Way OT: Anyone else out there raising an athlete?

Well, my ds9 is young yet, but he is quite an athlete. He plays both baseball and golf and excels in both. DD12 and dd6 both ride horses and dd12 hopes to someday work with horses in some capacity. Right now, we limit their activity to once per week for the most part, but I can see the day when we may rethink that. DD12 would like to lease or own a horse and work a minimum of 3-4 days a week on her horsemanship and riding skills. Honestly, I’m just not sure what we’ll do. I know that is zero help to you, but perhaps it helps a wee bit to know you aren’t the only one trying to think it through.

This is just thinking out loud, but I think I will seriously evaluate what the future holds with regards to each sport and each kid.

DD12 has a high liklihood of doing something with horses or animals in her future. I can see devoting a lot of time to it in the future while putting other things on a back burner. Perhaps we lessen the literature and history load formally and give her more books to read as free reads. Maybe some advanced math is unnessary. 

DS9 is unlikely to be a professional baseball player or golfer. He could possibly earn a college scholarship with either sport. My preference would be golf to avoid some of the negatives of HS team sports. I also prefer golf because it’s something that he can enjoy his entire life on his own. Baseball, not so much. What might that mean for his academics? Well, he will (hopefully) have a family to provide for some day and that weighs heavily, too. Being a realist, my son as good as he is in sports is not likely to make playing a sport his career. He will need to spend adequate time with academics to ensure that he has the necessary knowledge to make the right decisions for his future. If that’s plumbing, great. Medicine, fine. Sports journalism, eh. Computer engineering, fine. Car mechanic, a-ok. Whatever, so long as he can support himself and enjoy the work he does. 

I am not a college pusher. I want my kids to go if their future career dictates it. I will prepare them for college, definitely, but whether they go depends upon so many things. How much time we allow sports to take is dependent on what it does for their futures (in our family). 

Anywho, that’s more than my 2 cents. If your daughter is very committed and serious in her sport already and you’re in agreement with it for her future goals, then you may need to adjust your expectations in other areas to allow for time for that. 

Blessings on the journey,

Christie

PS – With 4 kids, I’ve no idea how we will navigate even when the little guy wants to try little league or something. That’s why we limit it at the younger ages!

We are living this right now.We have four children.  All do somethings, but only one has an intense schedule.  Our 14 year old daughter is a ballerina. She began at age 3 because she talked of it constantly and wanted to live in a leotard and tights!. We pulled her out at age 10 after she had been en pointe for a season.  That was the most difficult thing we have ever done. It was devastating for her and we surely second guessed ourselves over and over.

She was having a terrible time managing the stress at age 10 and we didn’t think she was mature enough to handle so much time away from us in the evenings.

Here is the bright side to this story. She was out for 3 years and really wanted to go back.  We felt she could handle the stress better, was more mature and we had the finances to fund it – it’s not a cheap endeavor! So we put her back into the program she had left. She was placed right back into the level she was when she had left 3 years ago!  She had to wait 3 months to go back en pointe so as to build up knee and core stength again. What a pleasant surpise.  She was given many great parts in the Nutcracker in Dec.!

As difficult as that decision was and as hard as those 3 years were, one thing was made clear. God does honor us when we are trying to obey and live out his call. We felt clearly He was calling us to pull her out.   You should have heard the criticism that we took from just about every adult we know.  They pretty much figured we were ruining her life! But, God had another plan. Our daughter has learned that God honors those who honor Him.  I have also become more confident in not feeling the pressure the world puts on us thaat our children must be trained in something from birth or they won’t get into a good school or be successful.

She is excelling, but at a pace we have some control over.  It can be done.

For reference, she dances 3 evenings a week for 3 hours each and one evening for 1.5 hours. She also dances Saturdays for 3 hours.  If there is an upcoming perfomance she may dance 6 days a week in rehearsals. In order to have the strength for pointe work, the must dance a lot and strengthen. She has a few girls at her level that go to school. They are up till 11 at night trying to get homework done because of their dance schedules. We could never pull this off if she went to school.  Homeschooling does make this easier for her.

I don’t really have to scale back much as her classes never begin before 5pm during the week. I do make sure she doesn’t have evening work and during rehearsal weeks I give her less work as she is physically very tired.

