Yes, I feel as if there is a healthy balance here. Parents should strive to ensure their child is educated adequately, well mannered and polite… a parent should try ensure said child can grow up to the best of his/her capabilities… within reason.
When one enforces rigorous, extensive training regarding athletic or academic endeavours… it may cross a line between good parenting and abuse. When a parental guardian say enforces that the child is at practice/learning every waking second of every single day… or perhaps pushes drugs upon the child (for academics stimulants pertaining to a child who doesn’t need it. For athletics performance enhancing drugs) it turns to outright neglect/abuse.
At this point I stop and wonder whether the parent is actually trying to do what’s best for the child… or catering to their own vested interests (legacy). These kids tend to burn out, hate their parents (at least from what I’ve anecdotally perceived)
My experience (observing others) is from the academic standpoint, I can’t say I know any parent who pushes PED’s upon their children… if I did I’d probably say something.
Uhuh! Same goes for these damn endless enrolled activities, like Jr. and princess are all destined to be Wayne Gretzky, Elon Musk, and Chopin wrapped in one. I made a thread related to over-striving and to this called the “bionic man” but as usual many couldn’t see my point.
Just MY view: having kids constantly cooped up in institutional environments doesn’t serve them well with mommy, daddy, priest, teacher, And coach nearby isn’t beneficial. Learn to do shit on your own sometimes, manage other people, organize your own games. That’s just as valuable as learning.
I wonder how much of that has to do with athleticism and how much it has to do with the parent/s grasping at status.
I have a couple of friends that are “hockey parents”. OMG, the money they spend on skates, pads, uniforms, ice time etc. And tell you about it.
Then there’s Travel Team. They’re like the parent funded Delta Force of junior hockey (according to the parents) what with having to emergency fly out to some location for the huge important tournament, hotel, blah blah blah. And how Expensive it is. Oh my goodness!
I like to joke that I’ve spent over $10,000 on hockey and I still can’t ice skate.
Hockey parents were the worst when my kid was in pee wees and younger (12 and below). Luckily the arenas are usually quite large so it’s easy to move away from the guy who is trying to coach his kid from the stands or berate the 16 year old ref who is doing his best.
By the time they reached high school age most everyone that had kids playing at the travel level had mellowed out. Been there, done that and all of the kids who sucked or didn’t want to be there have all washed out, not unlike their angry and alcoholic parents who pushed them into hockey.
I can’t believe the level of competitiveness in high school sports in some areas. Special programs in the evenings after the child has already had their afterschool practice for whatever team they’re on, it’s like how we used to think about academics when we were kids, only now it’s for something that used to be considered a hobby or something to do after you did your homework.
This is really really fucked up… especially considering statistically most professional athletes retire in their 20s… academic achievement is something that helps later on in life far more than being able to throw a ball with a tremendous amount of velocity/force.
Not saying you have to do well in school, there are numerous pathways one can go through to get where they need to be… but PASSING is a must (in my opinion)… get that high school diploma, start a life
Man in my area alone there are sooooo many sports training facilities. Literally out in the middle of nowhere you’ll see some little pop sports trading facility. These guys are keeping the doors open too meaning parents are bringing their kids from age 5-17 there. They’re all targeting high school athletes. Amazing
In addition to what I said it’s likely the dream of a family member becoming famous. Almost no one will be.
Bottom line Is you and I know people who did exceptionally well in life who didn’t have all sorts of shit crammed on them.
I actually read an interesting article about an American demographic (that I’m not mentioning else some ultra-sensitive types will flip) that has high representation in STEM generally but underrepresentation in the C-suite of the companies in this field. The proposed reason for this is that although the demographic is highly intelligent and competent, it lacks the sort of verbal skills and psychological acuity it takes to manage people. This is why I think what I said: There is a benefit, even a professional one, to socializing, not being freaking constantly bogged down to various personnel and shipped to and fro in the back of SUV’s.
actually read an interesting article about an American demographic (that I’m not mentioning else some ultra-sensitive types will flip) that has high representation in STEM generally but underrepresentation in the C-suite of the companies in this field
Let me guess, Asians?
I say this as someone whose parents are from India. Many Indians do very well in school, but also do horribly socially (though this seems to be changing for the better in my experience).
Watching a TV piece on his training regimen during the Olympics back in the day is one of those jaw dropping moments that will flash before my eyes when I buy the farm.
Dan Gable was the original specimen on which I built one of my rules to live by -do not fuck with ex-wrestlers (good ones obviously) because they are just a weeee bit “touched” in the head…
Long ago used to work with a kid that wrestled at Penn during the “Dupont era”. He told me a Penn story about a kid who was wrestling with a broken jaw that was still in the wired shut stage of recovery; dude got pissed off because he was having trouble breathing (duh) and had the wires cut, so he could wrestle better…straight out of Rocky stuff. And I believe it because I randomly saw this dude (don’t remember the name) on TV one day at the NCAA Championships, didn’t win but came in 2nd or 3rd.
Then there was the kid from when I was at college, All-American wrestler in the 150ish class, so “small”. The (legendary) story was that some big, dumb football jock didn’t know who he was messing with…-the wrestler kid jumps onto a chair, flies through the air and knocks the football jock out with one punch. Straight out of WWE.
On topic: no idea if these kids were on the juice, but they were definitely not natural.
By the time they get to that point the cut has been made any number of times. They may or may not be natural, but they are definitely unusual.
We had some tough kids on the teams I was on too. Getting back out there with dislocations, sprains or broken stuff was relatively common even at grade school and middle school levels. I used to get my nose busted at least once a week just from the way I shot takedowns.
