GOOD MORNING WORLD
I am headed home taking two days and picking up a grandchild on the way for the weekend. That is the BEST!!! It is ever bittersweet and not so bad as I will be back up in a few weeks with my best friend for some more work this time outside. Hopefully rentals will be good this year!!! Anyone reading this want to rent go to Homeaway.com and type in the number 318828 and VOILA the coast of Maine can be yours for a week – fee paid of course!!!
At any rate I had been reading the Bangor Daily News as my paper of choice. Could have had the Portland Press or the Boston Globe or Wall Street and decided to stay local. I especially liked a column by Sara Smiley. The paper says she is syndicated throughout the country weekly and lives in Bangor and can be reached at www.facebook.com/Sarah.is.Smiley.
The column this week featured Little League baseball and the cry and title of, “Where have all the kids gone?” She shared much information about her sons and their coach and the team and how boys are recruited and practice times and game times. She praised the fact that her boys could walk to the park and how it was a bit of independence for them and a good thing. I was right there with her.
Then she noted that the coach called them and had to inform them that there would be two fewer teams this year as not enough boys had signed up.
She went on to suggest that “Helicopter Parents” might be the cause of this situation. Her premise appeared to be that Little League with the separation of dugouts and stands may mean the parents were not able to be involved enough and did not like this. I think that was her point. Please go read it. Yet I remember Little League a little differently – we could not get the parents to be involved??
I think she missed a whole other spectrum of the reason boys are not playing ball and I had to have my say of course! I wrote the paper. In case they do not publish it I wanted my opinion out there. My blog my choice. This also goes along with some of the points I made in Tuesday’s posts about single mothers.
My Letter to the BDN:
I have been in residence on MDI for the last week in Maine and have enjoyed the Bangor Daily especially the Sarah Smiley column. I have to comment on her column from Monday. While ‘helicopter parents’ may be part of the issue of fewer children playing baseball I think that there is a sadder reason. Many young school aged children live in single parent homes. The moms may not have the transportation to get the kids to the park. May not have the funds to pay the fees. They may have to work and the children are stuck in a daycare rather than out playing at home in their own yards. The fact that Ms. Smiley got the call on her cell while driving with her family back from a vacation in our nation’s capital tells us a whole lot about her state in life. Not having enough kids to fill out two extra teams for little league sadly may tell us a lot about what way of life others are living in our country. It is ‘sad really and there it is’.
…..ONWARD TO MORE MISADVENTURE…
ktsquared 