Geek dreams and jock shocks

Parent Cafe
1

I’m a geek (editor at a science journal). My husband is a geek (physician-researcher).

Our 7yo son, CR is a geek. Chemistry sets. Fossils collecting. Obsessed with dark matter (what IS it?). Trash picker/upcycler/junk collector and tinkerer. Absolute bookworm (esp. comics, fiction, science). The three of us are a unit.

And then there is RJ.

RJ does not love books as we love books.
RJ does not yearn for blissful afternoons navigating the local science museum. He sees past the dinosaur fossils and stares thru the window into the green space below and his feet start tapping impatiently.
I have seen it and I have been in denial. He’ll come around to the wonders of crystals, I would tell myself. When I explain how stars have a life cycle and spider web silk is ejected from spinnerets as a liquid, he too will hear the siren call of science and bask in it’s wonder as WE do! And since I work an intense FT job as does my husband this intellectually neat and tidy life was perfect for us.

RJ, who is 5, has a love. And that love begins with S but is not science. It is soccer. We are geeks and RJ is a jock.

As I recently posted, the stars have aligned and RJ just got invited to join a highly competitive U6 soccer club. We’re talking 3x90m training per week and traveling. He is over the MOON.

To be COMPLETELY HONEST there a little part of me that was hoping he would turn out to be the wonderful geek his big brother is. I can totally do geek mothering. I can and do spend happy hours reading about the incredibly durability of tardigrades or the logical underpinnings of proof-based math. And CR drinks it all in an it is family bliss.

It is slowly sinking in that RJ is RJ. And RJ needs a mom who will embrace schlepping and cleats and cheering from the sidelines.

I’d love to hear from anyone who knows what I’m talking about and has a child whose interests represent totally new territory for the family and a whole different reality for what family life is shaping up to look like.

2

Get over your geek dreams and embrace your jock child. It’s that simple.

3

Balance. All things should be in balance.

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Love the kid on the couch. Actually half the fun of parenting was what I learned from my kids. And yes, I learned a lot about soccer from the second kid while my oldest was much like your oldest. That said, I don’t believe in pushing sports too early. And that second kid while very different from the oldest did end up being a book lover too, he learned to read at seven instead of three, but their reading scores on the SAT were only 10 points apart. He never did get in to the electronics kits or computer programming that fascinated his older brother, but there turned out to be more commonalities than you might expect. They both ended up on the same Science Olympiad team in high school. S1 doing physics and S2 doing ecology.

5

That’s the beauty of having kids. They open up the world to us.

My husband and I are baseball fans and wordsmiths. My dad is a writer. We cannot figure out where our math and physics loving son came from :). In high school we would find scraps of paper where he had been scribbling, trying to figure out a formula. He wrote a program to solve Rubik’s cube for himself.

All the while we could not get him interested in fiction or discussing current events. He is who he is.

He and his sister love tennis. So we learned to love watching them play.

You’ll see. Your kids are young. They will do so many things differently from you, even the geek.

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We have a similar family dynamic, where the second kid surprised us by turning out to be very athletic. Like mathmom, I would caution against assuming the jock is not also capable of being brainy. I have seen so many kids over the years who were solely devoted to swimming, water polo, volleyball and baseball through middle school…only to have that interest or talent fizzle out by high school. Make sure the younger child is also being encouraged to be curious about everything.

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It’s a HUGE step for you to recognize and admit your family dynamics. So pat yourself on the back.

I am not a big travel sport fan, my thought it is wrecks the family dinners on weeknights, and demands multiple weekends where either the family is divided up or the family all schleps to accommodate one child. But you and your husband will have to experience a season or two and decide if the price is worth it. My son wanted to continue in his love for soccer, but had other sports he wanted to try. So he got certified and has been a soccer ref since he was 8 years old. They start out reffing the tiniest kids’ games, and as they get older and get more training, they move up to the better leagues. It has been a great outlet for my active boy, and he has gained confidence and the needed personal skills to deal with nasty parents’ comments from the sidelines.

I have an introvert daughter (first born) who was calm and lived indoors and read books. Then 5 years later along came my active boy. He literally cried to go outside, even at 15 degrees in the wintertime. I am an indoor bookworm, so I was comfy with my firstborn, and had to work to adjust to my son’s needs. And they really are needs. I had to accept that, and figure out how to compromise.

