My child plays no sports.

by

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band geek FTW!!

I am definitely not a sportswoman.

I was born before the push for girls in sports.

I claim (I think I read it somewhere?) it’s all because when there’s dyslexia in a family the non-dyslexic sibling will have poor athletic prowess.

The bottom line is I’m not  traditionally athletic.

I’ve discovered through trial & error, however, I enjoy moving my body and lifting heavy things/setting em back down.

Most days the “heavy thing” I end up lifting is my body and I’m more than content with this fact.

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I think that was the reason I never thought much about the Child and sports when she was little.

I encouraged her to play.

I provided her opportunities to experience different ways to move her body and discover what she enjoyed and what she didn’t.

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Not only did I possess no preconceived notion of where her skills SHOULD be, I was neither trying to live through her nor attempting to steer her in a certain direction so she could have the sporty-experiences I did.

We just hopped.

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And jumped.

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And hooped.

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And balanced (note the TINY Doodle in background):

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And it was fine.

As she grew older I encouraged her to try organized sports in the same manner I encouraged her to try dance and drawing.

All I wanted to do was help her discover her passion.

She tried soccer for a while.  She played softball for a bit.  She liked both “just fine,” but neither seemed her soul-mate exercise (to borrow a term from fitness).

And so we played.

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And so she played.

With friends at the park, on our trampoline, in neighbors’ swimming pools—everywhere.

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Not organized. No practices. No weekends filled with competitions.

For the most part just play with some gymnastics thrown in sporadically.

I’d not thought about it much until recently.

I noticed, post-move, the first question people–big and little–ask upon meeting is:

What sports do you do?

Interestingly, the Child never seems flustered by this query. She responds with whatever is in/on her mind.

I like to do _______.

Right now I ______.

I often eavesdrop out of curiosity (will she say I wish I did _____?? Is she interested in something I’m not aware of?), but her answer doesn’t vary and she seems entirely happy with how shes moving her body right now.

These thoughts languished in the back of my mind and until a few weekends ago.

We’d had a busy day.

Walking, swimming, playing basketball, monkey bar’ing, indoor soccer’ing and she turned to me and said:

We’re an active family.

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 she’s always viewed us that way.

Her remark made me smile.

(Connection)

To me *active* is a gift I can give her which is bigger than playing a specific sport.

To my misfit eyes I’m aiding her in creating a self-definition which will serve her life-long.

She can continue this routine without the struggle I’ve seen of:

I no longer play college ____ or team ____ I may as well sit on the couch.  I have no reason to move my body.

To my eyes there’s a gift and value in that.

We’re an active family.  My child plays no sports.

And yet, when I’m entirely honest, there’s still a small part of me which winces each time she’s asked what sport she plays.

There’s a tiny piece of me which wonders:

Is it enough we’re an active family and my child plays no sports?

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Comments

  2. I grew up when sports for girls were very in and I wasn’t an athlete in the traditional sense either.
    I was forced to play sports and for me it made me hate them.

  3. Wow, that’s one very together child to be able to articulate their views so well! Good on you for being an active family – there are too few around!

    • I don’t think my daughters are in that place yet.
      Now I wonder if family activities would be enough?

  4. CHOICE is key here. Too many parents push and pull. I’ve always believed in presenting the opportunity, making it fun and letting them chose!

  5. It is a hard one as I was raised believing the only way to learn self-discipline is through sports.
    My daughter does soccer and martial arts and doesn’t like either too much but I do make her go.

  7. I am rather annoyed to put it lightly by the obsession with kids in sports these days, travel teams, constantly going here and there and entire weekends I hear friends spending at this gym or that while their kids do their sport. It’s insane! My kids are active, we do flag football in the fall and gymnastics once a week, but living where we do it’s too crazy and too far of a drive to be in the obsession and I am not sad about that.

  8. I am the person you describe at the end 🙁
    I played college softball and since I graduated 2 years ago have gained 30 pounds and lost my mojo.
    I wish I had done other things which were not all team related. I don’t know where to begin now.:/

  9. Ah, I can see how there would be “peer pressure” to be involved in a competitive sport in this day and age, but you are the BEST at apologetically hewing to what you know works for YOUR family.

