Flunking Kids 4 Sports?

I was stunned to see this topic on the morning news. What a joke. A recent trend among parents is emerging, where some parents are delaying their child's enrollment into Kindergarten and/or holding the child back a year in school, in order for their young athlete to have a competitive advantage over the other athletes. Some parents say that it allows their child to be the star, and therefore provides a greater advantage for them to obtain a scholarship and/or become a professional athlete.

As a former athlete, I believe if your parent has to hold you back so that you can be one year older and better than the competition, then you sucked to begin with! And, your parent is an idiot for drumming up this idea of redshirting you. It's okay to suck as an athlete. Not everyone is athletic. But to the parent holding their kid back because they want them to have an advantage, your kid does have a gift. Perhaps sports isn't it. That's just my opinion, and raising kids today to be losers -- yes losers because they can't deal with true competition (in their same age bracket); learning that not everyone gets a trophy; not everyone is an athlete; everyone has a special gift, perhaps athleticism isn't it, is a part of life. We live in a society filled with kids entering the real world without accountability, where parents have made excuses for them their entire life, then wonder why they grow up to be failures. Parents, you're not doing your kids any favors redshirting them, because it will catch up sooner or later.  Being the older, bigger kid on the team because you were held back by your parents is not cool, and I am certain, hurts their self-esteem later in life. A true and stellar athlete plays up, not back. That's how it was when I participated, and that's how it's still today. Good athletes that are younger get to play up, and with the older kids, moving as a freshman participant to junior varsity or varsity. That's cool. Not the other way around!

As I am watching this special, they indicated that the kids that were redshirt are twice as likely to drop out of high school. That is an astounding statistic, but it also makes perfect sense given the blow to a child's ego. If you are the older bigger kid on the team (at least back in my day), we just assumed you flunked and that was not something to be proud of, regardless how good you were athletically. We actually excused a good athlete for losing to the older kid, because they had an unfair advantage. But even then, a true athlete beats out all the competition, same age and older. Shame on parents for messing up their child's social and educational opportunities by forcing them to live out some self-fulfilling athletic dream, and redshirting them to accomplish this. Good athletes are already crushing the competition in their current grade. I'm sure I'll receive some nasty emails from parents that disagree, but really think about it. If you're holding your kid back, in attempts for them to move forward, isn't that counterintuitive?! Good luck.

For more on this topic, view this video from Good Morning America.

-OzzyMommy

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