I've been reading with increasing interest the thread on overbearing swim parents. I am familiar with this situation having been a Little League umpire at one point in time ... my proudest moment was stopping the game to eject parents!!
However ... I remarried some time ago, and 9 months after our honeymoon, my lovely wife gave birth to a son. He's now 7.5 years old and almost daily makes me consider this athletic dilemma. (One of the great parts of being a 56-year old, stay-at-home Dad & small business owner is "they" get to deal with me, not a "soccer MOM"!!)
Ryan, our son, show some pretty good athletic talent. At age 4, he started Karate and went through the belts quickly. When we joined the Y so I could swim, he transitioned away from karate to judo and is also doing well at that. Last winter, we took him skiing and he took to it quickly and enthusiastically. In all of this, Mom and I do very little "pushing" ... but do give him a lot of encouragement and opportunity.
This past summer, he asked if he could learn to swim. We enrolled him as a beginner and he made good progress. Very good progress, actually, as he's pretty adept at crawl, backstroke, and he's even started playing at butterfly. He's asked if he could join the Y's swim team. Their basic criteria is to do 50 yards of crawl without stopping, and have a rudimentary knowledge of the other strokes. Over the past two weeks, he has been working himself hard and he can meet the basic criteria and is now exceeding it.
For example, today, while I was swimming in lane 2, he and his mother shared lane 1. He did 2x50 free without fins, 4x50 free with fins, a 400 backstroke with fins (could not believe it ... he just kept going, and going, and going ...!!), and several 1x25 "butterfly". He hasn't mastered breaststroke yet. But, clearly, he is ready to join the team in the near future.
Here's our main dilemma. He seems to have all of the physical attributes of a gifted young athlete. He catches on quickly and seems willing to work. We're not sure about his mental attitude, but he seems to be competitive and likes to win (if I spot him about 5 yards, he can keep up with me when he wears fins. Today we raced three times, and he beat me one out of three ... much to his joy.) By the way, he does well in school and his teacher says he's in the top 20% of his class ... so no worries there either.
I'd obviously like to have him join the swim team (I was about that age when I first joined) and he's probably ready. But, we don't want to be THOSE kind of parents ... yet we want him to succeed ... maybe even excel.
Any ideas?
Cheers!!
Ken
