Triple The Dad

The triplets and I were watching baseball the other day.  It was a Phillies-Nationals game.  I’m a big Nationals fan.  It’s a long story for another time, but there you have it.    The pitcher was shaking off one pitch request from the catcher after another.  One of the announcers discussed the finer skills of hitting and pitching: To succeed, the hitter pretty much has to guess correctly at what pitch the pitcher will throw and where.  Meanwhile, the pitcher is trying to make a combination of his best pitch to the hitter’s weakest area of the strike zone, all while mixing it up enough that the hitter doesn’t see it coming. As I sat there shaking off requests from my kids – no, we aren’t going outside; we are watching baseball – I got to thinking. Because just about the time I think I’ve figured these kids out well enough to strike through 3 hours while avoiding a grand tantrum the wind shifts towards the outfield.  Suddenly, what wou...

I’ll tell you that my initial reaction to this Facebook post was anger, or sadness, at any rate.  The post starts with ignorance (feigned or real) about “ball sports,” and follows with an insinuation that the father wants his son to go over to the section of the store where the sports he “gets” (skateboards & bikes) are for sale.  But that just makes me sad.  I mean, if your kid wants to play football or soccer, or volleyball, what is the harm? I feel like this type of attitude – what would you call it?  Live like Daddy ? – limits children entirely too much.  The Dad in the picture says “I don’t like “ball sports” so we will just guide you over to stuff I like.”  But to what end?  So the Dad doesn’t like to do the things the kid in the picture is looking at.  Your child isn’t you, after all.  And maybe the kid wants that ball because he saw his best friend playing with one and wants to be able to play with his friend.  O...

I couldn’t resist posting this interesting little tidbit from a slate.com article that kind of sums up the impact parents can actually have on their child: “… if live in a small city or town, or out in the country, you’re probably not. And the difference is information and your sense of the possible—what you know about, what you learn from the experiences of people around you. Hoxby followed up with an experiment in which she showed that just sending high school seniors 75 pages of information about selective schools could boost their admission rates from about 30 percent to 54 percent.” The quote addresses the likelihood of someone applying to elite colleges and notes that the poor and especially those from outside big cities often don’t bother applying to those schools, despite the fact that colleges would often accept these types of applicants.  Push your kid into “Super Kindergarten” all you want; stress out about their college acceptances for 20 years and th...