Bananacorner
SILVER ELITE
Oh @chargerfan and @Striker17 I'm so sorry I hurt your sensitive little feelings.... please forgive me so I can learn how to live a completely happy and fulfilled life like you!!
When to let your kid quit?
- Thread starter Desert619
- Start date
coachrefparent
GOLD
Sage advice:
SoccerFan4Life
PREMIER
So going back to the topic..... This Just happened to me. My son said "Im done with the soccer, done with the yelling by the coaches, done with the pressure". I was sad but knew this day would come. I signed him up to cross country and he still needs to go 2 days a week and will be doing 5k/10k races once a month. To me, I just want to keep my kids busy and get them to find passion for something outside of video games.
My question to the forum is this.... Do kids now a days have less passion for sports than our generation?? The reason I ask is that ratings are down for most sports on TV. Kids now a days have everything they want on their smart phone and computer. Personally I think that our middle income kids are getting soft compared to previous generations. Things are too easy for them nowadays. School work is tough but other than that, everything else is just instant.
My question to the forum is this.... Do kids now a days have less passion for sports than our generation?? The reason I ask is that ratings are down for most sports on TV. Kids now a days have everything they want on their smart phone and computer. Personally I think that our middle income kids are getting soft compared to previous generations. Things are too easy for them nowadays. School work is tough but other than that, everything else is just instant.
Generational study is tough...too many exceptions and too much extrapolations. But, from the talks I've been to about Gen Z (hard to say when it starts...some say we should start counting as of those that cannot remember the time before 9/11, while others say it comes with the availability with the iphone...I lean heavily towards the latter) it's actually quite the opposite. Unlike the Millenials, they haven't been coddled. School is tracked much more rigorously. Colleges are much more competitive. Club sports dominates not just soccer but other activities. Winning has been emphasized unlike the AYSO everyone wins a trophy days. That said, because of their interconnectivity, and because they are practically addicted to their phones, they do want more instant gratification. Sports ratings are down on TV not because of the sports...it's because of the TV....these are kids that have been raised nonlinearly...activities which don't interconnect with them aren't interesting and many get their sports on their phones....their TV viewing time is down dramatically and the golden age of TV we are in now might not survive the Millenials. And if anything it's harder for them than either Gen. X or the Millenials because there is more competition for (arguably) fewer opportunities. The big thing we don't really know about them is how they react when they lose on a large scale basis or face adversity (unlike the Millenials...and the answer there has been surprising...they've actually broken into 2 distinct subgroups).
I think that kids get caught up in a single sport too early and they lose the passion for that sport. But then it's too late to pick up something else and video games are easier.
Great question, I've wondered the same myself. My son has also said he might quit academy soccer or soccer entirely because it takes up too much of his time, and play other sports, that take less time and are more fun for him. I've told him take a break at end of season, but definitely play HS soccer at least. Once I looked over his coursework and homework, I told him I'm fine with whatever decision he makes.
Compared to when I was a kid, the level of training is unbelievable. The coaches are better, there are hi quality DVDs that show you how to train basic wall ball and cone drills that I never knew about as a kid. You can watch the best players on YouTube in slo mo and copy their moves. When I was a kid, I would watch the best players do something on poor quality, non-HD tv, see the slo mo and reverse slo mo replays and take my best guess at what they had done, and usually get it wrong.
But because of all this training, all the other kids are good too, all the low lying fruit has been picked, so every kid has to dig deeper to stand out and make the top teams and get playing time. It's a grind and time consuming to improve at this point, and a lot of kids are probably worn out by the grind.
Plus, as you said, the honors classes are way more difficult and cover a lot more material than they used to. It takes time to do this homework. I told him he's better off doing honors classes and whatever high school sports he can squeeze in, rather than doing academy and non-honors classes.
There' only so many hours in a day. Unless your kid is both an exceptional and natural student and athlete, and is mature beyond normal teens as to time management, something has to give.
