Another who passed on youth travel soccer opportunities. My D did travel for rock climbing comps for a while. For us it lost its appeal quickly. To do so required high levels of weekday and weekend scheduling and provided an insufficient amount of downtime. Also $$$.
@GreatBooksMom , do you have older children (older than the 5 and 7 year old)??? Just curious if you have been through the childhood interests stages with an older child - and that maybe that’s why you found CC - or if you have just now found CC with these questions about your very young children.
Relax! And celebrate!
Looks like you will have 2 children that will both keep your family entertained and challenged. As a parent, the best thing you can do is to encourage both kids to try a variety of things and let them focus wherever their own interests take them. Try to be smart so you can stretch your budget and spread it wider. Travel sports can be costly and we did not start those until a bit older (age 8). Until that point the local Rec leagues were cheaper, easier on logistics, and perfectly fine for starting the character-building and skills-building that sports can be so great at developing.
Since your kids are both so young, there is nothing to say that CR will not bloom into a sports fiend and that RJ will not turn out to be the geekiest of you all. In no way is this an either/or, and you should not attempt to teach them that it is one or the other… The ideal is “Mens sana in corpore sano”
I have plenty of friends pursuing careers at the highest level while also qualifying for Ironman Hawaii and the Boston Marathon. For some smart people life is only half full without physical expression… And many find sports a fun respite from an intellectually challenging job.
Travel, explore, trace your genealogy, take family bike rides, collect and categorize rocks or bugs, try a bunch of sports, go to political events, go see your congressperson, expose them to leaders at the tops of many fields.
My D2 in particular has drunk out of a firehose her whole life. She played multiple travel sports, black belt, triathlete…She also is a complete history buff, voracious reader on any topic, 2400 SAT, D1 student athlete.
Bottom line, don’t encourage your kids to believe they must pick either academics or sports. Enrich their lives, and your own, by exposing them to both areas…
Stanford, Duke, Northwestern and Notre Dame are the four schools perfect for kids who want to do both academics and sports at the highest levels.
My husband and I are both engineers by training. We have 4 kids and each is so different. Each has talents that we sometimes wonder the origin of (especially the singer/dancer???). Just continue exposing your son to all areas and let him go. We do have a college soccer athlete who is a science major, and a word of caution about starting at the club level at too young an age.
Our youngest loves science- but not as much as he loves soccer. I don’t think he will ever love anything as much as he loves soccer. But as someone who went through the whole soccer thing with this kid, we have seen many, many kids who started out with too intense a soccer team at too young an age and totally burned out when they were older. Some of the best kids at age 5 are good because they are bigger, or more coordinated, or more competitive than other 5 year olds. In a few years, the other kids have caught up and that kid who was so good is just an average player. I’m definitely not saying that your son is one of those kids- he has the passion also and will probably continue to be good. While our son always loved soccer, we told him he could not play at a club level until he was older,and in our case we finally gave in when he was in 8th grade. He eventually ended up on a nationally ranked club team that gave him options to play in college. A lot of parents told us we were holding him back and that it would be too late for him to get college recognition. Of all of those local kids that he started with, there is only one other who is still playing in college, so waiting obviously did not hurt our S. In the meantime, he had time to play other sports, do some acting, go to science camps, and explore other interests. Once he started playing competitive soccer with a club, most everything else stopped. They play year round, and missing practices and games is not acceptable. It is tough to take family vacations and dinners together are few and far between. The higher the level of soccer, the farther they have travel to practices. We are in a big soccer area and even so, the club team my son ended up on drew in kids from a 70 mile radius- some kids traveled over 2 hours each way with traffic to get to practices. They traveled cross country for tournaments and missed some school and a lot of family time. Fortunately for us, our kids are very spread out age-wise, so by the time he started the more intense soccer, our other kids were pretty much out of the house. I have told him that he is very lucky because there is no way we would have done it if there had been other kids at home.
Until 8th grade our son played rec soccer (AYSO) along with all-star teams and some AYSO tournament teams. He still got a lot of competition and was able to grow as a player. He stood out as one of the best players and gained confidence. His coaches were competitive but compassionate people (often his Dad) and he had fun. Club coaches (especially with older kids) are usually paid coaches and they are there to win. They often expect a LOT from their players and can be pretty cut-throat. They are not there to coddle the kids and we know many kids who just couldn’t handle the atmosphere. Just make sure your son is having fun and continue trying other activities. Have fun!
It’s great to expose kids to a range of activities, but be wary of ones that take time and energy away from the family, particularly when they are young.
Throughout childhood they may change their interests, so it’s wise not to get emotionally invested in them following a certain path. Even senior yr of high school/college, they may change from wanting a career in art and design, to engineering or history.
Although if they change their mind senior yr of college, my recommendation is to encourage them to finish their planned degree.
They can always pursue a new interest in other ways.
This is a good thought from @mathmom, and it speaks to my experience.
When D was 3, I was on the lookout for activities for her, and her best friend’s mom invited us to come along with them to a dance lesson. Well, D was hooked from the first day, and continued with dance all the way through college.
