I was a ‘soccer mom’ for about two weeks. I enrolled my 4-year old and 2-year old in a Toronto soccer club. They were both so excited to play (like their big auntie and uncle), but it turned out to be very short lived.
My son’s toddler program was unfortunately cancelled and when my daughter found that out, she was crushed and didn’t want to play. We still tried—I would race out of work, pick the kids up from summer camp and head straight to the field with snacks and treats in tow. My daughter would proudly put on her soccer uniform (all the teams were named after the FIFA World Cup countries. Her team was Spain and from the start, our hopes were high!), but that’s where the fun stopped. Dressed in her replica uniform, she refused to play and would sit on the sidelines and watch the rest of her team run from one side of the field to the other. We continued to go to as many games as we could, sometimes staying for the whole game, other times heading home early…but my daughter still refused to play.
It made me think how much parents should encourage kids to pursue various activities. This was my first experience of enrolling my kids into something that they didn’t want to continue. Everyone seems to say that it’s not good to push kids too much, but how do you know what the right balance is? I used to take piano lessons, but stopped in high school (though I regret it and hope to start playing again, when I enrol my kids). I too wasn’t serious about playing soccer when I was younger—my friends and I would walk around the field eating snacks and catching up on schoolyard gossip. I wish I did play though. I wish my parents—though they are amazing and let me do things I can’t even imagine letting my kids do, like traveling alone throughout India for 6 months—pushed me just a little more to continue some of the things I started.
I know that my kids are still very young and there’s lots of time for them to try and discover new things. I just hope that I can find the right balance of encouragement and independence. And I haven’t given up on soccer yet! This season is over, but next season we’ll be back at it, hopefully playing on the field this time!
Any advice?
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My son is playing soccer at a NCAA Division 1 soccer school in the U.S. at the moment. We enrolled him in soccer at the age of five and watched him run around chasing his shadow (literally) and picking lovely bouquets of dandelions for his mother. His biggest thrill was the pizza party at the end of the season, where he received a medal for first place, yet I don’t remember him ever touching the ball. Needless to say, from a selfish perspective, we didn’t enroll him in soccer the next year as it seemed to be too much driving and time for something from which he wasn’t getting the expected benefits.
It was recess at school in about Grade 5 that he started playing soccer with his friends and realized he could play with the boys that had continued on and were playing either rep or house league. He came home and said “I want to play soccer”. This time it was his idea, he found out when and where and we enrolled him in house league. The next year he came home and said, “I want to try out for rep”. He ended up making the same pronouncement about rep volleyball a couple of years later and at one point had sports seven days a week (he had goalkeeper training on top of practices and games). Were we being too indulgent at this point? We certainly didn’t enjoy the driving, but it was very gratifying to see him enjoy sports and gain the many benefits derived from team sports. We did however insist each season that if he chose to participate he had to stick with his commitment to the end of that season (win or lose
We didn’t complain when he announced “I want to get an athletic scholarship at a Division 1 school” (which necessitated him keeping his grades in perspective, and taking it easy through his teenage years because of upcoming games/training, etc.)
I don’t think you can ever go wrong introducing your kids to new things. Forcing them to stick with one of your ideas if they are really unhappy probably isn’t a good idea. You never know, having introduced them to a sport or activity early in life might predispose them to picking it up again later in life in their own time.
I think the process of introducing your kids to new things has to be approached as an experiment in finding out what they can enjoy and gain a measure of mastery. Likely, these things may not be the same things you enjoyed as a kid (as I discovered more than once).
We were lucky for the early friend influence as it made it easy to get started, familiar faces for him, parents we knew from school, and carpooling! My advice would be keep an eye out for things your children’s friends are doing and keep asking if they want to try soccer again. Who knows what would have happened if your son’s program hadn’t been canceled?
Thanks, Struan. I really like your idea on allowing kids to choose the activity they would like to participate in and making them stick to it through the end of the season—it allows them to take ownership of their decisions. We're starting swimming lessons this Fall, so we'll see how that goes