Having Child Athletes

 I couldn't really come up with a better name for this topic. Everything sounded way too serious. So, that's where I landed. I get a lot of questions/comments about my older two children being involved in sports so I decided to delve into that a little more. 

People comment all the time about how they are, "so athletic" and I just have to giggle and I usually respond with, "you only say that because you haven't seen them swim".  I mean they are little balls of muscle and so far appear to have some little athletic gifts but mainly they have so much dang energy that they need to burn in order to be nice productive people. I swear, they rarely get tired. When they just can't get it together I send them outside to burn off some energy and they come back inside so much more well behaved.

Georgia (will be 10 in May) is a competitive gymnast. There are two routes you can go. Xcel and JO. She is in Xcel which does not feed into collegiate or Olympic events. So, she competes for the fun of it and we are not doing this with hopes that she will be a college or professional athlete. Georgia was always my little monkey...as soon as she could crawl she was climbing. So, we put her in gymnastics because it seemed to be something she would be naturally good at...and she was. Aside from all the physical benefits it has really helped her in so many other ways. She's learned about hard work and goal setting and also about following directions and having a longer attention span. It has been so great for her and made her more confident. She goes to practice from 4:30-7:30 on MWF and she usually has practice over holidays. Honestly, if she wasn't in gym 9 hours a week she wouldn't know what to do with herself. Before gym, after gym, and on the weekends I swear she spends most of her time still doing gymnastics. Her competition season starts at the end of January and runs through early April. This year she only had 3 meets not including state. The season before she about 7 I think. She got her first gold medal (in vault) this season. She was SO proud of herself.

Milam (age 4) is a registered BMX rider. (That is bicycle racing). There are literally only three places to do this in the greater Houston area so this one is a bit tricky. He started riding a two wheeled bike with no training wheels at age two and REALLY got into it during the beginning of the quarantine. There is a BMX park nearish our house and we decided to give it a try and he LOVED it. Jonathan really jumped on the idea because they love to ride bikes together. Milam loves his little bikes so much. I always say they are an extension of his body. Milam rides all the time but practices at the park for a couple of hours on Thursday and then races on Friday. He has gotten 5 trophies so far and got his first FIRST place trophy the week after Georgia got her first gold medal.

We do not make our kids do these sports. We don't let them quit on a whim but we don't make them do it. If they really didn't want to do these things we wouldn't make them. I love watching their faces when they finally get a new skill...or, watching them work so hard to get that new skill and not quitting. It is such an amazing learning process. 

I do often think about all the things we could do with that money other than paying for practices and lessons...or what we could do with a little more free time or flexible schedule. It takes a lot out of a family to have your kids super involved in something. Which, is why they only do ONE thing.

We often joke about what Barrett will be into and always say he'll be a competitive eater. We're actually hoping he decides to do BMX since it takes a lot of time (because there aren't a lot of tracks so we spend time driving) and he's already very interested in bikes but we'll see. If he doesn't like it then we'll try to figure out where is interests and talents converge. 

What are your kids into?