I know a family where the father was musical (not as his vocation, but very dedicated to playing music in church). He was blessed with his first 2 children that they were also musical and enjoyed following in father’s footsteps. Along came child #3, who was pretty much forced into the musical path, but hated it. When she was old enough, she signed up for the Army without telling her family, and is off having the adventures she was hoping for. She never got the family camping trips she wanted or even acceptance of her own unique personality, and had to seek it elsewhere.

With your new attitude and acceptance of your son’s personality, you and your husband will be exposed to new things and will adjust to a new kind of reality for your family. Take it one season at a time, and adjust as needed.

Good luck!

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How fun that through RJ you and you family will be exposed to new adventures and new friends. How wonderful for RJ that he will have the opportunity to develop the skill sets of teamwork and leadership. Don’t think of this as disrupting your lifestyle, but rather as enhancing it! There are plenty of good books about sports and plenty of interesting things for CR to discover on the sidelines. (he may even enjoy keeping the stats)

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Great feedback - I’m and soaking it all up.

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I think all parents deal with this on some level. We are all “jocks” in this house. We never let our kids do select/travel sports due to the strain that would put on our family time and the challenge of all 3 wanting to do travel teams. Instead, we did local sports clubs and switched sports with the season. Soccer, baseball, basketball, tae kwon do, summer swim league, lather, rinse, repeat. We loved it. But we are all also “geeks” by your definition!

I think what non-athletic people might not understand is that people who are naturally athletic can’t “help” it. They can’t walk under a basketball hoop without jumping up to touch it. They can’t hold anything still - they must swing it or toss it or bounce it. That does not go away in adulthood. It’s the way we are made. I’m a middle aged woman and it pains me to walk when really I just want to break into a run, dodging and hurdling objects in my way. It would never occur to anyone in our house to “put” laundry in a hamper or trash in the trash can. All items must be tossed from great distance. It’s fun. It’s natural. For naturally athletic people, everything is a physical challenge to be accomplished. It is a type of physical curiosity (the question of “can I DO it?”) not unlike your natural curiosity about intellectual pursuits.

So for our family being all sports crazy but still geeky, the shocker came with our middle kiddo. He loved sports, and had a favorite sport he was cuckoo about. But he also wanted to take piano lessons and guitar lessons and violin lessons, play percussion in the school band, and sing in the choir. EEK! He had… MUSICAL TALENT!!! Where did this come from? Put on an Eagles CD. That’s the only musical gene he should have inherited.

Once, as our little boy walked out to the piano in his little blue blazer and tie, and sat down to play at yet another recital, my H whispered (no not whispered exactly - I felt sure everyone heard it) “I’d rather be at a soccer tournament”. Shame on H!!! (Though I secretly felt exactly the same).

Just enjoy your little guy! Honor his gift of athleticism. Sure, keep engaging him in family reading nights, trips to the library and museum, etc. But throw in an occasional outing to a sporting event (before you go, you can all learn about the history of the venue, the rules of the game, etc.). Replace one museum trip with a trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame, or something that he will love. And when you sit down to read to him, choose a Gordon Korman book about sports. Teach him how to calculate a batting average, the physics of how a football flies, how nutrition affects sports performance, the countries where futbol is bigger than football. Read him biographies of great athletes who are also people of great character.

In other words, find that place where Geek meets Jock! No reason you can’t find common ground here!

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What a great reply @Barfly - I especially loved:

“For naturally athletic people, everything is a physical challenge to be accomplished. It is a type of physical curiosity (the question of “can I DO it?”) not unlike your natural curiosity about intellectual pursuits.”

You just described RJ. He explores a block (balances on little walls, leaps off slightly too high ones), he doesn’t just walk down the street.

He also has what can only be described as a vibrational hum to his body even when sitting.

Great reply.

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YES! Exactly! I totally get that. And, over the years, I’ve started to “get” my kid that can make music come out of his cereal bowl and spoon.

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I have zero coordination but H was HS varsity athlete in 2 sports (including football captain). We were both brainy kids.

