There are relatively few Jewish sportsmen and women of global fame. But dare try telling a Jewish mother that their little bubbele won’t make it as an Olympic gymnast.
I recall a classroom debate years ago in which a teenager named Rafi insisted that anyone could achieve anything in life if they put in enough work. I said some targets are unrealistic and cited my belief that no matter how well he trained, Rafi could not become the world’s best ballet dancer.
Not that he had ever tried his hand (or feet) at ballet dancing, Rafi insisted that if he tried hard enough, he could be a ballet world-beater. (Rafi ended up joining a combat unit in the IDF.)
While we produce very few sportspeople of global repute, we are world-beaters at signing up our children for extra-curricular activities. Some out of necessity, for example working parents who need wrap-around care and after-school clubs for their children. But many are out of choice.
Many a parent is criss-crossing north-west London or elsewher to take their future Olympian child one evening to netball, the next night to trampolining, football, swimming (the Talmud does teach that a parent has an obligation to make sure a child learns to swim) and any one of martial arts, art, music, drama, fencing et al.
Gone are the days when after school you came home, did your homework, ate supper and maybe once a week had football training. I always thought I’d be spared this extra-curricular craving until one of my daughters cornered me, insisting that she wanted to simultaneously sign up for an after-school art class and an acting course.
The sages underline that choices do not exist in a vacuum – every decision needs to be examined for knock-on effects. In the case of extra-curricular clubs, there’s the cost, the travel, the rotas, the headspace.
And sometimes there are other considerations to ponder. Is this coming at the expense of quality family time? Am I overburdening my child? Is there an element of “everyone is doing it” peer pressure to join the clubs that I’m encouraging? Are the children demanding and the parent giving in, or is the parent making a decision?
I’ve seen parents sign up their children to clubs purely because the parents wanted to do it when they were young (“I never made the netball team, I want you to do it!”).
In my case, I was also weighing up any potential sibling jealousy regarding which children can go to which clubs. If budget is limited, there is an opportunity for a conversation with a child about not being able to attend every club under the sun.
Then there’s an important question to ask: am I putting my child into a discipline theuy are not going to excel at? It’s important to teach resilience and a child should not feel like they have to excel at everything, but do I want to put them into an environment in which they feel that they can’t succeed?
Ultimately, how many skills will they learn at these clubs that will be of use in later life? I mean both soft and hard skills – the particular discipline in question but also other areas like teamwork, social skills, work ethic. If lots, then great; if very few, then perhaps choices need to be revisited.
My daughter has a talent for art, so I felt that art should be pursued but not acting – we had an adult discussion with the other children about their potential clubs.
Ultimately, as reflected in the Hebrew word chinuch, the goal of parenting is not to produce good children, it is to nurture great future-adults. In selecting our extra-curricular activities do we always have this goal in mind?
Rabbi Fine is director of education at Seed. His new book on practical Jewish philosophy, Building Blocks, is available now
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