Being that her mother and I had been obsessively active in school, we searched for her passion. We found it in music. She began piano lessons before age 5, then progressed to the cello in 5th grade (no wind instruments or percussion taught before middle school in our district). Then when she started middle school she took up the french horn. When her 5th grade orchestra teacher found out she was abandoning the instrument, he pleaded, cajoled, tried to enlist parents’ intervention to keep her from switching instruments, but when we posed the question to our daughter as to why give up the potential continuance of the cello, she answered simply and assertively, “Cellos aren’t in the marching band.”

So there you have it, when she started high school, she did so with the benefit of having already met 150+ friends with similar interests before she stepped through the doors of her high school because of the summer band camp program.

To make a short story long Encourage your children to PARTICIPATE. Find something healthy from a physical and psychological perspective for them to get passionate about and support it. Some of our fondest memories include our son playing for the area CYC championship, our older daughter “crossing over” from Brownies to Girl Scouts and our younger daughter being the featured soloist in her senior year marching band show.

We love all the Bur Bur books; just got them in the mail yesterday. Read them often to you kids (for me it’s now grandkids, I have 2 now)

Well my co-coach moved, but my son wanted to continue on with soccer. So my newborn son would sit in his stroller and sleep as other parents kept an eye on him.
I found another co-coach…the mom of the little flower picker girl that was so absolutely adorable! My friend knew soccer from playing it in high school and college. We were both laid back and loved keeping kids active, letting them have fun while playing a sport along with learning rules and safety.
Some of the other parents had other ideas…they felt we weren’t competitve enough. Oh, we were, just not “aggressive.” We were sad to see one kid so hard on himself because the dad was never pleased with his progress. Or the mom that would scream at the kids negatively sometimes using profanity to get her point across.
These kids were only 6-8 years old!
Then there was a mom that called me after a game one day. Two of her children were on my team. She was upset, crying and said, I thought we were friends!” I was at a loss.
Each child gets to play a minimum of 2 out of 4 play periods. I always rotated so that every kid got to play equally…that was so much more important than putting the good kids in and winning the game. Believe me we had some really amazing kids…but equally as many average player kids. To me it just wasn’t about who was better! Well her child got one less play period that day so I could let one of the less esteemed kids that really needed a lift and needed his equal game time play. The mom didn’t talk to me for years…she ripped me apart because I wasn’t a friend…all because I didn’t play her child for approx. 12 minutes of one game in an entire season.
That year taught me alot about organized sports…moreso about the parents and the pressure that these kids are under to perform for their parents.
I wasn’t asked back to coach that year as the league was changing and a bunch of us were too “non-competitive.” I was a flower picker…and I am still proud to pick flowers with any child that just choses to have fun!