I was reading about a mother complaining how horrendous her day was as she had to drive her kids from one event to another.
I have to admit guilt and say that I had them in a FEW organized activities. The one thing I learned was that the kids weren't having fun and didn't learn as much as we all believe.
My son and his friends would walk down by the railroad tracks and on a patch of ice, play hockey, for hours. They learned on their own, with no intrusion from adults, and enjoyed themselves immensely, an experience he will never forget.
When I was growing up, you would be at the park playing the sport in season. No instruction books or manuals, no videos, no organized teams. You wanted to play, you just went out and tried it and before you knew it you were playing the way it was meant to be played.
Riding a bike or swimming, no instructions or classes, you fell of the bike or went under water. But soon you had mastered it. And the most important thing, you mastered it on your own. Remember that feeling of mastering something and how proud you felt, and then brag to your parents about it.
Now everything has to be organized and supervised. Parents send kids to specialized camps and training seminars, or even personal instructors.
Let the kids be kids and have fun. You may want to argue this with me, but before you do, go watch an organized event, and look at the kids faces and the terror in them, afraid of making a mistake. Then compare it to a pickup game, where they are laughing and smiling and enjoying it.
So before signing them up, think, are you doing it for them or for yourself.
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4 comments:
Could you have been more obvious about whom you were talking about there Pete? The thing that is different between now and the dinosaur age: Kids get kidnapped/killed/molested on a regular basis now. Not to mention the laws at this point in time dictate that if a child under the age of 14 gets hurt while participating in an activity that is unsupervised by adults, the parents can lose their kids and go to jail for child abuse. Maybe that's extreme but that is the way things are. I also have a hard time buying that you never participated in organized sports. I am sure your daughters/son were in little league etc. I know that I was in drama, tumbling, softball, tap, cheerleading, swimming, and basketball. I may have walked to my practices, but not always. I would also like to see my kids walk fifteen miles to the swimming pool. Also, for the record, I wasn't complaining about the activities that my kids do. I am very proud of what they have accomplished; Iain is two months away from his black belt. I was complaining about people who think I go home from work and am off the rest of the weekend. I am sure foot doesn't taste so good; you might want to get it out of your mouth.
The tumbling explains it, now I know why I have to talk slowly and use a chalk board to explain things. Read the piece again S L O W L Y and maybe you will get the gist of the article.
I read every word that you wrote. Maybe you should go back and read it yourself. Whether you intended it that way or not, you wrote a personal attack on me and the way that I raise my kids. No matter how you tried to veil it with your “clever” euphemisms about “a mother,” you wrote this as a direct response to my post. Raising kids TODAY is very, very, different from raising kids 30 or even 20 years ago. Read my first comment SLOWLY and maybe you’ll see why. Also, raising my son is a lot different than raising your son. You’ve met him, I am sure you can see that. You can’t just say this worked for your kids; it will work for everyone. It is a fallacious argument, especially when it’s applied too two totally different generations.
Also, you don’t get to talk about how great my kids are and then criticize how I raise them. My kids are who they are because of the way that I am raising them. I don’t need a bucsha to come around and hit them with a stick because they are misbehaving. It doesn’t happen. How do I know? I am involved in their lives. When my kids accomplish something, including something in the activities THEY have chosen, I know about it because not only have I seen the effort it took to accomplish it, but I am there cheering for them when they finally work it out. I get to see the pride in their faces; you’d have seen it too if you had come to his belt test. Ask your wife!
I will talk slowly so even you will understand.
I wasn't talking about you, even tho I got the idea from your blog.If I wanted to talk about you I would have answered on your site.
I wasn't talking how YOU raise your kids or how I raised mine.
The point of post was that We are in to much of a hurry to put them into organized activities and NOT LET THEM PLAY ON THEIR OWN.
Two cases in point. When my friend Dennis came to the farm with his son Ryan or when Justin was there, how quickly they bonded and PLAYED AND HAD FUN. No one had to tell them HOW or WHAT to do they just played. and probably learned a lot from each other. I have seen and expierenced seeing a kid play ALL the time to the one who only got in periodically or not at all. As the title goes LET KIDS BE KIDS. And if you read it carefully I admitted that I had fallen into that trap. The point about my son, was that it was just a bunch of guys went out and played hockey. They just went and played, no one told them to do so, they just did it. How you got a personal attack from that is beyond me.
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