We are not college pushers either. We want them to be equipped for whatever God may call them to.  Our state has a “seed program” and they can go to local 2yr. tech college for free! So they may do that carrying at least 12 credits. They could probably do it in 1 1/2 years as hopefully they can CLEP out of a few credits here and there. That way they have a least 2 years done.  If they want to go on to school further- fine, but if not they have only gained usable skills during that time.

Our daughter has considered going professional if she is able and taking college credits here and there.  That would be fine with us.  She would like to teach ballet at some point. She does not need a 4 yr. degree for that.

We try to put the money aside as well.  It is difficult. A grandparent has offered to help us with pointe shoes as they are about $100 a pair and the more she dances the faster she goes through them. 

I am secretly glad her two younger sisters are not interested in ballet!  We would never be able to swing this for 3! Our other children participate in things that are less expensive- Girls on the Run, although the extra 5K’s she wants to do are adding up! Homeschool gymnastics is affordable for our youngest(6).  We said no to team for her as it is too out of our price range and they travel all over on Sundays for meets. Our son does TeenPact which is not cheap but it is only once a year. He also runs and that is very affordable. They all take music lessons and we have been blessed to have a teacher that has given us a great rate for 4 students and comes to our home.

I really see where God has provided when what they are doing is in His will for them. Otherwise, I could never explain how we have been able to give our four children opportunities such as they have had on one income. The key, I think, is to seek what is His will for them, where are they truly gifted and then to trust that He will make a way.

Hi Cheryl.  I’m chiming in a bit late in the thread, but I have 5 kids (ds & 4 dd’s) from age 23 (almost 24, yikes!) down to my youngest who will be 13 on Wednesday.  We require the kids to do at least one sport as that more than sufficiently covers PE since we add in swimming as well.  At any rate, my oldest 3 are graduates of our hs, and we were able to keep all of the kids on the same day for the soccer program in our area. 

The youngest 3, and now my youngest 2, participate in swim team.  Again, they were all able to practice at the same time, so it’s not a big deal and this sport, for us, only occurs in the summer.  DD #3 is very adept at sports.  She can potentially get a scholarship for her swimming or soccer – either of which are fairly easy to obtain in our area for some reason.  This dd also has decided to obtain a degree in photography as she is extremely gifted in that as well.  I really don’t make huge curricular allowances as the practices and games do not interfere with our schedule much if at all.  However, we have chosen to loosely school year round – rather more of a modified approach which works for us. Truth be told, her work as a photographer is becoming more of an issue than the sports has ever been.

DD #4 is a violinist.  She has decided that she would like to play professionally.  Right now she is taking individual lessons 1 day/ week and has a group lesson 1 day/ week.  I have been told that we will need to get her into one of the youth symphonies in the near future which has the potential to throw our schedule somewhat off depending upon how we go about this.  We’ve actually been told that participating in both symphonies in our general area is a good idea for her.  However, we’ve also been told by the family who helped us get started with violin that if A wants to go professional, she really needs to think about participating in the Chicago Youth Symphony which is a MAJOR time commitment.  At this point, since DD #3 will be Senior next year, we will likely look more seriously into Chicago and the Peoria YS’s for DD #4 during her first year of high school.  We will be changing her lessons to either a 45 minute or 60 minute lesson after she completes the book she is in now, so that will change our schedule a bit as well since round trip is 1.5 not including the lesson.

As far as school goes, I won’t push the higher sciences (chemistry and physics) unless A would like to pursue them.  However, I will require her to be well grounded in her history, math, and literature.  Our days will just be more part and parcel than I am used to, so will require me to move out of my comfort zone. 🙂  I am working on that now, whether I want to or not, as I am a duckies in a row, routine is important kind of person.

Not sure if that helped at all or not.

Pax,

~jacqleene

“As far as school goes, I won’t push the higher sciences (chemistry and physics) unless A would like to pursue them. However, I will require her to be well grounded in her history, math, and literature.” This sums up my thoughts. My dd12 will definitely be well grounded in these subjects. I simply meant that it may (we aren’t there yet) require us to move a couple of cooks from the scheduled/write narrations list to the free read list. It’s a bit too early for us to decide these things, so all of my thoughts are theoretical at this point anyway. I appreciate those sharing from experience.