Extreme Parenting

I read and saw a few things that compelled me to write them down. I have begun my rehab bike riding and I was just doing repetitive laps around the park. I saw a father (I assumed) with two kids probably about 8 and 10. The father was making them run sprints between some cones, I imagine for soccer or thugby.

It reminded me of another time I was in a park, it was Tunks Park in Cammeray, down near the water they have an exercise eqiupment park with bars for chinups, raised things to do situps on and so on. There was a crazy dad there with 3 kids probably 10,8 and 7 or so and he was sending them through a full on work out routine, all of his kids did more chinups than I could do at that time. The other thing was they were clearly not enjoying it at all. The dad was full on into it with the whole yelling motivation at his kids despite the pained looks and tears in their eyes.

The last little story is a friend of mine, as a child he was whipped into sports and is one of those extremely talented nuts that can pick up a sport and become an expert at it in no time at all. He was in year 6 when he peaked his career being 5th in his age group on the National Tennis scene. In year 7 the testerone of puberty kicked in and his rebellious nature came out, told his mum to piss off and gave up tennis despite his amazing talent.

Since then I saw him absolutely tear so many opponents to pieces, he was beating the zone reps in table tennis, players who felt they need $100+ bats to improve their play, he was beating them with an old one he'd found at home with the rubber on one side missing and the foam coming off on the other. He became a qaurter back playing grid iron, had a few runs playing rugby, beat down his state level opponents who were training 4 times a week tennis opponents at our Crawford shield. the next year bored of tennis came down and represented our waterpolo team being part of our second victory in waterpolo in 17 years against Melbourne, and in his last year bored of those sports played squash but lost his temper against their Victorian state reps and smashed up a racquet that belonged to the PE teacher. To top it all off he was always in kings playing 8 court handball at school...

Interestingly he was one of the least motivated sportsmen I'd ever played with he was remarkably talented but completely unmotivated. He had amazing potential but as soon as there was serious commitment to the sport (beyond turning up to competitions and winning) he was so put off the sport that he would drop it immedietly.

The other is a child success story.

In year 8 I started playing waterpolo for school, the last open team called themselves "The bogan patrol" and had bright disgusting pink speedos with their team name to go with it. They were some of the most talented players our school had seen for quite some time winning the Crawford Shield waterpolo for the first time from Melbourne in 15 years, getting to regionals in state knockout and coming second in the zone competition. We were a bunch of kids looking to get out of the summer heat. Tyler Martin started that year in year 7, and with some amazing leadership and skills from him and our extraordinary coaches brought us to once again reclaim the waterpolo win from Melbourne, win the zone comp and getting Kinkumbered by a bunch of bogans at regionals in the state knockout.

He was extremely talented a great team player, extremely patient with all of us, and although he was small in year 7 when other teams would triple mark him and laugh us while they tried to score on us using headers (extremely hard in a pool), he filled out as he got older. And eventually represented the Australia in its under 19 opens waterpolo team. He currently players nationals league as well.

Both these guys were childs sportsmen but there was a huge difference in their training and motivation. Both would surely owe a large amount of this to their parents. Both the success and their failures. With many frisbee parents now having kids, I wonder if any of them will force their kids into playing and training, or if this will ever happen. Or are people going to be nice and let their kids play whatever sports they want?