I have one daughter and we had a standing rule - she could do one extra-curricular activity at a time. Neither my husband nor I wanted to spend our free time ferrying her thither and you. As a result, she tried a lot of different things over the years. There was ballet/tap, piano, gymnastics, softball, swim team, plus performances from her chorus classes and her drama class.
I don’t think I lie when I say she was OK at most of them - probably because she was never really driven to excel at any of them. She did them for fun or, in the case of swim team, exercise. She was a solid member of her various choruses - I know the teacher looked to her to anchor the altos - but she wasn’t a soloist. Still, she had fun, she sampled different activities, made friends, and overall, I think she had a good time.
The dance recitals were a hoot, because 5-y/o girls trying to dance in unison are hilariously adorable. The piano recitals were excruciating, mostly because there were so many students and the teacher made it clear she didn’t want anyone walking out on other performers. Swim meets were boring (to me) probably because my daughter wasn’t very good or competitive - she just liked to swim. Softball games were fun because there were some really good players, but not our girl. Chorus concerts were the best - I’m hoping my grandkids get into that someday.
Your turn - brag or commiserate about your kids’ activities!
My daughter was good at art. Very very good from a very early age. She won some local contests, went to some prestigious entry-by-portfolio summer art programs in high school and decided she lacked the hustle to make it in the art world. This was a correct assessment. Also, she said, “everyone at those programs was sort of crazy and highstrung.” Also accurate.
She was also good at language. Very very good. She taught herself linguistics from a college textbook while in middle school. There was a chocolate bar for the person with the highest score on the monthly Latin test. She always won it. (and gave it away, doesn’t like candy).
She was truly abysmal at sports, all sports, carrying on the tradition of her parents. And not much of a joiner, really. Except for art classes she never wanted to do much after-school activity. She read books, and painted.
When I reflect on how much effort my sisters put into schlepping their kids from one sports practice/meet after another, I feel rather fortunate.
But my kids finished 2nd, 1st, and 1st, in their HS classes. And my daughter finished 2nd to a girl who avoided taking any AP courses in order to build a record that would allow her to go directly to med school after two years of community college.
I was nowhere near the top of my own HS class, although my wife was 1st in hers.
My kid is a standout in, uhh, the other direction? Her intelligence tests as above average (though not exceedingly so), but she is lots of trouble. Everybody in the school knows who she is.
Random kid at the pool to her, “you’re littleecho from Jefferson Elementary!” Me to random adult on campus, “I’m littleecho’s Dad” “oh, I know her…”
Weeks, weeks I say, can go by when we don’t get a call from the office about her. It’s the reason I have to answer all of the unknown calls, even though 9 out of 10 are spam, it’s that one that is having me bring new socks to school…
Standouts? Not in sports or high school. BUT, they are indeed standouts in “Chillin’ and Bein’ Content”…
Must’ve gotten that from their dad. Decades ago, I saw a Peanuts comic where someone (CB?) asks “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and Linus says “Outrageously happy!”
In his senior year my son was the #1 varsity bowler along with 3 other very good bowlers on his high school team. Coach thought he (in singles) and the team had a very good shot at going to state and maybe placing in the top 5.
My kid decided to go downhill skiing 3 weeks before district qualifying and broke his collarbone. Right hand bowler and his right arm was now in a sling. He bowled left handed the rest of the season and they never made it past the conference finals.
My daughter had straight A’s all through grade school and junior high. When I ran into her teachers at the grocery store they told me what a joy she was in class. In high school I convinced her to relax a bit and enjoy life and she got a few B’s.
My son tried out for the football team and made it, then turned down the chance to play. The only reason he tried out was to get access to the gym so he could lift weights over the summer. The coach contacted me to see if I could convince him to play, but I approved of his choice. I bought him a bench and weights.
Lest I give a bad impression of my daughter, while she wasn’t a jock or much of a dancer, she did get a full-ride scholarship to the University of Central Florida, and she became a very good teacher. Unfortunately, political meddling in education has soured her on the profession and she’s about to make a career change. Education’s loss - she really is a good teacher.
