Friday Frivolity - Drama in the First Person

I was just thinking, I could use a little less drama these days, and then friend Karsten showed me this.   Brilliant.

P.S.
No offense Don but I'm just not that into you anymore.  I know there are loads of women out there who don't mind you taking a powder for 17 months  but apparently I'm not one of them.   So, now that you're back, guess what?  I don't care.  No giddy anticipation, no butterflies, no Zou Bisou Bisou here.  Seeing you again has mostly just reminded me why we stopped seeing each other in the first place.   You have the same old issues and seem to have picked up a couple of new ones since we last met.  So thanks for the good times, please tell Joanie "Well done, it's about time" and I hope to see you some evening once we're all caught up on Modern Family.

The Maternal Arms Race

 Even the most well mannered and confident mother can get a bit wobbly at times.  No matter how put-together, the modern mother can occasionally have doubts.  Her children are well behaved,  good students and they participate in after school activities.  Yet there she stands, one sunny afternoon, blindsided by a group of mothers engaged in some sort of maternal arms race determined to out-do each other with the myriad of extracurricular, athletic, artistic and pseudo-academic pursuits in which their under-10 children are participating.  Couched as laments such as, "I don't know how I'm going to get my children to all their activities this weekend,"  or "I just wish the school could teach math at Avery's level, then I wouldn't have to be dragging her to Russian Math twice a week..."  these comments are intended to expose the brilliance of one's children and the many sacrifices of their fabulous and selfless mother.   By the time we encountered a friend after a recent episode, she was shell-shocked and, even worse, doubting her own excellent parenting philosophy.  Ridiculous.  We know.  She knows.  You know too, dear reader.  Yet, everyone has been there.  One wonders did those other mothers come away from the encounter feeling better about themselves?  Was such bravado comforting to anyone in that collective? 

We happened across a blog recently called breed 'em and weep.  It is written by a single mother in Western Massachusetts who is struggling.   She is struggling to find the meaning in her separation,  struggling to raise her children, struggling to keep her house and pay her bills.  This piece the road more taken, puts a lot of things in perspective.

Are Youth Sports for the Young?

Most modern mothers recognize that the world of youth sports has gotten out of control. Nine year-olds play hockey year round. Or soccer. Or swim team. Eleven year olds suffer stress fractures, tendinitis, and repetitive stress injuries.  And, the parents? The parents make themselves crazy shuttling children to practices all week and trekking to distant tournaments on weekends; they give up on a family dinner hour when faced with the demands of multiple youth sports schedules; and, we won't even begin with those rare, but notoriously ill-mannered parents known for their appalling parenting strategies,shouting expletives, and fighting.

What is the goal of youth sports? To instill a life-long love of exercise? To allow children to experience the camaraderie of a team? Clearly, those goals could be accomplished in less intensive programs. Is the goal to help them attain admission to an elite college, i.e., get them" recruited" to Harvard? There are ample statistics to demonstrate the slim chances of post-high school athletic glory, though this might be a motivation for some.

Why do we sign on for these punishing schedules? Are we doing it because everyone else is doing it?  We just can’t stop ourselves? A child wants to play basketball, even likes to play basketball. We sign him up. The team practices twice a week and his team loses every game to teams that practice 4 times a week, and it's no fun to lose every game. What is the solution? Practice more! Thus, the vicious cycle begins, the arms race of youth sports programs.  Well, its time to de-escalate.

So, when her 10 year old, who has been playing ice hockey three to five times a week since October, says, “I'm kind of tired can I skip practice tonight?” this modern mother might surprise herself by saying yes. She agrees, despite the fact that she believes strongly in honoring one's commitments.  She will not worry about raising someone to think its acceptable to renege, she will remember she is raising someone who can recognize when he has reached his limit. She will instead feel satisfied with taking one small step towards fighting the exponential intensification of youth sports. Her next step should be to seek out a team with a lighter practice schedule. She should find that about the same time she discovers a unicorn or the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.