I would say don't force it based on how you described his interest. My 4 year old just started baseball a couple weeks ago but has been in jiu jutsu for almost a year and it's been great. Classes are short and small sized so it keeps their interest throughout. Aside from the athletic stuff/physical contact, discipline and listening to the coaches is a big deal and if too many kids act out whole class doesn't get a lollipop. Been a great alternative to traditional sports.
My son is 7 and I think the most important thing at this age is that they enjoy the sport(s). I’m taking the cues from our son and avoiding pushing too hard on anything. If it’s a chore for them you risk pushing them away from the sport altogether. A few years ago he stopped playing soccer. The next year he wanted to play again and now a year later he is doing club/travel (where they cut 25% of the kids that tryout). He didn’t want to do baseball in the spring but then signed up for midsummer and once playing he declared it’s his favorite sport. When he gets done with soccer practice he goes out and throws to a pitch back. The only pushing I do is making him follow through on going to practice and participating in the sports he committed to. I’d also add, my experience coaching so far is that kids just want to play and not do drills at this age so you need to figure out how to make it fun or competitive (if they have that streak). When playing catch we count how many in a row we can catch, always trying to beat our record. When coaching we split in to 3 groups of 4 (hitting, grounders, pop flys) to increase reps and minimize downtime/waiting. And with our son, I’ve figured out it’s more important to get him doing the activities and enjoying it than to critique form or teach.
Hockey is the first one I think he is quitting for good. He played the last 3 years but the last 2 springs got harder and harder to get him to finish the season. I think too many drills for him and not enough play/scrimmage. The talent and commitment level in our town is ridiculous so I’m kind of happy about his decision.
Idk about 5, but my dad essentially forced me to play football in HS and convinced my mom into on the side bribery to get get me to play. I hated it and just did the absolute least possible. I played lots of other sports, just hated playing football after like 7th grade. Feel like at 5 or 6 just let him do what he wants outside some light encouragement like you're doing now. If he stops playing baseball for 2 years it's not like he can't start playing again at 8 years old if he gets an itch. 6 is pretty young to get lil snakes onto a dedicated sports path. Bruh got time to develop into a mediocre athlete.
Bloody is a red lobster from our imagination And when she flows She's what we call a menstral old crustacean Bloody's flows are big and small They come from single places Any time she comes to play You'll have to pause your chases
My favorite thing about having a two year old is it doesn’t matter how much he’s eaten or when he ate last, if I make food to eat, I better make enough for both of us. He ate all his food and some snacks, I make myself a Caesar salad and the kid is hovering over asking for bites lol.
My only advice would be don’t let them quit mid-season. “Don’t have to play next year but you need to follow through if you made the commitment to your teammates for the whole year etc…” It’s a game it’s supposed to be fun, if it’s not fun, lets move on a find something you do enjoy.
Hank Jr. played his first soccer game yesterday in a league for 1st/2nd graders. His team won 13-0 and Hank Jr had 9 goals. I felt kinda bad after like goal 4.
If this ever happens with my kid, I will be absolutely devastated but understand. I'm sad I can't get him to play with his toy hockey stick at 19 months.
Gretsky was talking about this in regard to the state of the youth game on a podcast I listened to not that long ago.
He told me this weekend it was in part because some of the kids on his hockey team were mean to him. I’m not really sure. He complained last year but I didn’t see anything but it’s hard to know from the bleachers. If you want to build a passion/interest, what has seemed to resonate with my son is he loves the sports that he has seen live a lot. We have Gopher football and basketball tickets and he loves the sports and is super knowledgeable. I’ve taken him to fewer hockey games but he picked up the interest from his pre-K friends. Building the love for sports wasn’t a goal persay but it happened because he came and did what we did. It hasn’t had the same impact on our daughter either though so I’m not totally sure, there is some nature/nurture going on.
oh this kid will have the same experience as me growing up. We will go to a ton of sporting events until he narrows on the sports he likes most and then we will go to more of those than others.
Our soccer club has a play/practice/play philosophy which I find interesting. It’s more hands off and let’s the kids play first. They see where kids struggle or need help be it strategy or skill development (drills) to solve problems they are struggling with. Then, they end with more play (scrimmage) to let them try things out and see if it solves the problems. I think we would probably win more now if they coached to offensive/defensive positioning and structure. This seems to be more targeted to developing natural and creative players that solve things themselves. I can say, our son is enjoying these practices more than his hockey ones so it’s good in that regard.
I used to coach college club hockey and had to go through all the USA hockey certification classes. The first few levels dealt pretty exclusivlely with coaching young kids. USA hockey is aware of the issue as well and spent 99% of the time stressing that kids U8 and below need play based skill development to keep practices fun and keep kids engaged in the game. They legit were using examples from the Mighty Ducks movies to show ways you can develop skating and agility by playing tag on the ice. Made all the sense in the world to me.
