Football!
March 22, 2006 at 1:07 PM
by Ashleigh
Today is the day that my boys start playing football. My friend alerted me to a club that has a 'minis' training schedule and so we're going to go try it this afternoon. They take kids from 4 - 6 but as Joe is 3.5 years old but big for his age and Seb is 6 already, but doesn't know anything about football, the co-ordinator said they could both come. I enlisted another friend and her son to come along too and check it out so we'll be quite a crowd. I hope they are prepared ;)
There is a football club closer to us, but it seems quite disorganised and this one that Melissa found has a website, plus, strangely enough an English speaking co-ordinator! When she first answered the phone when I called, her Dutch was so good that I thought perhaps I had the wrong person but Melissa had tipped me off to her English-speaking status so I asked to switch to English about a quarter of the way through the conversation.
I was really surprised to get a very strong regional English accent from her! She has lived in Holland 18 years or something. I hope I'm that fluent when I have lived here that long.
Seb and Joe now do three scheduled sports - football, swimming and judo. Swimming is through Seb's school but I'm thinking of signing him up for private lessons at the gym as he really needs a lot of help. Judo is at the gym and they both love it, and now the football. I hope its a success.
I once read in a book about raising boys advice saying that one should interest boys in sport early on, and if boys have a sport that takes up enough of their time and energy they will be very much less likely to do drugs or get into trouble in their teens. This really makes sense to me as most of the 'naughty' boys I knew in my teens were those who had no sporting abilities or hadn't been encouraged to engage in team sports.
Pop back here in 10 years time and I'll tell you if it worked or not ;)
Comments
Sports aren't a big priority in our house. My boys haven't been especially interested and I just couldn't handle the additional craziness. But all the kids do karate. They like it and the running around is much more limited, as is the cost!
We can't drag Max out of the house for sports, but I would love to get him involved in judo. I'll have to contact you for more details on the organization you've found.
I would love to enroll Nicky in a mini football club. He'd love it - what a brilliant idea!!
Hi Ashleigh,
Baseball season is starting for Ben tomorrow. He LOVES the sport and this will be his third year playing. I think sports are great for kids to be involved. Have fun with football!!!
March 22, 2006 1:34 PM