<p>Good coaches can spot the talent at an early age. That talent may be unrefined so parents may not see it but it is also more than physical talent that gets one to the Olympics or the pinnacle of their sport, dance, music, etc. There is an underlying desire and determination that is just "different’ in those kids. There are plenty of kids that have a passion for a sport, etc. but that isn’t enough. Coaches can see that in kids. A good coach will be realistic with parents, the problem is, parents are not realistic about their child’s ability and that is where you see the problems more often than with the coaches. Elite coaches won’t take on an athlete that doesn’t have the potential to reach the top. That doesn’t mean all of their students do reach the top, but if there is no hope, they won’t waste their time.</p>
<p>Yes, a 5’ tall professional football player is a VERY, VERY long shot but if the skills are there, why not. A lot can happen between 8th grade and 12th grade. When our son was in 8th grade, the top level basketball team was “destined” to be state champions by the rest of the parents of that group. They just thought these kids were amazing players. They are ok, nothing special. Of course talking to the other parents these kids were all playing D1 basketball :D. Senior year is just around the corner. Their high school team record is below .500, half those kids aren’t even playing ball any more and those that are, not one of them is a starter on the varsity. Should those parents still let the kids play, absolutely. Should they catch a clue that their kid is NOT getting a D1 scholarship by now, I certainly hope so. The school is pretty good about recognizing this too. They hold a meeting with all of the coaches, counseling staff and administration each year to discuss potential scholarshiped athletes (usually current sophomores). None of these kids showed up on that radar either.</p>
<p>Do you think it’s easier for the parents of kids whose talent and success can be fairly objectively measured, or can they be delusional, too? I’m thinking about runners and swimmers, where you can compare your kid’s best times with the best times of others.</p>
<p>Quantifiable sports are always easier to measure. Talent and potential in something like voice are incredibly tough nuts to crack. After all, your instrument changes radically for better or for worse between the ages of 15 to 35. My D is 26 and has had a certain amount of success in classical voice. BUT she may have another 8 to 9 years until her instrument fully develops. It’s a long hard slog.</p>
<p>But thank God, she is no longer my “kid” and she is a fully functioning adult and all this stuff is now her problem. ;)</p>
<p>When my (untalented, unmotivated) kids were taking piano lessons, I was always very aware that the piano teacher had a lot of room in his studio and would have kept taking our money forever.</p>
<p>missypie–yes, it’s easier in a sport where the results are not subjective, however, even in many of those sports, there are variations-cross country for example, it’s pretty easy to get a great time on a flat course vs running a course through the woods somewhere. I see a lot of parents that are still delusional in sports like this–like yesterday. One mom was asking me about college recruiting. She was playing in a tournament with our DD (who is a recruited athlete-senior in high school-has about 30 coaches in all levels actively recruiting her). I gave her some advice but honestly, her DD has no hope of playing at a scholarship level in college. She might be able to play for a low level, D3 team, maybe, but the D3 teams around here are national caliber. This girl just does not have the skill level to make it. She finished 2nd to last in the tournament (90th), as a junior in high school. DD, who had her worst finish of the season finished, 11th. The mom kept comparing her DD to my DD and I kept reminding her that my DD is NOT playing well at all, yet she was still out driving this girl by 100 yards and beat her by 23 strokes.</p>
<p>As for the piano teacher, was the piano teacher claiming she was going to make them elite players or was she just happy to be fostering a skill in some kids. Plenty of people take piano just to learn the piano. An elite teacher will not take those students on. There is a difference.</p>
<p>I think it’s an interesting issue and one I’ve faced with both of my kids. H and I supported activities (in each case it was only one) about which our kids were passionate. The one point where we drew a line was that education came first. Oldest D who was a pretty talented rhythmic gymnast and did very well. Her coach wanted her to do home schooling. We said no. I think home schooling can be a wonderful option for some kids–but for kids and coaches in rhythmic gymnastics (I don’t know about artistic and won’t speculate) home schooling is a way for kids to do the minimal amount of school work and train as much as possible. Not something we wanted D to do. I think D didn’t push it because she really didn’t want it either. </p>
<p>Youngest D’s passion turned out to be acting. Purely an accident–she was cut from varsity soccer and thought her life would end. She auditioned for a school play and it turned out she got a part and continued with drama all through high school. She won a couple of state-wide drama awards at high school drama festivals and had a very hard time deciding between going with a conservatory program and a regular liberal arts program for college. She got into both and ended up graduating from a liberal arts with a major in theater. That was her decision–but I’m sure she picked up on the fact that D and I weren’t crazy about having her pursue a BFA simply because we are both big fans of liberal arts education.</p>