  10. I don’t think that organized sports are a necessity. I’m a big believer in having kids try different things and staying committed to that thing for the term you’ve signed up for, but once you’ve finished that commitment, you can move on. And I include sports, music, etc in that. My kids have each tried a bunch of stuff and right now I have a cellist and a soccer player. I struggle more with the fact that my older son is not active at all (he’s totally me in middle school.)

  11. It’s important to be active. Playing organized sports per se? Not so much. My parents tried to put me in all kinds of team sports as a kid; it failed every time. I even dropped out of swimming at a 5 because of a water phobia. It took until my teens before I learned to enjoy sports (I became a lifeguard, swimming instructor and swim coach, interestingly). It took another few years (adulthood) until I became really competitive. All in all, I still prefer individual sports (swimming, running, tennis, badminton, hiking, rowing, archery). In physical activity, you have to find what you love. 🙂

  12. well, my personal experience with organized sports was very limited and not favorable (aside from gymnastics lessons which were more one on one) — in 5th my mom signed me up for softball team and it was soooooo awful, I hated it and I think actually did way more harm to my psyche than good.

  13. I think overall activity is more important than participating in organized sports! My daughters love dance and I’ve tried to expose them to soccer and basketball but ultimately they do what they love! Same with my son, we play and he’s active, but he doesn’t have interest in organized sports, at least not yet. He’s 4, so who knows in two years how he’ll feel, but I’m just following his lead while keeping active.

  14. I adore this!

    I was talking to Jamie about this the other day. Growing up because of the way sports were structured and the way we taught to be active in gym class, I didn’t think I was good enough to be sporty. I was always one of the last kids picked for teams. And I wasn’t one of the fast kids that “won” stuff/ So I just assumed Sports weren’t really for me.

    If you asked my 9 year old self if I would be a marathoner I would have said ‘Absolutely Not!”

    I think by prioritizing being active you are teaching her so much more!

  16. To each their own. I like sports. I like the social aspects. I’ve played most everything except football, and I think I am lucky I didn’t do that other than flag or tag football. Some people have a problem with the competitive aspects of sports. I’m ambivalent on that. If I wasn’t competitive, I wouldn’t be nearly as accomplished.

  17. My children experimented with some sports but never “played” them. Activity is the important key, however you get it.

  18. Love this! My son can’t play contact sports, as he was born with one kidney. I try to keep him active and hate that so many community things are centered around organized sports. I am so glad he has yoga, dance, running, and other things to keep him active. Kids just need to play 🙂

  19. The opportunity to have choices is so important. I recall reading post her her trying different sports & other things… playing sports does not define us – I think sometimes it becomes too defining & for some parents it is a push there when kid does not want it or living thru the kids.

  20. I love this post…. I think it’s great to just be an active family…. bike, hike, swim, play…. if she asks to do something, you encourage it… when she doesn’t want to do it anymore, it’s fine. I do this with my kids, and I think it works out well.

  21. Beautiful! Your daughter is so lucky to have you as a mom. Teaching our kids to be active, whatever active looks like, is one of the best skills/habits we can impart to them. And that drawing she made of your family is priceless! Hope you still have that somewhere. 🙂

  22. “Is it enough we’re an active family and my child plays no sports?”

    YES.

    So good to let kids figure out for themselves what they want to do and what they enjoy doing… and to instill the good habit of just being ACTIVE overall.

  23. I love this and the lesson here. You ARE an active family and I love how that seeps into your daughter’s mind and blood, that it’s part of who she is. And don’t get me started on the team sports thing. While my younger son loves playing baseball, holy moly the extra stress it adds to our schedule is amazing.

  24. I was the kid who did everything–soccer, ballet, piano, violin, riding, etc. But slowly that whittled down to just riding. I was not what I would say was “athletic,” but I was active. My brother ran track but wasn’t really “active.” Health, happiness, and wellness come in different shapes and sizes!

  25. I grew up a scholar, not an athlete, and I’ve always envied those who did sports and learned confidence, drive, the ability to see plays ahead of time, to improvise on their feet, to get knocked down and keep going, to lose and win gracefully, and I hoped to give our daughters opportunities to learn those things so we put both of them in various sports. The older one dropped team sports after a couple of years and has stuck with karate and the younger one is still playing soccer but is gravitating more toward theater. It turns out it’s possible to learn all those lessons in karate and theater as well! I agree that exposing your kids to all kinds of play and sports and encouraging them to be active, strong, disciplined and have fun in whatever they choose to do is the best we can do for them (and for ourselves as well!).