D is athletic but gave up travel soccer for dance. S tried several sports but not particularly good at any. Both kids were high academic achievers. To H’s great credit he never expressed any disappointment about the kids not being in sports. And he comes from a family in which several members were sports stars in HS and in which 2 close family members (not him) played Div I college football.

I am very proud of the fact that my 2 HS non athletes are fit and active. Both work out and run on a regular basis.

D has gotten me very interested in theater. S has always had a great love of other cultures and is an incredible travel companion. They have both helped to expand our horizons in so many ways!

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Sports can be the subject of various academic or geeky subjects.

  • Sports performance through practice and training methods, technical skills, physiology and nutrition, etc..
  • Sports analytics based on math and statistics.
  • Sociology, psychology, economics of sports.
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I have three kids. Each of them is completely different, and I saw it the minute the second was born. As someone above said, the beauty of having kids is learning all the wonderful things each one brings to the family. I am not a sports person, so I’m a bit surprised to learn that there are elite travel teams for 5 year olds! I could not endorse that in my family, for several reasons, but if it works for you, go for it. Just be careful about keeping him in that one sport for all of his childhood-he may change his mind and want to try something else, that he’ll likely love just as much.

My older D used to vibrate-I get that-and she still does at 25. Her sport as a little kid was gymnastics, then she switched to swimming and skiing. Now she hikes and kayaks along with swimming. Her older brother is a natural athlete, but prefers introspective things, coupled with hands-on pursuits like fixing up cars or his boat. What made him happy was not all all what interested his sister. We had to learn new things with each kid in addition to learning new things as they grew. Yours are still very young-anything could change.

My youngest is different from both of the others. Her “sport” is dance and that was whole new territory for us. And when she started school, we discovered that the busier she is, the happier she is, so she signs up for everything. And we drive. It’s hard on us two introverts, but we’ve learned yet another new way of being. It’s fun. It’s exhausting, and it will be ending too soon when she leaves home.

Final thought-let your kids be who they are. Don’t assume much-that’s likely to get you into trouble. And don’t assume your little kid who loves sports more than books as a 5 yo is never going to be interested in school or books. People are multifaceted. H holds 2 degrees and has a book collection that’s impressive, but he’s also a die-hard sports fan and loves those Marvel comic movies. Those things don’t make his less intelligent. Give your kids a chance to grow up before you form assumptions about who they’ll be for always.

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I am in the opposite situation (child and the geek). My father was a plumber and a jock. School was not his thing. My mother… was neither, really. But she is a wonderful woman.

Me? I am a geek. My mother jokes that she never had an infant because I did everything so early. I’m a PhD student and my parents never went past high school. I did do sports and was a jock until I blew out my knee in high school.

What did my parents do? They cheered on ME every step of the way. They had no idea how to help me navigate through school and whatnot but they did what they could.

I love them for trying.

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So you’re going to have your five year old join a highly competitive travel team? You know there are plenty of soccer teams for five year olds that don’t involve making the family travel around on weekends, intense workouts. and the like.“But if he doesn’t do it now, he’ll never have another chance! He’ll be behind, and won’t get that athletic scholarship and win the World cup!”

I used to live in Memphis, and that was a common attitude. Really draining, and those superstar athletic kids were often burned out and injured by the time they got to college. The families got to spend their weekends driving to athletic events all over the place. It was the entire families world, and the kids ended up hating it. If you didn’t start them when they were four, it’s too late! Sigh.

Kids are different. It’s not a surprise. They bring all sorts of challenges and rewards to our lives, they are not clones. Embrace them for what they are, but don’t push them into things obsessively, just because they are good at something. Like someone brought up before, balance.

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Since you live in NYC and there are many opportunities, maybe he would enjoy dance. Another outlet for moving, and to music, which a lot of kids love.

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Also, he’s 5. He might learn to love soccer AND science. Don’t pigeonhole him into an activity yet - do soccer but leave time and energy for other interests or down time to develop other interests.

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Expose him to and encourage him to try as many activities as possible, but do not push heavily into those where you think he has talent. Dance, swimming, soccer, gymnastics… Just do not overschedule his time. Kids need some unstructured time to dig in the mud, play on the swing set, etc.