General Malaise
Footballguy
God, dance sounds like torture. My wife is on board with no dance for our daughter ever.
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"I'm Done Making My Kid's Childhood Magical" (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter gianmarco
- Start date
Judge Smails
Footballguy
Self reliance and work ethic are the two positives that come from an upbringing like that. No doubt. We had no choice.
I do feel blessed to have a great wife and 3 great "kids" (youngest turns 21 next week). Pretty amazing when my wife and I think of the absolute ####ty circumstances we came from. Talking dysfunction at the highest levels. We broke the cycle.
I'm not an entrepreneur. Probably should be. Instead I'm working for the man. Sorta grinding like most. Providing because I have to provide, and starting to long for the time I don't have to. Thinking about it too much actually.
NutterButter
Footballguy
you pay her off then. Weekly trip to chuck e cheese if she doesn't dance. You go there when it just opens. Place is empty. Way better than dance.
DropKick
Footballguy
You can read Judge Smail's reply a little above this... he goes into great detail on how times have changed.62Care to explain why it's off-base?How old are you? This couldn't be more offat the notion that parenting has
substantially changed over the course of a generation or two and even more
parents. There will always be overbearing parents and neglectful parents.
Same as day one.
base...
I'll add that when I was a kid, your coaches and teachers were respected. If I complained about something, I would have been told to pay more attention, or work or practice harder. Now, every parent with a perceived slight has something to say to the adults... And its never the kids fault...
Same with birthday parties, we had cake and ice-cream and maybe a round of pin the tail on the donkey... Nothing is ever simple any more...
Courtjester
The Town Drunk
Dance is tough. My oldest (15) has been in dance for the past 10 years. Pointe/ballet is her focus. She goes for 2 hours on Friday and 2 hours on Saturday.
My 10 year old does tap and we take her on Mondays for an hour. She would much rather play sports--so this won't be for much longer.
We are lucky that our daughters don't go to one of the big name schools (because you can easily drop $400 a month at those), but we pay a reasonable $75.00 a month. However, we get nailed when it comes to recitals for the costume fees and because it is a small school on a shoe string budget, we have to do fundraisers to help pay for the facility to hold the recitals. I have like 5 Yankee Candles sitting here that I paid $100 for--that we will probably just re-gift to people. Shoes, gel pads, leotards and last year my oldest fell while dancing and sustained a torn ligament in her foot--so 6 weeks in a boot, physical therapy, etc...tons of co-pays.
She just finished a run performing in the Nutcracker in front of two sold out shows of probably 5,000 plus people each night. However. what is interesting is she has come to the conclusion there is no realistic future in this and only wants to pursue this for fun and exercise. That makes me proud that she is following the mantra of sometimes you have to do what you have to do, so you can do what you want to do. She has a 4.75 GPA and probably will have her pick of colleges, so I am crossing my fingers things stay okay.
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AcerFC
Footballguy
One thing I can agree with everyone on is dance is the suck. We had the two way mirror though. I am so grateful my daughter asked to quit. We usually dont allow her to quit anything so easily but she truly hated it and made us miserable when it was time to go to dance. We were more than happy to wash our hands of it and save a few hundred dollars
Sabertooth
Footballguy
You know how I make my 8 year old's life magical? I joke with her, every single day on her level. Super corny stuff and she says "daaaaaddd" in a sing songy voice back to me. We also rock out to Taylor Swift or whoever in the truck when I bring her to school. Consistently the best parts of my day easily. I also truly enjoy picking up my 11 year old from school. Just me and her in the truck asking how her day was. She's not the free spirit my 8 year old is, but we have some good times.
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NutterButter
Footballguy
You've got the have the playlist of girl songs. Swift, Gomez, Perry, some disney sprinkled in. Good times.
gianmarco
Footballguy
parasaurolophus
Footballguy
You tell her no. What are there 5 people in the US that make a good, enjoyable living as non motorboatin dancers?It won't affect her life one bit. Actually that is not true. You will probably make it better because she won't have image issues and messed up feet.
RBM
Footballguy
It's not that bad. My girls are way into ballet and tap. I go every few weeks to watch and get a kick out of it.
All kids activities suck though pretty much. I'd shoot myself if they ever wanted to play soccer. Talk about boring ####.
Otis
Footballguy
Tennessee_ATO
Footballguy
Dance is the most expensive, most time-intensive of all activities. If you are in competition the time/money suck is unbelievable. That said, if your kid wants to try it out then loves it, waddyagonnado? My daughter loves it but voluntarily gave up competition so she could play softball. She'll never give up her "regular" dance classes voluntarily and I would never want her to.
Just my take, but when they find something that they love like that, you owe it to them to make it happen if at all possible. Lots of folks seem to miss that point. It really ain't much about you once you have kids. If that's not OK, then don't have them.
ffldrew
Footballguy
My daughter did dance at a studio in Denver where the teachers were former or current Bronco Cheerleaders(owner was former cheerleader) and/or Nuggets dance team. Dads were always in attendance. It wasn't that bad.