  26. I am not a parent but I come from a played every sport on multiple teams every season childhood and I think that exposure to sports is good but if they don’t want to play, do not force! (after 2 broken noses I wasn’t fond of softball but my family was so I stuck with it through college!)
    I think the key is she is obviously exposed to an active lifestyle which will benefit so much moving through life. You too often see as you pointed out – that people graduate from school and then just cease to be active because they are not tied to a team sport anymore.

  27. I think it’s great!! So often with many of my teammates from growing up, left college and the world of competitive sports and had no idea how to continue to be active…no coaches or organization left them unable and unmotivated to move. You are showing her how to be active no matter what!

  28. Organized sports were fun and I learned a lot from them. However, I did them because *I* was driven to do them. I liked the striving to get better and competition aspect (which I’ve never lost).

    However, it did cause the “well, I’m out of high school and not going to college for any of this, so let’s just sit on the couch” did happen. I thought sport was for the young. 🙂

  29. I was forced to play organized sports as a kid and I hated every second of it. It made me think that because I hated organized sports that I hated moving my body. It took a long time to learn that I loved moving my body in my own unorganized way. 🙂 I associated sports and the pain of it with ALL physical activity and it steered me wrong for a long time. Once I disassociated physical activity with organized sports, I realized I loved it (but it look 20ish years).

  31. Nice post its true as mothers we need to help our children discover the passion they have in sports not just force them to do…

  32. I developed a passion for paddling in my 30’s, but it was rooted in a lot of casual boating with my folks (especially when visiting aunts and uncles in canoe-crazy Michigan) when I was little. I was actually intrigued by outrigger paddling as a kid in Hawaii, to the point that I went to hear the talk for kids who were interested, but it turned out that back then paddling was strictly varsity and I was too young. We left Hawaii when I was going into my junior year so that remained unexplored. I still wonder to this day what would’ve happened if we’d stayed and I’d joined the team – I was a gawky and uncoordinated kid and have a feeling that at that time I might not have had the drive and coordination that outrigger paddling takes (it’s taken very seriously there). An intense start at that age might actually have left me completely burned out on paddling. Picking up paddling as a personal sport later in life, as I did, it’s become something I genuinely think I will be doing for years to come.

  33. I think it’s the nature of motherhood to second guess ourselves, no matter what choices we have made that we believe to be in our child’s best interests. Sometimes, we need to stand firm, even if we’re going against the flow. Sometimes, we need to course correct.
    Choosing to send my daughter to dance, and watching her grow in her skills and continue to pursue it the past 14 years has brought both of us real joy.

    • Interesting thing about dancing – I have a cousin once removed who’s in high school and fairly early on chose dancing as her “thing”. She’s dedicated and has done quite well at it, but dancing at the professional level being horrendously competitive, there is a pretty good chance that in the end, she will not become a career ballerina.

      What drives my cousin nuts about this is when people suggest that she’s somehow been wasting her time because of that. Nobody says that playing high school sports is a waste of time because a youngster isn’t shaping up to be NFL or WNBA material – why is dance looked upon so differently?

  34. As a parent with two kids in travel soccer, yes, it is ok! But I also am a fan of girls playing organized sports b/c of all the studies backing up the benefit. I have to email you on this, btw!

  35. Yes. It is definitely enough. We put our 10 yo son in baseball and soccer in previous years in an effort to encourage sports. I didn’t work. However, very recently he’s taking a liking to basketball all by himself. The thing is, we were ready to accept a sport-less kid. We were okay with that. Basketball is suddenly happening now, but even if it weren’t, I would still be okay with that. xoxoxo.

  36. Oh, this post makes me smile 🙂 I personally believe that that can be enough – it is SO RARE for me to encounter active families during my job as personal trainer, and facilitating that active-ness will – I think – carry her through life! Structured sports can help, but what happens when that “ends”?

