Let Life Teach
December 7, 2012
Here’s a golden nugget from Ann Arbor’s Dr. Dan Saferstein’s little book, Win or Lose: A Guide to Sports Parenting:
“Most of us have an easier time being math parents than we do being sports parents. We don’t stand over our children as they’re doing their homework, hollering at them to round to the highest decimal or carry their zero. We trust that they’ll be able to figure things out on their own, and if they can’t, they’ll get the help they need from their teachers or by asking us.
“What a lot of sports parents seem to forget is that young athletes also need the same space to figure things out on their own. They need to learn how to think and make decisions during game situations, which isn’t easy to do when your parent (or someone else’s parent) is shouting out directions.
“The reality is that if your child could score a goal or stop a defender, he would. In most cases, telling your child to move faster to the ball is like telling him to be taller. Effort isn’t the only critical factor in sports, or in math. Some children will never be high-level athletes no matter how hard they try, which is by no means a tragedy. The world doesn’t necessarily need more gymnastics, softball or soccer stars. It needs more young people who are willing to try and make our world a better place.”
Go to dansaferstein.com for more good stuff from the good doctor.
Consider Communications
June 6, 2017
Like many of my generation, I have a love-hate relationship with advances in communications technology.
I love it when, during a single day, my wife and I can have important career conversations by text with one son in China, chuckle at dog photos from another son in Texas, message with a "daughter" in South Korea, and watch videos of a "granddaughter" in California. I need it for heart-to-heart emails with my sister in Oregon. I love it for talking with and seeing many of these people in real time, face to face through Skype.
I enjoy the freedom that this technology provides me to keep in touch with both work and family when I travel, or escape to the cottage on summer weekends. It makes me far more productive than I was able to be years ago.
And that's a good thing because, with all of the convenience has come the expectation that everybody is "on call" every minute of every day.
Which is but one of the many downsides of our technological progress. Another is that people can communicate so quickly that they are prone to do so without thinking.
Another is the frequency of solicitations and the stupidity of most social media that tends to swamp my inbox. The "unsubscribe" feature cannot cope with the flood of foolishness.
I recall reading a biography of John Adams, masterfully created in large part from the letters written by his wife Abigail. It amazes me that when she wrote a letter to a person in Europe, she knew the letter would not be received for several months, and that she would not get a reply for half a year.
That was not necessarily a better time, but I imagine each word was given greater consideration as it was penned and posted.