Along with seven other girls about the same age, youngsters who more or less have become her extended family, Katie will be here at Win-Win Gymnastics until 2:30 p.m. every day, five days a week, pursuing her dream of athletic glory. Then she and the others will go to school, at their homes.
These eight families have decided to pull their children from public school systems this fall and home-school them to give the talented young gymnasts intensive coaching and streamlined lives stretched and twisted by the demands of gymnastics at the near-elite level.
“There is no rule book with parenting, and I just weighed the choices,” says Katie’s mother, Arlene Ours. “I don’t want the woulda, coulda, shouldas. ‘Mom, I could’ve done that. I could’ve been great.’ ”
The road to athletic fame and fortune is littered with the wrecks of children who swerve into the fast lane too young, only to blow an engine so spectacularly that we cannot look away from the carnage. Some are, sadly, household names: Jennifer Capriati in tennis. Todd Marinovich in football.
This is not a column about kids like them. First, I would not presume to judge another parent’s child-rearing decisions after a few short conversations. I will leave that to you and the experts, who have long debated the pros and cons of home schooling, overspecialization and hothousing for youngsters.
“The preponderance of the available evidence clearly indicates that home schoolers do at least as well as their publicly educated peers on standard academic measures,” says Mitchell Stevens, a Stanford University education professor and expert on home schooling.
Second, this seemingly radical move actually will make these children’s lives easier in some ways, and certainly will benefit their parents and siblings. Currently, the girls go to school all day and then hit the gym from 4 or 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., Monday to Thursday, as well as one day each weekend. Then they go home to eat, study and get some sleep. That kind of schedule requires the children and their families to bend like Nastia Liukin. There are no weeknight dinners with Mom, Pop, brother and sister. One mother drives her daughter 90 minutes each way to the gym. Some of the girls do their homework in the car.
“She’s always missing something. She’s missing birthday parties. She’s missing play dates,” says Ours, whose daughter has won a national competition on the uneven parallel bars at her skill level. “It’s always for the same excuse. She has a practice. She has a meet.”
Loading...
Comments