In Defense of Team Sports

Our two oldest kids are elementary school age, and so we have entered the world of team sports.  We're just dipping our toe in so far with an 8 week recreational soccer league.  I played 4 sports over the course of high school, including the off season travel teams and summer camps, so I know how very much team sports ramp up in intensity as the kids get older.

We all want our kids to be happy and have fun memories, but there is the question of whether the enormous amount of time and money that can go into team sports is the right way to make this happen.  Everybody's circumstances are different, and I'm not saying every kid has to do all the sports all the time, but I think team sports can add tremendous value and teach important lessons in childhood.  (I'm writing this blog as a reminder to myself, too, because being a sports parent, while it has it's fun and cute and thrilling moments, is a very different experience from being the athlete.)

Here are just some of the things I think kids can learn from participating in sports:

• Cooperation - How many times in life do you work together with others on projects, whether it's a team assignment at work or raising a family or being on a church committee?  Team sports are a fun way to start to learn that delicate balance of working well with others: sometimes taking the lead and sometimes being the follower, sometimes doing more than your share and other times relying on others to make the big plays.  Watching teammates do things that sometimes amaze you with their brilliance and other times flabbergast you with their foolishness, and learning to handle it either way.  
• Discipline  / Hard Work - I have SO many memories of doing wind sprints, stair drills, and other torturous exercises designed to get you in peak physical shape.  There's nothing fun about doing these things that make you feel like your legs or lungs are going to collapse, except this -- that moment when you're playing the championship game and you're able to go hard through the whole game because of the work you've put in when no one was watching.  This practice of working hard day by day so that you'll be ready when the big moments come along has benefits in education, work, spiritual life, and so many other things.  
• Resilience / perserverance - Many athletes will get to experience the thrill of victory; all at some point will experience the agony of defeat.  Learning how to deal with the various disappointments that come with sports - injuries, getting cut from a team, losing the big game - is great starter training for the bigger disappointments that will come along in life.
• Time management / responsibility / organization - In the high school and college years, athletic practice takes up at least a couple hours per day.  You have to learn how to fit this in with other things (homework, job, other extra-curriculars), and how to eat and sleep at least well enough to make it through practice.  (Sometimes these lessons are learned the hard way, like the time when Surge was doing a promotion and giving away free sugary sodas right before basketball practice.)
• Friendship - There's something special about relationships that are formed when you're embarking on a shared mission.  When you go through some of these things listed above together - conditioning until you puke, winning the championship or losing every game the whole season - it forges a special bond.  Add that to the enormous amount of time you spend together, and chances are good that some of these teammates will be your friends for life.
• Healthy Living / Exercise as a Habit - This one is a little more obvious, but it's great to incorporate exercise early on to set kids on a trajectory for a healthy life.  Participating in team sports gives you some knowledge about how to do things like stretches, weight lifting, aerobic conditioning, and agility drills.  It gives you muscle memory for pushing past pain.  And it sets a high standard in your mind for what physical fitness should look like.  (I'll be honest, I rarely meet this standard since becoming a parent, but I still think it's a good thing to have in mind and strive towards.)
• Strategy - By learning plays, or learning that there are better and worse ways to do things, or learning that you need to set several consecutive things in motion to have a successful outcome - these are all valuable starts to learning that it pays to have a strategy in your various endeavors in life.  
• For girls especially, body image and self confidence - There is enormous pressure on women to look good, as defined by the fashion magazine standard, and girls base much of their self confidence on their physical attractiveness.  Sports can't take this whole problem away, but I think it can make girls feel more body positivity by seeing the amazing physical feats that their bodies are capable of, and confidence based on athletic accomplishment rather than just how they look.  

Ordering equipment from the Internet = you might end up with shin guards sized for a newborn.

That's my case for why team sports are worth it.  Of course  every team sports experience is not going to provide all of this; and not every kid is going to be into team sports. 

But some of my very best friends, some of my best preparation for the rigors of college and law school, for how to conduct yourself in a job, for how to get through the harder times in life - it came from lessons learned in sports.  Anything you would add to this list?

