Olympic Games and Raising Children: Daily Feats of Inhuman Skill

Though success at the Olympics is more easily measured than success in parenting, the two goals stem from the same ideals.

It is impossible to miss the direction network programming and retail marketing usually point us in:  spend more, care less. This message is not lost on younger audiences.  The shift in national focus during the Olympic Games, however, is infectious.  Untold amounts of time, money and energy are dedicated to celebrating the value of hard work, sacrifice and loyalty to a team or goal.  Olympic athletes are regaled by millions of supporters as heroes and symbols of national pride. In the overall scheme of the daily media onslaught of information and advertising, it is a rare event when we are asked to collectively look outside ourselves and toward a larger, national endeavor as we support the swimmers, archers and other athletes wrapped in the American flag.

A swimmer herself, I can see the effect on my daughter of watching the games.  I don’t ordinarily encourage her to camp out in front of the boob-tube.  As a parent, I daily consider the ramifications of exposing her to the mentality prevalent in the media that encourages image over self-awareness, passion and profligacy over pathos, judgement over judiciousness.  As a lawyer, I also consider whether or how those “values” will play a role in the society my daughter will become a member of as she reaches adulthood.  Those values underlie the legislation adopted and verdicts rendered that shape her culture and environment.  They shape the world’s expectations of her, and vice versa.

When my child, along with millions of her peers, begins school this Fall, there will be new opportunities, new friends, faces, and experiences; they will coincide with new dangers, risks, failures, and more distractions (primarily of the Apple-manufactured, electronic nature) than I ever had to deal with at her age.  The timing of the London Olympic Games couldn’t be more ideal for parents like me who are contending with these hurdles, and trying to overcome them with personal sacrifice, prudence and hard work. The Olympics provides a clear illustration for parents, school-aged children and young adults, alike, of the results hard work and commitment create. It can help us shape our expectations of the coming year and what we should put in to and get out of it.  Though we shouldn’t expect something as concrete as a precious-metal medal or international adulation for our efforts, a stellar report card and some little plastic trophies for the mantel are just as, if not more, valuable in the lives of our children.