Will you ban your children from certain sports

[CURIOUSMIND]

when they are playing instruments seriously?
I can see the reason is obvious.But when they are still young, deserve to do something else as well, will you ban them?
What do you do to avoid the risk?How about school PE?

As I've mellowed over th years (really, I have!) I think only the parent knows their child. Now while some may be slightly abusive (Tiger parents) I doubt giving up football to play the piano is going to damage a child. Sixty years ago my grandfather was down the mines at twelve and had never played rugby, cricket or swam. Yes that's extreme but our kids are very fortunate and have a pretty broad and balanced life.

if your child loves piano above all things and doesn't like team games you don't have to ban anything, as he won't want to do the things you are worried about anyway, surely?

Yes, sure.It's not a problem at all.There is different levels about the game: I don't like it at all, and I don't play at all , level 0;I don't like it that much, but I just play even I am not that good;I love it, I want to do it;I am big fan of football, I can't live without football, level 10.

My Ds1's football passion is about level 1 only.

Colleger - if you post anything on MN about your own DC you will soon find that there are a lot of people who know whats best for your child much better then you do. So it is much easier talking about an abstract generic child :) :) :) .

Pianomama,
Never mind. Doesn't matter.

:) I am not bitter :)

Lol!

They don't depend on me for which sports they play or which activities they do - or they wouldn't have played football and I wouldn't have had to watch it in the cold and rain. DS would have played the piano and not the drums left to me - and none of them would have rockclimbed!

I happen to know a lot of professional musicians and I've never heard of a specifically career-ending injury (whether through sports or anything else). Obviously you could break your neck playing rugby or horse riding but that's not a musician-specific risk.
Does anyone know of any actual cases of "he'll live but he'll never play the piano again" (as per 1940s melodrama)?

That being the case, I think I'd steer clear of contact sports if I were a professional who genuinely couldn't take the risk of being unable to work for a month or two, and I'd ask for dispensation for my child to skip contact sports in the run-up to (say) an audition for entry to a specialist music school that could not be put off or retaken in a month or two, but I wouldn't rule out contact sports otherwise.

I know plenty of choristers who are not allowed to do contact sports in case they get a black eye and that would not look good for an upcoming concert!

Katymac do you not worry that your DD lives sleeps and breathes dance to the exclusion of all else. what is going to happen if she has an accident that means she can't ever dance seriously again.

That's just dumb Colleger. I'm not saying you're lying, but makeup can cover up a black eye perfectly adequately (found this out the hard way when DS accidentally head butted me while bf ).

Well hopefully the 14 GCSEs she is doing, plus the instruments she plays and her creative writing will get her through; but yes to be frank it worries me

Plus he long-term goal is to teach (when she is really old, maybe 30 or 32 )

I certainly am not lying! Te he!

I know it's easy to say "bollocks" when you don't mean you're doubting the poster, just saying that the behaviour they describe is ridiculous, aand get misunderstood - hence I wanted to make that clear.

My friend's DS would agree with OP-he couldn't wash up because it wasn't good for his hands and he couldn't cook in case he burnt them!

Musicians develop more injuries from RSI than anything else!

Katymac- I'm glad to hear she has other interests too.I feel sorry for gymnastic kids I've known who get to the ripe old age of 18 or19 and dropped from their squads.they've built their whole life round gym, their friends are all at the gym they have compromised their education & have no social life outside gymnastics.

Exoticfruit,
agree with OP-he couldn't wash up because it wasn't good for his hands and he couldn't cook in case he burnt them!

Where is this from??????

He was a musician - he didn't want to risk injury- I thought that was the point of OP banning her DC from PE.

Exoticfruits,Read OP again, try harder.

You don't want your DC playing rugby is how I read it because he is playing instruments seriously. The DC I was talking about is now an adult and a professional musician. He could have burnt his fingers using the oven as a 12 yr old probably more likely than him having an accident in rugby when he wasn't an enthusiastic player. Just as well as games were compulsory at his school. He would have agreed with you if a it got him out of housework or b out of school games. It did neither.

Unless you HE I can't see how you can ban it anyway.

'You seem to have a picture of a great big domineering mother witha stick in her hand overshadowing supressed little child playing scales for hours while secretely wishing he was on a rugby field. It is not quite like that.'

No, and that is not quite the picture I was suggesting either. What I see is much more subtle. I see no stick and no outright coercion. I see a parent with her eyes on the prize and a malleable and talented child going along. I also see the potential for the parent not to recognise the whole child and focus in on the piano-player, and the possibility of a reality shock hitting everyone hard if child and parent are not adequately prepared for the possibility that all that time and effort might still fall short. I don't see Plan B. I don't see even lip service to the idea that the company of peers is important.

ExoticFruits you got it easy I had a trumpeter on my hands.

Colleger - thats more down to poor technique .

exoticfruit - are you simply jelous as we are sitting in a comfort of our warm living rooms listening to the piano while you getting soaking wet on the football pitch looking forward to washing your DC muddy socks? Is that the real issue? You are being a sporty mum has to put up with much more hardship . Still, makes us quite similar in other ways - ai? You wouldn't see me dead anywhere near a football match but I am lucky that none of my many DC were ever interested - musical ones or not.
Just because you think you are doing a good job with your lot doesn't automatically makes someone like us bad (well, OP and myself I guess, colleger seems to keep swinging from side to side, but her DC is a wind player by the sound of things , they generally tend to be tougher ).