<p>After graduation, D decided to pursue an acting career. She’s had successes in regional theater, but she works part time as a nanny to support herself. H and I pay for her car insurance and health insurance–which she couldn’t afford without our support. For now, we don’t mind supplementing her income. She’s doing what she loves and keeps on working at her craft. She’s happy, so I’m not complaining.</p>
<p>I think at some point kids are pretty savvy and can make the right decision for themselves. As a parent, however, it’s hard not point out all of the pros and cons and try to influence their decisions.</p>
<p>On zoozermom’s football kid friend . . . the quirk of most youth football programs it that teams/levels are assigned based on a system of age and weight points. It actually favors smaller kids as they are playing with/against kids several years younger so while they may be small, they are usually more coordinated and better at following directions and executing. I have seen many of these kids wash out and become great wrestlers by 10th grade. Our HS for a number of years has a kid as a quarterback who had the job growing up because he was the smallest/most coordinated kid. He got to HS and couldn’t see over the line. He was a great runner/option QB but absolutely did not have the build/skill set to do that in college although one couldn’t tell that to his mother. She spent her life getting film to round out his recruiting profile. He was not recruited.</p>
<p>DS (who no longer plays football) now has the QB/tight end build, but was always on the line as a kid playing against kids 3 years older because of his size - no fun.</p>
<p>DH coached baseball for many years and, like missypie’s piano teacher observation, there is always a “pitching coach” out there ready to take someone’s money and tell the parent that they really have potential.</p>
<p>Unless your family is wealthy enough that a child’s future income is irrelevant, parents need to be very honest with any kid pursuing a quixotic quest. The parents’ need to show the kid that the average income of, for example, a working actor is $12,000 per year. God knows what the unemployment rate is. </p>
<p>And I agree with the comments on the injury potential of certain sports like gymnastics. I recall a gymnast a few years ago who fell off a piece of equipment and was paralyzed. Just today I heard of an athlete who is giving up football due to the repeated concussions and the risk of brain damage. </p>
<p>I steered my kids to sports where the risk of injury is much less (tennis and basketball).</p>
The thing is that in this area, youth football is such small fish that there aren’t enough kids to make that possible. Pretty much all the kids play together before high school. In terms of Little League, we have all the bells and whistles, but definitely not football. There is no frame of reference in my area for excellence in football, except at the high school level, and then only rarely.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s easy to measure even in “quantifiable” sports. The fastest runner in the 5th grade may not be the fast runner in 10th. We all know that Michael Jordan got cut from his JV basketball team. </p>
<p>Bodies grow and develop in different, often unpredictable ways. Injuries happen. </p>
<p>Sometimes, I think the kids who make it are the kids who aren’t that talented or gifted in other areas. One woman who grew up in my neighborhood was a great dancer. She got accepted to the pre-whatever program at American Ballet Theater. Her mom refused to sign the papers. The girl was furious. Mom still refused. ABT was calling mom and telling her that her D had the potential to be a star ballerina.</p>
<p>Girl ended up at Harvard, danced for fun there, and became a MD. She now thinks mom made the right call. She probably was good enough to end up in a corps, but the odds of really making it to stardom as a ballerina are small. At 11 or so, she was willing to give up rigorous academics to be a ballerina. By 16, she was convinced it would have been a bad decision. </p>
<p>I see this all the time with kids who go to LaGuardia (Music& Art) HS in NYC. Except in dance, you can get a good education there. Most of the kids don’t end up earning a living in performing arts. Some of the kids who go there had better academic options. Some of those who did and chose LaGuardia, only to realize that performing arts wasn’t going to be their career after all, are VERY critical of their parents for letting them choose LaGuardia.</p>
<p>Sometimes, I think it’s easier in something like gymnastics, in which “careers” end at an early age. You’re still young enough to go in a different direction when you get too old. But in something like performing arts, there’s no finish line and there ARE people…lots of people…who look back and say I should have quit sooner.</p>
<p>Pinning your college financial future on sports is at best a crap shoot on fate. We know a boy who was an excellent football player and had several D1 full-ride offers. Second to last game of his senior year, he was blindsided and blew his knee out. The scholarship offers were all pulled within a week and he had complete reconstructive surgery a few weeks later. He’s now at a D3 school with a weak football team just hoping his knee will hold out.</p>
This is why we didn’t let my son go to LaGuardia. We chose a school based, first, on its academic and social fit for him, then on the fact that it is the place to follow his musical path.</p>
<p>I’ve known several kids who got the big scholarships to top schools. Tennis, football, music, swimming. The only common thread among them was that it was clear early on that they were each something special AND they were all at the top of their classes in academically rigorous programs all through school. Sometimes it does work out.</p>
<p>I’m sitting outside work having lunch and two ladies came by talking about this very thing. I thought it was funny.