DH and I had never had any contact with or experience in the world of performing arts – heck, no one in either of our families had. Dance was completely new and alien territory to us, and not something we would have ever thought to choose. I didn’t know a grand jete from a shuffle ball change. But being a dance mom stretched me in wonderful ways, and now I wouldn’t trade the studio years for anything.
romani also has it right – cheer your son. You don’t need to know a blasted thing about soccer; that’s what the coaches are for (though I guarantee you will learn 
). You just have to be a mom. You buy his equipment and uniforms. You drive him to practice. You show up for every game. You head up a fundraiser. You smile and listen when he excitedly talks about it. You ask him about everything you don’t understand; he will love to teach you and he will love you for asking. You see this as a golden opportunity to make a childhood history for him that will be uniquely his,
Regarding the frustration of losing a game, or making a bad play that allows the other team to score…as a mom you can focus on the joy you get from being out there watching him play. Especially for boys, just limit yourself to comments that are genuine. “I really enjoyed watching you play today”. That covers the basics, doesn’t try to mitigate the bad parts of the game, or try to make him feel better. It says spending my valuable time hanging out watching you kick a ball around is worth it because I love you. That’s enough words for a boy to know you care.
S1 became friends with a little boy during his youth league years. HIs mother would either sit in the car and read or sit off to the side and talk on her phone (never looking toward the field). It was was so painful to watch him scan the seating area for his mom after making a play…I still regret not having a little chat with her.
“Seriously? I’m beginning to doubt that this discussion is genuine.”
You think? The OP (with 8 total posts), has started up two threads on the same topic, in less than 24 hours. Going on a parents college discussion board site about her 5 year old.
Why would anyone do that?
Closing out this (and my other thread).
So thanks for the great replies. They were thoughtful, funny, witty, insightful and tender. I appreciated the coaches perspective from @Anxiousmom1.
Someone asked why I’m here asking about a 5yo. Bottom line is this is the most thoughtful articulate group of parents I’ve come across on the internets. If the site were called thoughtful parents confidential or puff of blue smoke confidential, I’d be posting. I’m grateful for the support.
Here is the plan. Going to keep him in the little kids group (same club) for now to ensure we have ample time to dig up worms, learn to dribble a basketball, climb rocks and read books in the glory days of summertime.
Come fall we’re going to give it a try. I say ‘travel’ but it in fact neither here nor there to us: it is all downtown NYC (presumably a patchwork of space rentals?) and since we’re coming from uptown it is a wash where we land. Also it is training, not competition.
But I do feel that if these practices become a highlight of his week, he’s getting great exercise (esp with indoor soccer in the bitter winter months), learning skills, making friends and it feels like we’re giving him the chance to be part of a group of kindred spirits then we’ll support him.
These threads highlighted one big salient point for me: injuries. 1) I’ll talk to the coach about that. 2) My husband is a pediatrician and our old nanny is a PT specializing in caring for professional dancers (she was one herself in her early 20s). We have a good network to tap with that question.
Re burnout (his or ours): If it becomes a drag him (or us) we’ll downshift to something lighter that still keeps the ball rolling (pardon the pun).
Way way tooo early for any labels, and labeling is not what you want to do to begin with.
Here, label my D:
-pationate about competitive swimming since age 5 all thru HS, Still holds numrous team records. Dropped participation after freshman year at college for other interests
-used to like reading up until HS. Cannot read at all, cannot finish a single book, just not her thing. As a result - Reading scores are the lowest in every standardized test
-great writing skills, recognized by many, awards in HS
-strong in math, but never had any passion for it
-strong in hard sciences, loves Chemistry, but this “love” developed in HS class - had a great HS science teacher. But Bio is the one for her, never was easy, had to work very hard in every class.
-passion for music, piano skills, Music minor in college
-3 foreign languages
- anything below A in any class, including the ones that she hates, considered to be a failure
-huge number of firends of great variety all over USA now. Very outgoing.
We have never pushed her to pursue one thing or another, but we offerred a great variety of opportunities and let her lead. She loved to read, it was fine. she could not read anymore, it was fine also, whatever…
I do not see what label anybody could use for my D. Everyone will be great mismatch. -Geek? Just because she graduated from the Med. School? - I do not think so, just does not describe her.
Jock? Because of her passion for her sport as well as great achievemtns in it? No way!
Avid reader? - not her at all
Party animal? Just because she tried not to miss any party? Well, whatever was going on at these parties, she managed not to get into trouble. Not her label either.
So, what is her label? I do not think it exists.
Offer opportunites and let them lead on their own path, whatever it is. And they may have several in parallel, walking every one of them simultaniously or they may be very focused. As long as they are happy and do not mess up their lives, we shoud be happy for them, nothing more…
MiamiDAP, I think the OP was using those two words as shorthand.
OP; i think you’ve got a good grasp on it. try it out; see what your kid thinks.
We know kids who’ve swam, done gymnastics and dance at age 6/7 who practice 3x a week . . . it’s not that unusual, although they dont all stay with it. Just make sure you take clues from your kid, and see that its what he wants, not what the parents want.
And you’re right about the group of parents here. there’s some very helpful, sharp minds.