RBM
Footballguy
My girls are 6 and 4 so they're on year 2. The recital last year wasn't bad. They both were in the first 12-15 dances and we were allowed to leave right after. So it was only like an hour and a half. I'm afraid of what's going to happen as they get older though. And it is obscenely expensive. Weekly class is an hour each and we have them going at the same time on Saturday morning so that works out well. Right across the hall from each other. They absolutely love it so it's worth it.
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Apple Jack
Footballguy
Thread title still makes me laugh.
Ned
Footballguy
Soccer is friggin awesome. It stomps all over the snoozefest we call baseball.
Rick James
Footballguy
NutterButter
Footballguy
I still haven't heard anything that is remotely close to the suck of a dance recital.
Officer Pete Malloy
Footballguy
Add wrestling tournaments to that. 2 hours of pure boredom followed by 5 minutes of sheer terror...then repeat 2-3 times.
parasaurolophus
Footballguy
Baloney. They're kids. Jesus. Lots of them eat their own boogers. Do you owe it to them to let them do that too? They love princesses and Barbie dolls. They don't know #### about #### yet.
Dance, gymnastics, tap, etc. These are all activities that require huge time commitments and have a very short shelf life. Do you know any 32 year old women that go do gymnastics on the weekends? How about that do dance recitals?
This isn't like tennis, golf, basketball, where you can do it the rest of your life without much effort.
The worst thing about activities like this is that you create a vicious cycle. You know what old gymnasts do? They push their daughters to be gymnasts and go spend hours at meets because there is no other way to relive their glory days.
Tennessee_ATO
Footballguy
You guys are pieces of work. It's dance -- it's no less valid an athletic activity than any other sport. Just because you don't like it doesn't make it less valid. Who do you think those activities are for -- you or your kid? My daughter loves dance -- LOVES it. She practices around the house constantly. But I guess it's like eating her boogers because it isn't tennis. Ridiculous.
mr roboto
Footballguy
The main thing for me is to expose my daughters to a variety of activities when they are young but I refuse to allow them to be involved in multiple time-intensive sports. Being on travel softball teams AND dance AND basketball etc is madness and fairy disruptive to a family iMO.
Tennessee_ATO
Footballguy
I agree w/ this. My daughter gravitated to dance initially. I made her do 1 season of softball to see if she liked it -- she did, enough so to choose it over competition dance moving forward. She's going to be giving soccer a try next. If she likes it, we'll have to figure out how to integrate it into the mix. She may just be able to do it in the fall if she wants to keep going w/ dance and softball. Eventually if she ID's 1 that she likes over the others, we'll start focusing on it and phasing the others out. The choice will be hers though, not mine. If she loves soccer over softball, so be it even if I don't care for the sport much at all.mr roboto said:
FUBAR
Footballguy
It doesn't have to be like that, especially the birthday parties. Our oldest two just take a friend to a hockey game or arcade for a few hours.You can read Judge Smail's reply a little above this... he goes into great detail on how times have changed.62Care to explain why it's off-base?How old are you? This couldn't be more off
substantially changed over the course of a generation or two and even more
parents. There will always be overbearing parents and neglectful parents.
Same as day one.
base...
I'll add that when I was a kid, your coaches and teachers were respected. If I complained about something, I would have been told to pay more attention, or work or practice harder. Now, every parent with a perceived slight has something to say to the adults... And its never the kids fault...
Same with birthday parties, we had cake and ice-cream and maybe a round of pin the tail on the donkey... Nothing is ever simple any more...
Our youngest had a small party in the house, our 3rd was born in the summer so he gets a pool party every year. Keeping it simple.
parasaurolophus
Footballguy
Has nothing to do with whether or not I like it. If basketball was an activity that required constantly traveling and schlepping all over the place, paying tons of money every month, and he needed a new uniform every game, and then when my son reached the age of 18 he could basically never do it again, I wouldn't allow it and I love basketball.Tennessee_ATO said:
With tons of other sports you can play in leagues until you are dead. Justifies making a greater investment in them. Dance is just not one of those things for 99.999% of the population. The .001% of the population that does get to continue on beyond 18 has a decent likelihood of being miserable.
I know lots of kids that love video games. LOVE THEM. Doesn't justify letting them play them over and over and it certainly wouldn't justify putting them in a video game league or school if there was such a thing.
Kids love lots of things. That is not how I choose to make parenting decisions involving "the most expensive, most time-intensive of all activities. If you are in competition the time/money suck is unbelievable"
Would seem that there should be a lot more that goes into a decision like that than whether or not they love it. er I mean LOVE IT.
