Word: parental
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...parent knows that few pleasures match the sight of a child who's flushed and beaming after a romp on a stretch of turf. Travel teams in particular can do much to melt away the inhibitions between parents and their teens. "On about the seventh hour of a road trip from western Pennsylvania," says lawyer Robert Luskin of Washington, "you tend to hear things you wouldn't otherwise...
...primary importance of fun--of sport pursued for sheer exhilaration--is a credo repeated, and often honored, by coaches, kids and parents. At the same time, though, the pushy parent, red-faced and screaming from the sidelines or bleachers at a hapless preteen fumbling on the field, has become an American archetype and a symbol of the unmeasured costs of kids' sports...
...parents don't spoil the fun, sometimes the coaches will. Bob Bradley, 41, of Chicago tried to suggest quietly to his daughter's soccer instructor that his screaming at the players during a game was inhibiting their play. "Well, you're the parent and I'm the coach," came the reply, "and I'm the one who knows how to play this game." Bradley walked away without mentioning that he had just coached the Chicago Fire to the championship of Major League Soccer...
...what's a parent to do? We do what Americans have always done. This is, after all, a country that systematizes: we create seminars on how to make friends, teach classes in grieving and make pet walking a profession. In that light, Gregg Heinzmann's praise of unstructured play seems almost un-American. Any activity, no matter how innocent or trivial or spontaneous, can become specialized in America. So if our children are to have sports, we will make leagues and teams, write schedules and rule books, publish box scores and rankings, hire coaches and refs, buy uniforms and equipment...
...will be an all-time low in American culture if teenagers must show a photo ID to see an R-rated film [NATION, June 21]. Carding kids--or not allowing them to go into an R-rated movie without a parent--takes away the teens' illusion of control. Carding kids isn't going to make them less violent. It is simply going to make them more determined to get back the control they have lost. If that means walking into a school with a gun, they'll do it. In the opinion of this 12-year-old, the solution...