Oh and whoever they were talking about, the mother was delusionalaccording to them lol</p>
I don’t know about missypie’s case, but there is certainly a difference between taking lessons in order to pursue a hobby, and taking lessons in order to further a potential career talent. There is plenty of room for both types of teachers/coaches.</p>
<p>It seems every year the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal runs an article about the college sports crapshoot. The articles focus on how much money parents pay over the years in pursuit of a sports scholarship.</p>
<p>That cost analysis and return on investment potential is something that always seems to be left out of the parental thinking process. </p>
<p>We all know parents who spend many thousands of dollars every year for a dozen or more years on club teams, private coaching, tournament fees, hotels, air fair, gas, weekends of eating out… The family investment rarely leads to anything, in terms of college acceptances, college playing time, or eventual career. But it does seem to lead to a lot of burned out kids. </p>
<p>Having watched this play itself out for a number of years now, I can say that there are a lot of delusional parents out there. The kids I know who continued to love and participate in their sports in college have (with the exceptions of a few phenominal players who ANYONE could see were amazing) done so at a club level, or have done so with a light hearted attitude. The ones who were pushed as youngsters don’t do as well.</p>
<p>S2 is a good musician. Every band director, professional musician and private instructor he ever spoke to or worked with advised him to continue to play in college, but to major in something else. The pay for most musicians is poor, the hours are strange, and it is difficult to combine that with a family life. Employed music educators are some of the happiest people I know, however.</p>
<p>Just to clear up my piano teacher comment, I just knew to take any and all complements from the teacher with a giant grain of salt…to preserve his own income, he wanted me to think that they were good and were progressing nicely. (I knew better, of course.)</p>
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<p>That seems to be an area where a person can “have it all” to a limited extent. D’s voice teacher spent the summer singing in operas in Europe. A college voice prof that we know has spent the summer out of state performing in an opera festival. Another guy we know is a college music professor, but in his younger days, was hired on a fairly regular basis to sing oratorio solos with major symphony choruses. He even made it onto a couple of Grammy nominated albums. But always kept his day job.</p>
<p>One of my coworkers is in the chorus of the Metropolitan Opera and takes off every summer to tour. That was the deal when he chose this position and it works perfectly for him.</p>
<p>SteveMa, it has been very entertaining to see how many kids who were tops in our extremely competitive summer swim league and have gone on to higher levels of sports, USC -UC-Ivy- Minor/Major league baseball-US junior national team athletes. It is amazing how many strong swimmers were strong all around athletes who went to top levels in their sports. And yeah, some of those kids did not meet potential, some were groomed from an early age, red shirted at 5 to start school later and be stronger competitors, travel teams, etc., but simply did not get big enough to take the sport to the next level despite the talent and coaching, while others went all the way to DI blue chip teams.</p>
<p>It really made me smile to see, on DDs FB over the years, how many kids continued to be strong athletes through college.</p>
<p>As an abstract proposition, I’d say YES. But, I’ll temper my answer with a dose of reality.</p>
<p>My S graduated with dual majors in May of 2011. Mathematical Economics and Dance. Dance was a passion first developed while in college. He and I had a heart to heart his sophomore year. The first thing he said was that he wanted to do the dual majors and thought that he would pursue Dance to see if he could support himself and follow his passion. As far as I was concerned that framed the issue and provided the answer.</p>
<p>As long as the parent and child are clear on their respective expectations, I say following a passion (which I prefer to “chasing a dream”) is a wonderful way to live life. With us, his affirmation early on that he knew and expected to be responsible for supporting himself in this endeavor coupled with actually following though on that has been a source of my profound respect for him. </p>
<p>Similarly, my wholehearted and unconditional support of him making his own choice has been appreciated by him. I know. When I went to college graduation one of his Dance professors took me aside and told me that she was so glad to meet me and how much my son had expressed joy and appreciation that I had done so.</p>
<p>He has now had professional dance employment. He has expanded his skills to videography of dance. He makes his own plans. He lives cheap and is loving his self-sufficient life making his dream a reality one day at a time.</p>
<p>Wow 07Dad, what a great situation. You must be very, very proud. How exciting to see where he will go and know that he has an education that no one can ever take away from him.</p>