« 12 months of fun | Home | Treadmills for tots? »
Confessions of a soccer mom dropout
By Christina Quick | January 16, 2008
For the record, I am not a soccer mom. Though my kids are fit and physically active, neither of them is interested in being part of a sports team right now. That suits me fine.
I thought I was doing my daughter a favor when I signed her up for soccer several years ago, at the age of 3. In retrospect, I recognize the absurdity of expecting kids who just mastered toilet training to grasp the subtleties of organized sports. But her preschool was forming a weekend team, and for some reason I agreed to let her be a part of it.
One of my initial clues that soccer for toddlers is a dumb idea was when she refused to don her shin guards minutes before the first game.
“They’re hard and itchy,” she whined, stomping her miniature cleats in the dust. “And plus they’re yucky too! They look ugly with my purple shirt!”
She looked down to admire and smooth the uniform shirt as her coach and I tried in vain to explain the importance of athletes using proper safety equipment. Having seen her in practice a few days earlier, I think we both figured there was little chance of her getting close enough to the action to risk an actual shin injury. That’s not to say she couldn’t run. But most of the time, she preferred to skip, dance or inspect flowers near the sidelines. Nonetheless, shin guards were required. In desperation, I told her she would have to return the purple shirt if she couldn’t be a team player and follow the rules. I knew it was a low blow, but it worked.
The kids played in a huge YMCA field where dozens of other matches took place simultaneously. Once her game got going, my daughter seemed interested in participating. She was at least moving in the right direction as the pint-sized mob chased the ball back and forth. But less than five minutes into it, she darted out of the coned area and into the middle of someone else’s match. I frantically called her name as she skipped happily around like a crazed fan, the lone kid in purple on a field of blues and reds. I ran after her, dodging children and trying to ignore the piercing whistle of an overzealous teenage referee. Snagging the purple shirt as it danced past, I dragged my daughter back toward her own playing area.
“Your team is over there,” I gasped, pointing.
“I know,” she said indignantly. “I don’t want to play with them any more. The bigger ones always have the ball and they don’t share. They won’t even take turns. And so I don’t think that’s very nice, do you?”
I couldn’t argue with her logic. The truth is, competitive sports never did much for me either. Not long afterward, we retired the purple jersey to the pajama drawer. That’s when she told me what she really wanted was to be a ballerina.
“That’s great,” I said. “But let’s wait until you’re a little older. For now, just enjoy being 3.”
I did enroll her in ballet two years later, and she has been dancing contentedly ever since. If you ask her, the best part is the lovely costumes she gets to wear for the stage productions. Mercifully, none of them come with shin guards.
Topics: Parenting |
January 16th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
That made me smile but you never know when there might be a sports-related ballet. Better hang on to those shin guards.