To add, somewhat off topic, many parents are pulling their kids from public/private school and home schooling so that they may train a sport or art without the added time sinks of long school days/commutes.
Also, there's the new gap year thing, which is taking a year off between Jr. High and HS, so the child can mature more prior to entering HS.
Also, there's the new gap year thing, which is taking a year off between Jr. High and HS, so the child can mature more prior to entering HS.
chargerfan
GOLD
The sad thing is, I can't tell if you're joking.
Sadly, I doubt it (see link below). Families these days are hypercompetitively, looking for every advantage, and it's the extreme version of redshirting that's been going on in elementary schools for a while. The downside of homeschooling for high school, of course, is it doesn't give you an academic transcript so you are putting all your eggs either in the sports basket or in academic testing (SATs, APs, equivalency tests).
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/05/repeating-the-8th-grade/371814/
Goalaso
BRONZE
I've heard of this and know parents who've done this. Big in football.
Bananacorner
SILVER ELITE
Agree, that is where I see it, where high school is the place to be recruited.
Not as helpful in soccer where club system, not high school, is where most kids get recruited and it is based on birth year not grade. Also wouldn't work in swim, where US Swim is based on age of swimmer, not grade, or other sports that have become primarily club-based.
He's not it's happening and has nothing to do with birth year.
chargerfan
GOLD
Anyone this insane should not be allowed to parent.
chargerfan
GOLD
They also need to consider the emotional and social impact this will have on their child. Both holding your child back and homeschooling, unless academically necessary, are not beneficial in any way. Sports just aren't that important!
Multi Sport
DA
That depends on your situation. I'm guessing there are certain situations that a person thinks that it makes sense. Personally, for me and my family, no.
Without speaking to the merits of homeschooling, I think the primary reason parents started doing it nationally was religious objection to the teachings in the public schools. The primary reason parents have historically done it in LA has been to further their kid's entertainment career, where they want you to drop everything on a moment's notice to audition for a part and where school is often interrupted for jobs. Sports as a reason for home schooling has in the past been primarily when the sport is very focused on young kids, requires long practice time and faraway tournaments/performances, and is not offered in schools (e.g., gymnastics and ice skating). Pulling kids out for team sports is a very new phenomenon, but the line between home schooling and regular school is increasingly blurred, especially with the development of online schools. The LA Galaxy Academy school, for instance, is basically online instruction with some tutors and mandatory study halls and a few labs and group projects thrown in.
The red shirting goes on in sports where recruiting is done by high school graduating class, not birth year. It's a huge problem in football, and it's a serious problem in lacrosse, because it works. In physical contact sports, an extra year of growth and strength is a huge advantage.
The college coaches don't care because the benefits of an extra year maturity extend even to college years. Jimmy Clausen, who attended a premier prep school in So. Cal. (maybe Harvard Westlake), redshirted two years (repeated 6th and 8th grade I believe). He was a starting QB at Norte Dame and 2d round pick in the NFL, so it does work sometimes. It sure must be easier to be a "freshman QB sensation" when you are actually a junior.
I think what kicked off all this was Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers where most of the best hockey players were born close to Jan. 1, the age cutoff date in hockey. The Sept. to Dec. babies got pushed back because parents didn't like older kids beating up on them, then the Aug. babies were the youngest, so they got pushed back, and the dominoes kept falling.
I don't understand homeschooling at all. Why would I want to study all the stuff I never learned in school so I could screw up my kid's education?
Funny you mention lacrosse- one I knew transferred from a great school here as a junior to a prep school on the East coast. Due to the transfer he was allowed to become a junior again - they cited concerns as academics as parents but it was clear they wanted to have him compete for lacrosse.
It worked . Transferred as a Jr. ended up playing two years there and Duke scholarship.
Quite frankly why is everyone in a hurry to grow up anyway?
Holding one of mine back in fourth grade for maturity was one of he best things I ever did