My son loves sports. He likes to play anything with a ball. If weather permit, he plays sports outside until it is dark. Sports are a very important part of kid’s life in US. In the school, the most popular boy isn’t the math whiz, but the sports athletes.My son’s favorite sports so far are tennis, soccer and golf. He takes tennis group lesson once a week and plays at our community tennis court quite often. He also plays soccer in the U6 team once a week. For golf, he pretty much learnt how to swing by himself by watching the golf DVD I bought for him. No one in the family plays golf except him. I usually take him to the golf driving range during the weekend and let him hit one or two buckets of balls. He is doing pretty well in all these sports for his age.
It is a good thing that my son loves sports, but it also means we need to have time and money to support him. It starts cheap with group lesson, usually one instructor teaches 5 to 6 kids, costs about $10 to $20 per hour depends on the sports. If you get really serious about any sports, the cost adds up really quickly. A friend’s daughter is serious about figure skating. There are private coaching cost (really high at her level), skating ring cost, travelling cost for competition, costume costs (couple hundred dollars for one costume) and tutoring cost(because her training, she missed the regular school time). If it turns out she is not good enough to move any further, then all these money are wasted. This is totally different from China. In US, it is all parents’ money. Even if the kid has the best talent, if the parents do not have enough money to support it, the talent most likely will be wasted.
Several photos of my son playing different sports.
Soccer
Tennis
golf
Skating
basketball
ski
Baseball
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