  37. Woot! Fellow band geek here! I’ve always considered myself extremely non athletic, yet here I am with fitness being a big part of my life (in fact, I’ve blogged about this). Interesting how some people consider me athletic because I’m into fitness even though I think it’s separate.

  38. It’s more than enough. My #1 Son played football for a couple of seasons, all of them did a bit of t-ball or baseball, and Little Girl loves being on swim team. They all grew up being allowed to roam outdoors and stay active, and it’s plenty.

    If she wants to try a specific sport, she will ask.

  39. I freakin’ LOVE this post. I don’t even have kids, but I LOVE this. I hope to have kids one day and teach them this lesson — be active, in any capacity you want. My mom did this for me (I NEVER played sports) and it’s benefited me so much as an adult. Way to go for teaching this to your daughter! I love it..

  40. I introduced my daughter to everything and told her to pick one thing. I witnessed too many parents pushing their kids into things daily that they hated and as adults are not doing. For her it was dance. And later yoga. She stuck with them as it was her choice… And she still does both of them and is very fit.
    I grew up in the 60s and 70s…before title 9 and my friends and I started a girl’s track team at my High School. Just because there weren’t sports you liked (there WERE b’ball, volleyball and field hockey teams) doesn’t mean there were no women in sports when you went to high school. I am way older than you…

  41. I literally exhaled after reading this. I thought we were the only family that dabbled in sports. My kids might have enjoyed organized sports more if the parents and coaches didn’t act like each and every player was destined for the Pro’s. I get frustrated because we too are often asked the same question, and it seems even more so with boys ( gender labeling) but it’s true. Why would I spend a college education on years of baseball or soccer travel teams with the hopes that they might get a collage scholarship when I could just pay for them to go to college with the money I spent? It is insane. What happen to sandlot baseball and after school soccer at the park? The world has become extreme at everything –Extreme Politics, extreme parenting and sports. I shake my head at the ridiculousness of it all. We are an active family. The end.

  42. of course it is enough!! My boys are similar ages and our 10 year old marveled one day that another family is active like ours. To me, the most important part is giving our children skills that will help them in the future and a love of physical activity is just that!

    Our boys happen to love sports and we are struggling on the other end. They desperately want to try out for the town’s all star baseball team. We have resisted in the past, but decided to let them try this year. We will see how it goes and hope for the best 🙂

  43. I think it’s terrific that you are active as a family. It makes it a part of life, not just something you do at certain times or when you’re on a team and there’s no real competition to make her feel as though she can’t do things. I think it makes it far more likely that she’ll be an active teen and adult and just love to “do” things. 🙂

  44. That’s awesome! This is actually what my parents’ approach was too, with me/my brother. They had no idea what we’d be interested in, so they just had us try out a ton of different things, and we ended up picking up and sticking with what we liked. :] I think it was a great way to go!

    (P.S. I love that drawing. <3)

  45. I loved this post. I am not really a sports person but I will encourage my daughter to try everything she wants, to be active and find her passion.. It’s not important for her to play any sport – but it’s important to be active.

  46. I think she is as active as most kids who play sports for sure. So, the other big benefit of organized sports she is missing is the team building/learning to work together. As long as she is getting that somewhere else I say you are fine.

  47. Well put! This is a subject that’s been on my mind a lot lately. My 11 year old joined a competitive swim team about six months ago and I’ve been back and forth about how I feel about the commitment and practice schedule – 4 days a week seems like a lot and leaves little time for other activities or simply being able to play. She seems to love it though so for now we are sticking with it. My 8 year old, on the other hand, is perfectly happy to do a few weeks of soccer, switch to karate, then wants to try out wrestling… maybe it’s also a personality thing?

  48. Only just found your blog, and really enjoyed this article.

    In my opinion play and being active is the best start in life you can give your child – never force the issue, I’m sure they will find their own level, and all the family can spend time together having fun being active.

    Of course if your child shows a special interest in a sport at school, then encouragement is good…

    All the best Jan

  49. Anyone who tells you something like marching band isn’t a sport … doesn’t have a clue! I had no idea until my boys started … certainly more sweat, movement, teamwork and precision training than many ‘sports’ 🙂

  50. And what I love most about this is that you’re also just letting your daughter do what she loves. 🙂 There’s no right or wrong when it comes to kids and sports, because every child is different.

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