12 October 2011

Street Smart Blog!

12 October 2011

The Street vs University
Hello and welcome to our steet smart blog, for a great many years it has been common practice for parents to push their children to do well in school starting from kindergarten. In fact the pressure is so strong today that many children are encouraged from before kindergarten to start activities which jump start their academic and motor skills so that once in school these children can perform at optimal level. Let me start off by saying that I do not have any children of my own and so I am simply writing this blog as an observer of the parent child dynamic that I see and read about from time to time.

I often hear people with children say “Wow where have the years gone?” “I remember when little Becky was just getting her first tooth and taking her first steps. It seem like only yesterday” I often wonder to myself are parents enjoying their children and the whole experience of parenting or are they just pushing their kids too hard to one day be able to say that their son or daughter has become a huge success. I think the whole point of having children is because you would like to start a family and watch your offspring grow and be happy and experience life as it happens, however ,you will see 1000 kids in hockey each year with tremendous pressure to perform at NHL levels even though that child is only 10 years old and for some of these children it is like that until they graduate high school.

I suppose there is nothing wrong with wanting your children to be successful, however, if everyone is on the same path to success then who is going to fill all of the other important rolls in society I mean from my little knowledge of sports I think that there are only about 50 to 60 NHL teams and each team has 1 team captain and you literally have thousands of people with there children in competitive sports at an early age all trying to be number one at a sport where there are very few positions available and so I would think that it is important that while encouraging your child to play competitive sports it would also be important to find out what that child is also interested in so that once they decide to retire from team captain of their chosen team they can finally do what it is they want to do with their lives.

The people in our society who take the road less travelled are the ones who challenge the status quo and find out who they really are in relation to society and then adjust their ambitions according to where they feel most comfortable existing. The existentialist has done their home work and figured what works for them and are able to make smart compromises in regards to their life choices. You have to learn how the world works before you can take it over. While it is really important to motivate children and encourage them to succeed it is also important to help them find their true selves, who they want to be as opposed to who their parents want them to be, I think this sort of approach to parenting with ultimately help develop more well adjusted children. I mean someone once told me “Not everyone wants to be CEO” and I couldn’t believe it at the time but it was what was in me, however, for a lot of children I think given the chance to develop in their own way and to be encouraged to know themselves from an eary age they will probably have a better chance of claiming success at somthing that they are passionate about as opposed to just what their parents want for them.

It’s not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can’t tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself. ~Joyce Maynard

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