I’m coaching his 2nd grade basketball team this year and planning to do things like that with practice (dribble tag, dribble relay races, etc) as well as playing 3 on 2 to encourage//develop passing. His first practice for soccer was literally just monkey in the middle and 4 people on the perimeter passing but it made them recognize spacing and creating passing lanes so I’ll copy that too.
Took my 4 year old to his second mlb game yesterday had an awesome time. Bunch of family joined. Kids got to run on the field after the game. AND got a home run ball. So mad I didn't catch it, went right through my fingers But that shit came in HOT lol
I see Snakes riding his balance bike around the neighborhood pretty regularly and he always looks like he’s having a great time. His wife looks pretty embarrassed though.
Mean mugging after his 2nd flag football game of the season. Long time to develop but I feel he's ending up on the OL like his old man. Had a couple pancakes and kind of shoved a kids head into the dirt after one. That's my boy.
Glad I wasn’t the only one. Thought it was like one of these guy fieri hair visors but with a pumpkin head Flair Hair Sun Visor Cap with Fake Hair, Adjustable Baseball Hat https://a.co/d/6isDzEJ
My thought process went Holy shit that boys hair has come in a lot and it's color, holy shit..... No, wait that's gotta be a guy fieri hat..... No, I'm an idiot, it's a pumpkin
Well I just had some wonderful news. My wife gave birth to our second on the 18th last month. Today was my first day back working. I work remote out of a coworking space and had a call with HR an hour ago because my newborn son wasn’t showing up on our insurance. After getting everything straightened out with that she says she hopes I enjoy the rest of my leave. I say my 4 weeks are done and this is my first day back. She then tells me while I was on leave they changed the policy from 4 weeks to 8 weeks effective immediately so I have 4 more weeks off before I’ve got to be back!
Fucking snowflakes getting months off for having kids. Three ply soft. I took my lunch break to visit my wife in the hospital while she was giving birth and was back at it the same day. Nowadays my tax dollars are used to support deadbeats for nutting in broads. No wonder our country is going in the shitter. Spoiler I got two weeks off for each one of my kids and would have gladly taken much more. Congrats on the extra vacay.
New company(my old employer) changed the leave up to 8 weeks off for parental bonding, so taking advantage of that. That time off will be take one to daycare, then sleep and takeover nights from mom. This time around I hope she doesn’t have to go back into the hospital 4 weeks postpartum. (Had her galbladder removed last time).
My daughter has been sick for 3 days and doesn’t want any one but me. My wife is pissy and won’t help. I need sleep. My girl has been sleeping with me in my sons bed. Last night was the first night she seems to sleep since Saturday.
I got laid off 10 days before our son was born because of the start of the pandemic here. Actually worked out pretty great all things considered with the stress of trying to find another job in a tight job market with a newborn. Had unemployment and got to spend like 6 months with my son and my wife working from home the whole time which looking back was well worth losing the shitty job.
I've got #2 coming in a month. 8 weeks paternity leave plus another week of Caretakers leave. I was guided by my VP on how to fuck the system. He forced me to take all of my current PTO bc if I didn't they will use whatever is banked. Then said take the time when the baby is born whatever I want but if I want to spread it out I can as well. We have family and friends staggering visits to help. Basically I will be taking 3 weeks at the birth and then have 6 weeks to bullshit with. Going to take mid-November through the New Year off I think.
God what a stupidly written policy if it allows them to steal your pto if you have it but you still get the same time to use whenever if you don't
We got the little big bike because its a 3 in 1 convertible and has good reviews https://www.littlebigbikes.com/
Yup. Several people have warned me about it. It's something to do with the company that handles the leave iirc.
when we had our first one my company only did 2 weeks paternity leave, but it was around christmas and I had some vacation banked so was off about 4 or 5 weeks total. before second one was born they changed their policy to 8 weeks and I threw a few weeks of vacation on top of it
This would be great. My allows for 3 weeks leave if you are the secondary care-giver and 6 weeks if you're the primary. My old boss would sign off on any 6 week requests no matter what. I was able to get 6 weeks off plus took some of my own time for the 1st kid. 2nd kid comes in December and the people above my boss's position basically shut down the 6 week requests. I have a ton of saved time off so not that big of a deal, but still pretty shitty.
in the year of our lord 2022 my company increased its parental leave policy from 0 weeks to 1 week. i'm happy for those who have better situations.
Yea that's bullshit. I've been places where they only give two weeks to secondary. I was always very selective when it came to these benefits when I found somewhere I wanted to be awhile. I got lucky with my current company. what the fuck?
Tennis is doing this too. Playing tag and a lot of other activities that aren’t using a racquet at all. Throwing hula hoops onto cones, just games with placing balls onto different items like a race. My son loved that stuff way more than playing points. I assume most coaches don’t do this but private tennis lessons at like 5,6,7 is stupid unless it’s just parent/kid stuff. Group lessons with fun activity is the way to go