Or is sport more important than music?

[Azquilith]

Having an argument with DP about our DS learning music in the future. DP was in an orchestra at school - do kids really play in orchestras any more? Surely it's a bit 1950s and playing sport is more important for development and making friends?

I played Alto Sax in high school. Trust me, band is a good place to make friends.

Sport is more important than music.
Music is more important than sport.
Both are right - it depends on your personal interests.

OP, been thinking about this a bit more.

The way I see it, our responsibility as parents is to give our children an experience (however brief or fleeting) of as many things as possible so that they can find 'their thing'.

I didn't know that the 45 minutes of toddkler music would eventually lead to serious music-makeing and performance at jazz festivals. Nor did I know that skipping round the village hall pretending to be a fairy would lead DD into a full-blown 10-13 hours a week dancing obsession. I didn't know that football would go from a kick around in the local park, to the local professional club academy, back down to a weekly training session and game with a recreational side.

But nor did I know that swimming and rugby would fall by the wayside, that Scouting / Guiding would both be finished with by the age of 11, that DD's music wiould always take a back seat to her dance and that to date her art has tajken her nowhere, and that neither of them choose to sing. My 'job' - to expose them to different opportunities - has been done.

Excellent post by teacherwith2kids

I find it quite sad when parents of little ones plan out the leisure time of their dc when they are so little - it's so limiting!
My advice is to expose them to as much as you are able, encourage a 'give it a go' attitude (which, as we live as an adult for FAR longer than we live as a child - is a massively important thing IMO), and see what they are most interested in / where their skills lie.

TBH I don't think, as a parent, you end up with much choice about the route that children follow in this respect. I got DS playing the piano at 6. He took up the cornet at 8...at the same time he discovered rugby. A few months later he was asked to take part in a competitive swimming assessment.

Music has fallen by the wayside, swimming is now our life. Rugby may provide light relief come the winter. He has kept up the cornet but only with prodding.

Yes teacher, so true that we don't know where our children's interests may lie. I have a child with a dancing obsession too - something that I wouldn't ever have anticipated, but it has pushed aside most of the other activities that I had lined up for dd!

By the by, does dancing count as sport or music? Or is it both?

The whole concept of this thread seems to be 'I like sport more than music, so surely sport means more than music to everyone?' Weird.

I HATED sports at school but don't doubt its positives. I did lots of music for free - singing, recorder, violin - was never very good but I still adore listening to music even if my tastes are a bit naff :D

Don't assume what your child will like or be good at!

I am utterly non sporting (childhood asthmatic) and, when training as a teacher, had to be given special essons on 'how to teach dance when you yourself cannot demonstrate'. DH is unmusical to an extreme. We both, deliberately, set ut to expose our children to things we do not do / were not given the chance to do ourselves.

Jinsei - dancing is it sport or music? Umm both?

DD hasn't had a PE/Games lesson in about 3yrs but has better stamina & strength than a lot of the teenage athletes locally

teacherwith2kids that's a shame that you couldn't participate in sport.

Feminist - by the time I weas in seciondary, my asthma was largely under control, so I participated in all sport while I was there. However, the skills that others pick up in early childhood - in particular running action - was something I always struggled with and this was a problem in most sports!

I am a reasonably fit adult - fitter than many of my school friends - through cycling, swimming and hill walking: school PE is definitely not a 'gateway' to much adult fitness.

Dd does both, plays piano, guitar and sings in the choir. She was picked for the football and athletics team, as well as for the annual residential inter schools games competition. The only issue is trying to fit it all in.

teacher, I reckon my eldest gets more benefit from a daily 2 mile walk than school sports lessons. My youngest (who is asthmatic) does around 4 hours a week of organised sport so is fairly fit thank goodness.

Fitting in is an issue. My teenagers have a music scholarship to their school and in lots of orchestras, bands etc. One is also pretty good at sport and there will often be an away match when there is a concert rehearsal and he has to decide that week which is more important - way up how close they are to the concert, if he's doing a solo, how much the sports team needs him etc. Actually now I think about it that is a useful dilemma as all through our lives we have conflicting demands and have to judge what is important not to miss and what can be missed.

I certainly agree with the posters above saying expose children to lots of interesting hobbies - music, sport or whatever and they will pick what they like. When they were 5 I never imagined my daughters would spend literally 20 hours every weekend at riding stables and show jumping (as they did loads of music at home) yet that then happened - they had exposure to riding from a holiday club at their school and that was that. So just show them lots of things even if they are things you don't do and they can pick what suits them as they get older. Plenty of children enjoy their own company and like to be alone not doing anything and I see nothing wrong with that either.

Gosh. When I was growing up, the general consensus was that the really sporty kids were a bit thick and the orchestra and choir lot were the brain boxes. Occasionally there was an overlap (rugby mad violinists ?!) but they were rare.

Clearly times have changed if sport is seen to trump music.

I'm partial to both and will make sure my DS partakes eqy as he develops.

OP YABVVVFU

OP perhaps if you let your DS learn an instrument he will have a better circle of friends than you do?

It's important to us that our dc do one sporting and one musical activity (any more as they like, obviously), to give them a well-rounded range of experiences. Dc1 currently does tae kwondo and is learning the piano and trumpet, dc2 plays piano and both will be starting fencing after the holidays. Dc1 may choose to drop tae kwondo then but that is OK as he will still be doing one sport.

(I play piano and sing but am not sporty although I do a gymnastics/yoga class when I can, dh was very sporty when he was young and taught himself percussion. We met when we were in a band together. It's more natural to me to encourage the dc in music and for dh to push sports, so I suppose what parents are or were into will always have an influence. But I think we both feel part of our role is to give them as wide an experience as possible, in all sorts of ways)

I'm never sure why "health and fitness" are equated with team sports. IME, team sports had bugger all to do with health/fitness, and far more to do with bullying, coercion into "fitting in" and a kind of flocking. I only discovered I could be quite athletic with the aerobics craze of the 1980s.

And yes, in my world the sporty types tended to be a bit thick.

I logged in to reply to this actually.

I played badminton and swim, my sister played hockey and we BOTH play instruments. I have a clarinet and saxophone (the trombone was on loan - free - from band). My sister has a trumpet and a french horn and loans a tenor horn from band (she used to loan a woodwind instrument as well).

We've traveled the country for camps and competitions (marching competitions as well as music). My sister went to China.

My husband plays guitar and drums (owns a drum set and several guitars), one of his friends plays guitar (also owns several).

As someone else said above, I have excellent lung capacity, stamina and posture, because of band. Not to mention attention span, focus and self control.

The benefits of music have been well established. Just type "benefits of learning music" into a search engine and you will see.

That's not to say sport isn't good either, but you know all the benefits of that so there's no point in spelling that out.

I would definitely encourage learning a musical instrument as well as playing sport. Some of my most favourite memories from school are my music lessons and "jamming" with my teacher and singing in choir (and winning competitions of course :D)

Only read the start of the thread, but first of all, why should music and sport be mutually exclusive and secondly, do your child's own preferences not get a look in?

This is really interesting. I think I might have been a bit blinkered, I certainly don't want to stop my son doing anything he might want to, I suppose I just always felt that sport was a bit easier to get involved in and there were financial constraints around music - sounds like I was wrong if there is lots of school provision out there. Do schools tend to be either sporty or arts focused (my school was a sports college) or is it more mixed now?

Neither is more important. Your job as a parent is to spot your individual child's talents and encourage them.
I'm rubbish at both!