it celebrated?
I think that is the message of the article. Not that your son/daughter has no chance to become a professional athlete, and that they should forget those dreams and move on to something else. The real message, at least for me, is why are dreams of being a professional athlete so pervasive? Why do they live longer than dreams of being a cowboy or an astronaut? And why do we spend so much money on sports dreams?
Last edited by luckyEPDad on Sun Jun 08, 2014 11:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
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greybeard58
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Quite a few years ago there was a large article about the success of a local High school hockey player,front page big coverage. At the same time it became known to a few of us another local resident who had gone to and graduated from law school had successfully presented his case to the United States Supreme Court and won. His article did not even get printed.
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InigoMontoya
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The doctors examples of what parents would say. Yes, there are plenty of parents that are in the wrong with not letting their children heal/be healthy before returning to their sport. Those parents are the ones that live their dreams through their kids. I would like to say most parents would not make those comments that he shared.
If my kid has a dream to be a professional hockey player, I'm going to respect that. As they get older I would let them know that it comes with hard work, commitment, and passion. Kids are not going to understand this 100% but the more you can inform, and support your kid, I think you are doing something right as a parent.
What I can't stand is now a days is a child that wants to join a sport or do training or whatever it may be, then not showing up. Obviously sometimes there are valid conflicts where you cannot make every practice. But, when it's a reoccurring problem, what are you teaching your kid? They can sign up for things, then not be committed? By them not showing up is disrespectful, not only to coaching staff, but the players on the team.
With my time around sports I have seen both of these be an issue. Parents that seem insane about their childs performance, and the ones that pay the bill and let the children skip out on whatever he/she feels. Both are an ugly trait if you ask me. Yet, I don't believe majority of families are like this.
If my kid has a dream to be a professional hockey player, I'm going to respect that. As they get older I would let them know that it comes with hard work, commitment, and passion. Kids are not going to understand this 100% but the more you can inform, and support your kid, I think you are doing something right as a parent.
What I can't stand is now a days is a child that wants to join a sport or do training or whatever it may be, then not showing up. Obviously sometimes there are valid conflicts where you cannot make every practice. But, when it's a reoccurring problem, what are you teaching your kid? They can sign up for things, then not be committed? By them not showing up is disrespectful, not only to coaching staff, but the players on the team.
With my time around sports I have seen both of these be an issue. Parents that seem insane about their childs performance, and the ones that pay the bill and let the children skip out on whatever he/she feels. Both are an ugly trait if you ask me. Yet, I don't believe majority of families are like this.
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greybeard58
- Posts: 2511
- Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm
The editor's response was:the lawyer while graduating from the local high school did not now live in the area and the father of the hockey player was a prominent businessman and was a local politician and needed good press. Do to censor I can not repeat what my words to him were, I did cancel my superscription. I do know he suffered a loss of advertising dollars because of this. A couple of years later I ran into the editor again tried to make nice I basically told him he needed to grow a pair.
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InigoMontoya
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