Part 2: Bringing Healthy Sports into the Lives of Kids
By · CommentsVictory for Title IX and Girls and Women in Sports
Julia wanted to play college tennis, but when she got to school the team had been demoted to a club sport due to “lack of interest.”
Discussion:
Title IX has particular significance for me. It was passed the year after I graduated from high school.
Personally, I was lucky in the sports arena, growing up as an “army brat” with barracks of kids to play with and a baseball field across the street. I played baseball all spring and football all fall and every sport I could get my hands on in-between. I had a dad who thought girls could do anything. I had a high school that had swim team, track team and I was part of the first ski team. In college, I competed on the basketball, tennis and swim team.
Some of my friends did not fare so well, where girls just did not think about doing sports. No other girls did it and there were few opportunities. All that changed after Title IX and my daughter and her friends thrived. Women’s participation at the college level has increased more than 500 percent since Title IX’s enactment. Better still, these gains have not come at the expense of men, whose athletic opportunities have also increased since Title IX’s passage in 1972. We know that girls thrive when they participate in sports, and that the benefit of playing sports stays with them for years to come.
I was upset when Title IX powerful influence was gauged by a deeply flawed 2005 policy that allowed schools to count non-responses to the spam-like survey as a lack of interest in athletics. The AAUW (American Association of University Women) fought this, saying, “It not only created a major loophole through which schools could evade their Title IX obligations, it jeopardized the number of athletic opportunities available to women. “
All of this ended on April 20 when the Obama administration and Department of Education issued new guidance for Title IX, rescinding the 2005 policy. The new guidance returns to the previous standard, under which schools will consider a number of factors, including athletic participation rates at the secondary school levels and interviews with coaches, to ensure they are following Title IX requirements. Schools will have a much better road map for compliance, and women and girls will have a much better shot at fair play.
“Making Title IX as strong as possible is a no-brainer,” said Vice President Biden. “What we’re doing here today will better ensure equal opportunity in athletics, and allow women to realize their potential – so this nation can realize its potential.”
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If I knew then what I know now,
I would have encouraged my grade school girlfriends to play sport with me and the boys I played with.
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Let us know what you think.
Send us any questions you have.
Bringing Healthy Sports into the Lives of Kids
By · CommentsLearning Life Lessons through Sports
Bill really wanted his son to experience the fun of baseball the way he did as a kid. He was worried about the serious competitiveness that happened even in early grade school.
Discussion:
I want to share my friend John Child’s story as a coach of his 2 children to help us all remember the main point of sports for kids- to have fun.
John Child’s coaching style started with his management role at work. When he started a review with “you are doing ‘this’ wrong”, people would shut down and get defensive. So he started asking, “Tell me what you’re proud of.” and then asked, “What’s sub-par?” He found people to be surprisingly honest. It was easy for John to just “coach” them along to figure out solutions for improvement.
When John started coaching his child’s team—same thing happened. Kids shut down when told what they were doing wrong, not unlike the adults. Over time he developed a routine. Early in the season, after the first game, he starts the practice with what he thinks the team did well, then poorly as a team. Then he asks the kids to share something they were proud of and something they want to work on. He picks the kids with naturally out-going personalities first. Without fail, they pick something accurate in their self-critique. There are always 3-4 shy, non-athletic kids who find this process very painful, but John helps them through it. Every 2-3 games he repeats this, and gradually the shy ones have their hands up in the air as fast as the others. In addition, they start to critique themselves as a team and to see what the other team didn’t do as a team. This leads them to think for themselves on the field.
Team sports are a great place to learn life lessons.
- We belong. In addition to their team name, the team develops a song and a banner. Each game the kid who tried especially hard takes the banner home (John starts this at age 9. Every kid gets picked by the end of the season).
- Empowerment–everyone counts: If you show up to practice you get equal playing time.
- Everyone does something well and even the “best” have their weak points. We want the kids to be proud of themselves and to be proud to be on the team. We want them to learn to critique themselves
- Life is not fair. There will always be bad referees, people make mistakes. It is no big deal. (John deliberately makes bad calls in practice so they get used to it. “Bad calls” occur many times in life too.)
- Winning is just a by-product, success is something more. John likes to start with his soccer teams early at the kindergarten coed level and stay with them until they enter classics or high school. His “average” caliber kids have a lot of fun and also win most of their games.
ATTENTION ADULTS
50% of kids drop out of youth sports by age 13.
Number one reason: “It’s not fun anymore.”
LIFE LESSON HAVE FUN!
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If I knew then what I know now, I would have stepped up to being a coach of my kids sports teams.
