If you encourage your kids to do sports are you being a pushy parent?
I know I don’t ever really cover being a parent on the blog but I wanted your collective advice on something so bear with me on this. My little boy Jacob is six and this year he took up football. This wasn’t because I asked him too it was because some of his friends were doing it and he wanted to start playing regularly.
Now I was terrible at football and if I am honest I never went to any football training and the the first I experienced it was at high school. So when I took him to this he seems to have taken to it like a duck to water. However, although he has some skill and is quite a good player he isn’t going to be the next Gareth Bale and I am not bothered about that I just want him to enjoy it. However, there is a professional football academy near me that are nothing short of brilliant and it has produced a number of professional footballers. He wants to go to it to learn new skills and I think it will be good for him to go for his development but also his personal self-esteem. It is my opinion that if you are good at sport it helps you later in life.
So because of this I am asking myself, is it a good idea to send my boy to be coached professionally regularly or am I just being a pushy parent living out my youth again in my little lad?