She left Florida almost 4 years ago, lives in Maryland now, and teaches at a small private school. But the pay sucks and she just wants to do something else after 14 years. I don’t blame her.
My kids were pretty average, I think. Above average intelligence, but you wouldn’t know it from their schoolwork. But the same could be said for me. One of my sons was an above-average athlete and another was in a GAT program until it was eliminated because of funding (the irony burns). My daughter had a nice alto voice and sang in choirs. They are all (minus one) now living ordinary lives at ordinary jobs and have their own ordinary children.
My son was a standout hockey player. I remember when he was 5 and my husband said that he wanted to sign him up for youth hockey. I wasn’t too enthused but he started playing. He was a good player right from the get-go. He was an amazing skater too. He always made the “A” teams throughout his youth career. He was also asked to play on special teams every summer. Lots of traveling involved and $$$$. High school freshmen had to play junior varsity and then they could try out for the varsity team when they were sophomores. The JV team would always play their game before the varsity game. When my son was a freshman, he would play in the JV game and then the coach would have him suit up for the varsity game. He was the captain of his team also. After high school, he played on a couple of Junior A teams. Then played in college.
He was also a really great kid. Kind, funny, loved his family, didn’t get into any real trouble. I think back to my hesitation when my husband wanted him to play all of those years ago and am sure glad I didn’t put up a fuss about it. He made life-long friends, my husband and I made life-long friends. We had so much fun with the other families. It sure helped get through the long winters. Playing on a team taught him so many life lessons. It also kept him on the straight and narrow.
No kids, so I’ll talk about myself and my siblings.
I tested “gifted” in elementary and was even in the gifted program, until budget cuts killed it. Everyone had high expectations of me: valedictorian, full-ride scholarship to Yale, etc. Instead I half-assed my way through school and was a C student at best.
My older stepbrother was a standout on the football field, however, big fish, small pond, and all that, and he didn’t get any scholarship offers. It’s not hard to stand out on a football team with an 0-35 record across multiple seasons.
My younger half-brother was a player on the football field. That’s about all that can be said of his athletic prowess.
Both of my sons are gifted academically. Both were recipients of scholarships to go to Stanford - which meant that it was cheaper for them to go there than to the California University system.
One went on to become an executive at a very prominent software company, and the other became a professor of economics at a college.
(I certainly improved the family gene pool by marrying my Wife!)
I was told I was smart, but we had no TAG classes back in the 60s. But my SAT test came back with “Smartypants!” as the score.
I loved being a sharp student in science and math classes in high school (luckily, the teacher never outed me, so no one knew the class comedian was brainy).
But when I got to college, I hung out with students who were twice as smart as I was. If anyone here lived in Ezra L. Koon Honors Dormitory, you know what it was like: kids sitting around discussing Existentialism vs Catholicism vs Randian Objectivism 'til all hours…
And that night, 'round about three in the morning, Steve said “Scuse me, I’ve got to write a paper for my 8am class”. And he pulled out his typewriter and banged out a ten page paper off the top of his head… all while actively participating in the discussion!
4 out of 4 on that one. When I was their age I craved approval so I always did what I was told. I was a bit above average in a lot of things, but great in nothing. What I wanted was an absence of disapproval–and I excelled at that. Somewhere between then and spawning sprogs I realized the absence of disapproval is not particularly valuable, and indeed is the opposite of good for anyone. The kids were raised to question everything, including mom and me. By the time they got into high school they had no use for any part of the charade, but they DID learn a lot about what they did and did not want to be when they grew up. These days they’re all free-living adults and managing to balance daily responsibility with doing whatever they want. I couldn’t be more proud of them all.
At the end of 3rd grade my older daughter got signed by a talent manager in New York, and got a commercial on her third audition. She also had a featured recurring role on a cult TV series, her name before the credits. She thought that she might want to make films, which scared me. She starred in some NYU student films and I found from the students how expensive it was. Luckily she got a slot at a California Arts program where she made films and learned editing, and decided it was not for her. So she went to grad school where she got two PhDs.
My other daughter always thought she was dumb, but she did get a Fulbright Fellowship to teach English in Germany for two years.
My five year old grandson can add three digit numbers in his head, and invented the concept of a variable for himself last year.
