Today was a GREAT day! Beautiful weather, a date with my husband and of course the first soccer games of the season! It was also a day that completely reinforced the importance of home-schooling... especially if you have little girls. We were sitting at our oldests game and my husband commented, "Hey look. We have the only kid without soccer cleats on." I looked and sure enough, there were a total of 16 kids and 15/16 had on soccer cleats (that are actually NOT a requirement for 5 year olds playing Upwards soccer). I did not think too much about it though. Then I started noticing that ALL the kids are wearing special soccer shorts too. 15/16 in cleats AND special soccer shorts. I am starting to feel a little odd but not too much. The game ends and our oldest was THRILLED! We were too. She did so good and tried so hard the whole time. She had a few saves and few assists and just did her best. We take a break at Target and then head back for the 4 year olds game. That is when I actually started feeling guilty!!!! I looked around and again... 15/16 in soccer cleats and 14/16 in special soccer shorts. Not just ANY soccer shorts either... represented in this motley groupsof four year olds was Gap, Nike, Umbro, Upwards brand and Adidas. The cleats were almost exclusively Nike and I think Adidas. I was starting to feel like a parental outcast and it hit me. WHY? What on earth difference does it make? At four and five our sweet girls are perfectly content in their garage sale, end of season clearance rack clothes and they did not even notice the differences in their outfits. It is really shocking to see this stuff on kids so young. Do I think dressing in name brands is wrong? Absolutely not! But the fact is, it is likely impossible that those parents ALL got those clothes on sale or hand me downs. So, if at ages 4 and 5 they are getting these uber brands for their kids, what do you think those kids will expect at 7 and 13 and... You get my point.
Another incident from the day that made me smile and made me so happy that we home-school... We were on our way home from soccer when my husband spotted some semi-fresh looking roadkill ( the possum kind) and he pulled over and got the girls out. He got some guy stuff out of the van and gave the girls a lesson on death, dying and the life cycle of flies. They were absolutely intrigued and loved it! They were so full of questions and excitement and very little squeamishness. I must admit to staying in the vehicle! ;)
The last thing to say is that our 5 year old chased after and caught a frog today! I was so proud! She named him Pushy, played with him and then released him at a safe location. Happy jumping Pushy!
My family. My blog. Just a blog about the 6 of us, trying to live a Godly lifestyle in this crazy world.
3 comments:
The fact they even MAKE special soccer shorts and cleats in sizes to fit 4 and 5-year-olds is weird to me!
Glad you found some acceptable road-kill. We drove by a deer last weekend, and I wondered if he was going to pull over. I would have been fascinated to hear the roadkill lesson. :)
The road kill is an interesting way of teaching those things. My girls would have gagged at the smell. We at this point though are teaching about death and dying by our Peanut who is on his last leg. Olivia knows what is going on and we talked about what it will be like. Anyhow, good job!
Yep, the peer-pressure starts early and doesn't let go. That's one of the reasons I'm very glad to have been homeschooled [smile].
Never stopped to look at a dead possum, though.
~Luke
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