Special Needs Parenting and Perspective

There's been a few things on my mind lately, all orbiting around the themes of special needs parenting and perspective.  So I'm going to consolidate it all into one post and we'll see how that goes!

Item One:  Balancing Chill with Vigilance

Here is a key ingredient to both good mental health and a strong faith: you don't spend all your time worrying.  One thing that helps cut down on hours spent worrying is the realization is that you're not in control of most things anyway (and, for people of faith, the belief that God is in control).

Not worrying goes *way* against the grain of my natural personality.  When you add in special needs parenting, you get the added (perverse?) incentive that sometimes worrying DOES pay off in a big way.  The more time you spend discussing ideas with other parents, or pouring over medical journal articles, or checking and checking and checking the Facebook groups, the more you increase the chances that you will find the doctor / medicine / sensory solution / diagnosis / diet / therapy / school support / supplement that will improve or possibly even save your child's life.

But, it also means you will worry needlessly about extra things, both things you have identified and things you worry you might have missed.  My latest round of worry for Joshua was the possibility that he had a blood clotting disorder.  I was worried about this mostly because it's common with his chromosome disorder, but also because he has some trouble with nose bleeds and history of a blood transfusion with surgery.

It would be crazy to get a referral to a specialist to check on hemophilia just because a child living in a dessert climate gets nose bleeds -- you would never do that for a medically typical child.  But the nature of having a child with a rare disorder is that you can expect 1) that unexpected things WILL (sometimes) go wrong, and 2) that the doctors (again, sometimes) will NOT be watching out for these things because they're so unusual.  

When we went in to the hematologist, we discussed a bunch of things about Joshua's medical history, the doctor Googled at least 3 things in front of me, and then at the end of the appointment he thanked me for educating him (about the link between 4q deletions and Hemophilia C, and about the latest treatments for Pierre Robin Sequence) - which is cool, in a way, but it also puts a lot of pressure on special needs parents to know their stuff, because doctors need you to educate them when you're dealing with rare.  

The good news in this anecdote is that J does NOT have any kind of blood clotting disorder!  His labs were normal!  But then this begs the question -- was my worrying worth it?  If he would've tested positive, then it absolutely would have been - but he didn't.  This is the example that we're dealing with this month, but new concerns come up all the time, and it's tricky to know how to handle that in a way that's healthy (for me and for Josh).  I would love thoughts on how others strike this balance between not worrying and watching out for the medical things that doctors might miss.  

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Item Two:  My Lent Challenge, Perspective, and a School Update

I'm doing a Lent challenge with my prayer group to turn complaints into gratitude.  When it comes to Joshua's special needs, I am a complaining machine, so this is the place where the rubber hits the road for me, and the place where it would be most helpful to do the exercise and realize all that I have to be grateful for.  Here we go!

The complaint:  I'm tired of Josh having procedures and blood draws and doctors appointments as a constant part of his life.  I'm tired of the stress it causes him and the worry it causes me.  

The gratitude:  I'm very grateful that Josh does not have a blood clotting disorder.  And I'm grateful for other things that tend to come with his syndrome that he has not had trouble with (such as seizures), and for things he was born with that healed on their own with no surgery (such as his atrial septal defect).  I'm grateful that God has protected him through all his surgeries, and provided medicines and supplements to help with other issues.

The complaint:  I'm tired of school being a struggle.  I feel sad that the chromosome disorder causes learning struggles, and frustrated that since school is designed for a typical student, it often doesn't work perfectly for him.

The gratitude:  I'm grateful that he's at a school where the administration, teachers, and staff value and support students with special needs, even (especially?) as the district is strapped for cash.  I'm grateful that Josh likes his teachers and is making forward progress.  I'm grateful that things are going okay with fellow students.  I'm grateful that everyone on his team knows the things that make him excited and use those things to motivate him.

The complaint:  I'm tired of food still being a battle and still needing to be planned in every situation.

The gratitude:  I'm grateful that we have a wonderful private occupational therapist.  I'm grateful that, after YEARS of spinning our tires with eating, Josh is having a huge burst of willingness to try new foods.

And, in areas that continue to be challenging, I'm grateful that God will someday wipe away every tear and make all things new.