MichMoms Blog

Category: Sports

Are you a sports mom, too?

Have I told you I'm a skating mom? Or, Motherskater. (Yes, like a similar word, "Motherskater" has many practical applications, and I usually find myself mumbling it under my breath as I write yet another check to keep my daughter active in this sport).

I mention this for two reasons: one is because I've realized I've actually been a Stage Mom longer than I thought. There is nothing more Stage Mom-like than the mother of a figure skater Two, well, I'm taking advantage of National Novel Writing Month to write a book about being a Motherskater and I'm already slacking off, so I could use someone to hold me accountable.

Why a book? I've done some looking around and there are lots of books with great advice for parents who have athletic children and books about how we, as a nation, are becoming obsessed with turning our children into the next Tiger Woods ("101 Ways to Be a Terrific Sports Parent: Making Athletics a Positive Experience for Your Child" by Joel Fish and Susan Magee, "Game On: The All-American Race to Make Champions of Our Children" by Tom Farrey), but there is nothing for the parent who gets sucked in, caught up in the machine, then forced to stay because her kid loves it so much. You could say it's a cautionary tale.

Is it hypocritical of me to be working on this book while ordering costume pieces off the Internet and ramping up my daughter's coaching so she has every advantage at the Ice Show audition later this month? Absolutely. That hypocrisy will be addressed in Chapter Four.

I'd love to hear your sports mom stories! Comment here.

Category: Sports

Encourage the positives of youth sports

My younger son loves to play baseball and plays soccer, too, to keep active. He's not super competitive but has his moments when he gets really frustrated or angry about a bad call or a loss. My husband and I just want him to have fun and do his best. The winning and losing part doesn't matter as much to us (though it is more fun to win, right?).

We've had some really great coaches and some really lousy ones, too. Parents, too. We try to instill the positives in our kids and use those times when a coach or other parent loses their cool as teaching moments about how NOT to behave in that situation.

We also stress the positives, telling our son for example, how we liked how his coach talked calmly to the umpire about he thought was a bad call or how our son didn't gloat when his team creamed another one.

I think youth sports are great for making friends, learning teamwork and responsibility, dealing with disappointment and having fun while being active. But not all kids are into sports. So encouraging the same kinds of things in clubs or other youth activities is important, too.

How do you encourage and reinforce the positive aspects of youth sports?

Get tips on how to be a good youth sport coach and/or parent to help kids succeed on and off the field at ResponsibleSports.com.

Category: Sports

Dinner has long been a casualty of school sports

I'm either going to get applauded for this - in which case award-winning author and public radio show host Lynne Rossetto Kasper can get the credit - or loudly jeered, booed and tomatoed. But here goes.

Kasper once said something along the lines that if a soccer coach in Italy called for practice during dinner, he'd be fired. The implication was that the family dinner, still sacred in other places, in America has been on the endangered species list for so long that we've almost to accept its absence as normal. And, two-income households aside, school sports hasn't helped.

I know that while most of us want our kids growing in extracurricular and athletic activities, most of us don't exactly fancy being at the mercy of our kids' demanding schedules, particularly when it becomes kids' plural. I know, too, that many of us don't like how athletic programs tend to sideline dinnertime and worship. What do you think it would take to re-engineer how America does sports - not college or pro of course, just secondary school level - to allow more families to convene for the priorities of supper and worship?

A weekday moratorium on practice and play from say 5-6:30 p.m.? And for a couple hours Friday evening and Sunday morning? I bet it would never happen unless a reduction in games or practices was seen as a means of saving districts money. It usually comes down to cost, doesn't it?

Well, worship service times vary widely. We can settle for dinner. One out of two isn't bad.

Collectively, we complain a lot about what's being lost with every passing generation. Maybe we have to do more than complain amongst ourselves. Dinner isn't just about food. Yet it barely exists within some families anymore because there simply isn't time to fit it in. I'm already dreading what havoc sports involvement is going to wreak on the family when our preschooler is of age.

To motion, negotiate or agitate for a change. Is it worth it? Will any of us parents be willing to step up to the plate?

Category: Sports

Hockey moms, soccer moms - whatever, we're all just moms

Thanks to new GOP VP nominee Sarah Palin, I've been thinking a lot about labels us moms get, defined by activities we do with or for our children: soccer mom, PTA mom, hockey mom, Cub Scout mom ... what does all of that mean, anyway?

We're just moms who do for our kids. We're there to make sure they have all their equipment, get where they need to be, show up to cheer them on and get them home, fed and/or to their next activity - hopefully on time.

I think Bryan Gruley of the Wall Street Journal agrees with me that there's no one definition of a hockey mom. He has some great stories to tell in a piece he wrote for the Journal. Make sure you read all the way to the bottom. Love it!