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What was your biggest take-away?
What action step do you plan to take?
What additional questions do you have about this topic?
For Effective Parenting: Put Your Oxygen Mask on First
By · CommentsTake Care of You
Erica noticed that last week she was calm and connected with her kids. This week it seems everything is driving her crazy and she feels like a raving maniac, yelling at her kids about everything.
Discussion:
What is it about parenting that makes it feel like such a roller coaster?
I say there are two big influences.
- One is putting everyone else first and getting so run down it feels like screaming is the only option.
- The second is the tendency to oscillate back and forth between being friendly and loose with the rules (permissive) until our kids push us to the brink. Then we become the drill-sergeant of rules and regulations (strict) to let our kids know we REALLY mean business.
The second influence here is big. We all want to have fun and ease in our parenting … if those kids would just cooperate. In the family chaos, as we are barking out the “rules and regulations” orders, we are exhausted. There has got to be a better way.
What I have found in my own parenting and as a parent coach, is that NOTHING productive can happen when I don’t take care of myself. When I live my life reacting to what happens, I am at the mercy of other people and situations that I have no control over. When I live my life proactively, I take care of myself first so I have the energy to plan ahead and set up systems for homework, chores, family meals, and extra-curricular activities that work for everyone.
How do you start?
First- decide that YOU do matter and taking care of you in important. That is by far the most important step. Then think about what would nurture you the most.
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If I knew then what I know now,
I would have scheduled “me time” on my crowded calendar.
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What are your tips?
Send in your ideas on how us busy parents can carve out time for ourselves.
We’ll share them next week.
Deep and meaningful connections with extended family and friends: the glue that holds it all together.
“Joe and Sally did not have close family nearby, so they were delighted when a neighbor started a monthly parent and kid gathering. First the families all ate together. Then the kids played outside or in the game room while the parents chatted openly about monthly themes on the challenges of raising kids. Now Joe and Sally feel like they have “family” who care about them right in their neighborhood. “
Discussion:
Over the last two months we have explored many villages in the life of a family. Each of them can support our kids and our family in different ways. What is critical for these villages is to have close connections: people with whom we can be open, honest, and authentic and who accept and support us with unconditional love. What separates a village that just becomes another place to drive your kids to from a village that actually holds us dearly are these close connections. Close loved ones, both friends and extended family, are the glue that makes a village meaningful.
How does one build close, meaningful connections with other parents? It is wonderful to hang out on the sidelines of a sports game and chat with parents or to hang out together at the school carnival. This can be relaxing and fun. How does a parent take it deeper? I believe getting together with other parents monthly focusing on the goal of supporting each other in our parenting it the single best way for us to be really open and honest about our struggles, to share what works and doesn’t work, and to explore new ideas to try. With these real discussions, each parent will not only connect with other parents, they will connect with each other’s kids as we share our stories. The next time we see that child in the school hallway, we naturally reach out and connect with them more deeply, becoming another set of caring eyes “making sure he/she turns out OK.” If a serious or troubling issue arises, there is built in support for you and your family through the tough times. When problems are addressed early, they can be managed with the help of extended family and friends and occasional help from professionals. If we let problems grow too large, the intervention needed and pain experienced by both parents and kids is so much bigger. With this support each of us can be become more effective, confident, and competent in our parenting.
The themes of these monthly meetings can be:
- Topics that each parent volunteers to lead.
- Monthly parent book club, selecting different parenting books or a few chapters from that book.
- Webinars or videos that each parent takes turn finding on line or renting from the library.
- Raising Our Daughters and Raising Our Sons Parenting Guides can be used as resource material for parent discussion groups. There are many ideas for strengthening each of our villages in every one of the ten chapters.
Your group can commit to: “Together my parent group can influence all the villages.” You can:
- Organize a Girls Night Out and then a Boys Night Out for the incoming sixth graders at a middle school. The kids come for an evening of fun planned by the kids and then break up into small groups, lead by local high school teens, for real discussions about friendship, cliques, and the challenges of middle school.
- Address alcohol use by hosting a “Not My Kid” presentation, sending a Safe Party Guideline to every family in the high school, and putting a star by every family that agrees to follow the guidelines in the school roster
- Start a mother-daughter group that met every other month while the parents continued the Raising Our Daughter book every other month
- Promote the 40 Developmental Assets in your community which involved school, church, non-profits, and city government.
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If I knew then what I know now,
I would have directed ALL of my energy toward the goal: “My family is supported by a tight-knit group of people who unconditionally love us.”
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What was your biggest take-away?
What action step do you plan to take?
What additional questions do you have about this topic?
