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Earlville, NY | Football.
My youngest boy just turned 11 a month ago; he's pretty small for his age, about 4'10" and 60-65 lbs. He wanted to play on the local youth club football last year since some of his friends did, but decided last minute not to. His mother and I were not real keen on him playing tackle ball at such a young age, and tiny size, but supported his decision that he really wanted to this year.
It's a pretty time consuming sport- they started practice 2nd week of August every weekday 6-8 pm, excessive in my mind for kids 9-12 years old (there's two different age groups, he just slipped into the older group so he's the smallest on the team, although he's also very fast!) When it started he wasn't real happy with it, but after the first week he seemed to be getting into it more even though almost all the other kids on his team had already played at least one year. They had a practice scrimmage against another club 10 days ago, he got an interception and almost returned it all the way for a TD; however, he also got banged up some and hurt his foot, which has been giving him trouble running now. After having Labor Day weekend off and missing a few other practices, he is afraid that football will interfere with school, homework, free time etc and doesn't want to keep doing it. He's always been hard to talk to about things that bother him, he just clams up and gets very uncomfortable, especially with me. He's a great kid; he's smart, pretty calm, polite and nice to people ( I don't think he really enjoys tackling people like the bigger kids do), a great student whose teachers all really like him; he can be shy and a bit introverted. He's now into something it took him a long time to realize he's not made for. We hate to let him think he can get out of something that he's already started, although his mother and I are not bothered if he decided after the season not to play again. He also played soccer over the summer and enjoyed that, and was pretty good at it, we hope he will stick with that next year.
I know this is kind of a haphazard post; my feelings on the matter are the same way. I want him to finish very much, but I want him to finish because he wants to, not because his parents forced him to and he's miserable and resentful doing it. I've never been the parenting type to do that anyway. I also don't want him to be a quitter though.
On another hand, he's only 11, and although I enjoyed watching him practice, I still feel it's awfully excessive the amount of time they put into it for young kids. (BTW, I played football in 8th grade and really enjoyed it for a few weeks until I broke my arm. I tried again in 9th grade but it was not as much fun since I had very little experience and was playing with a lot of much bigger kids; then I broke the same arm again two weeks into practice, that was the end of football for me, I lettered in track instead. Just throwing that out there). His coaches are decent; the head coach is a little gung-ho in my opinion but his assistants are a pretty good group. I will say I haven't heard anything from them even after my son has missed three or four practices with the foot problem. The more he misses the harder it'll be to get back into it.
So, I'm not sure what I'm looking for. Just trying to vent my frustration. I feel bad for him finding out it isn't what he thought it'd be, I'm worried about the consequences of him sticking it out or of quitting, just seems like a lose-lose situation. His lack of motivation makes me feel personally like some of this is my fault somehow, which is probably what is bothering me the most. Nobody wants to feel like a bad parent, which is what this issue makes me feel. I suppose it won't be the first time. | |
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would you force your kid to...?