And this doesn't even factor in the impact it has on other family members, which is substantial.
belljr
Footballguy
I grew up in the 70s and 80s my dad coached most of my teams and came to most of my games but he was a ####. Just kidding he was just a bit strict and hard on me. Definitely not a helicopter parent 
not sure how going to your kids games is helicoptering
my sister danced and then was a cheer leader in college, she's pretty normal
not sure how going to your kids games is helicopteringmy sister danced and then was a cheer leader in college, she's pretty normal
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Tennessee_ATO
Footballguy
You obviously have no clue about what dance is and what it entails exactly, but at least you aren't going to let that stop you.
It involves a major time/money commitment, but it's not that much more than the commitment for kids who are big into soccer/baseball/basketball. The difference is the commitment made at a younger age. My 4 year old was in competition for a year. That required (in addition to the weekly class for her baseline tap/jazz/ballet) 1 day a week for her. The time/money suck came from traveling to competitions -- 1 or 2 a month -- over weekends. There are costumes to buy, but it's one set a year, not every competition.
Older girls are in dance classes 4-5 days a week, and have that many more costumes to buy, but the travel is pretty static.
It's not like my godson, whose been totally committed to baseball since an early age, isn't doing pretty close to the same schedule -- it just started at 12ish instead of 4ish.
And I'm legitimately sorry you seem to think dance is comparable to video games. You've clearly never seen the stretching, strength, and coordination required for even basic dancing. It's good for my daughter -- just like any number of sports would be for her.
As far as I'm concerned, if that's the one your kid is drawn to, that's what she should do barring some real reason (like you literally can't afford it). Not allowing it because it's inconvenient for you is an indictment of you, not dance.
RBM
Footballguy
According to some of these numbnuts you're making a huge mistake and need to shut that down pronto.
Frostillicus
Footballguy
I will never miss one of my kids' games. I will miss as many practices as possible.
parasaurolophus
Footballguy
But what if that is what he wants to do? What if he LOVES IT?shadyridr said:
parasaurolophus
Footballguy
Look Mr. Flatley, the only thing I know about your daughter's dance schedule is what you told me.
Ned
Footballguy
Why doesn't he want to do it? Has he ever played before?shadyridr said:
There are times you need to push your kids and this is probably one of those times. Assuming he hasn't played before, he has no idea what to expect so he may be scared. Just put him out there and see how he does, IMO. If he hates it later, at least he tried. He may surprise himself...
My oldest (8) always needs some nudging to participate in things and he almost always ends up having a blast.
Tennessee_ATO
Footballguy
If you can't see the difference between a child loving a healthy athletic activity and sitting on his ###, perhaps this isn't the discussion for you.
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Tennessee_ATO
Footballguy
It is exactly that, especially at a young age. But to equate it to buying a "uniform every game" is absurd and ignorant. Comparing it to video games is absurd and ignorant. Complaining because it's "only" beneficial for 14-15 years of doing it since she won't take dance classes after graduating high school is absurd and ignorant.
I get it -- you don't like dance and too much of a commitment to your kid is too inconvenient. Just own it instead of trying to justify it as something it isn't.
The Duff Man
Footballguy
Absolutely nothing wrong with your kid playing on a local sports team, or participating in dance, music lessons, Girl Guides or whatever gives them more life experiences they can learn from.
It is idiotic to me the parents that put their kids in "competitive" teams/activities. For all the extra time and money that gets spent, how much more does the kid get out of it versus playing on the local house league team?
Because I have no illusions of my two girls becoming pro at any of their childhood activities, I have turned down every offer we have ever got for them to advance to the "competitive" level (basketball and dance).
We use that time to read, play board games, go fishing or hiking, visit friends or just generally enjoy not being a slave to a demanding schedule that serves little purpose other than to inflate the ego of the parent who can boast their kid is on the upper level team.
It is idiotic to me the parents that put their kids in "competitive" teams/activities. For all the extra time and money that gets spent, how much more does the kid get out of it versus playing on the local house league team?
Because I have no illusions of my two girls becoming pro at any of their childhood activities, I have turned down every offer we have ever got for them to advance to the "competitive" level (basketball and dance).
We use that time to read, play board games, go fishing or hiking, visit friends or just generally enjoy not being a slave to a demanding schedule that serves little purpose other than to inflate the ego of the parent who can boast their kid is on the upper level team.
Tennessee_ATO
Footballguy
The big things my daughter got out of competition dance was the extra teaching, tutelage from some of the older girls, and the thrill she got watching all of the competitions. She was mesmerized by many of the routines. All of that combined to make a noticeable difference in her improvement and confidence. She's wired that way though -- she wants to be "good" at whatever she does and works hard at it. It's the same with softball and soccer and even Spanish and art and games like Uno. We'll eventually home it on whatever it is she really wants to focus on in terms of athletic activity, but she's really young now so we're just trying to expose her to a bunch of stuff to let her figure out what she likes and doesn't like. Apparently her likes aren't important according to some people, but we'll continue making that tragic parenting mistake.
"Competitive" anything at four years old seems nuts to me. But my only kid is less than a year old so I'm not exactly a parenting expert capable of rendering judgment.
