I don’t like baseball. In fact, I hate baseball.

So when my son DJ swore off baseball several years ago, I was thrilled. It’s not like DJ is one of those dreaded “sedentary” kids. It’s just that he’s into more non-traditional stuff like mixed martial arts and skateboarding.

I’m not quite free of baseball, though. My 11 year-old nephew, Daniel, plays in the sorts of leagues that you have to try out for. His sports schedule stretches through the spring and picks back up in fall.

Baseball talk dominates family get-togethers and the grandparents regularly trek over to watch Daniel’s games. My brother – Daniel’s dad – even cajoles me to come watch a few of Daniel’s games (and he knows how much I despise the sport).

On the other hand, no one feels compelled to watch DJ skateboarding or doing martial arts. News of his achievement is… well, not exactly newsworthy.

“What is it?” I recently complained to my husband. “Is it the cute uniforms? The bleachers? Why does baseball matter so much?”

Bitterness aside, I think I realize one big reason – because organized activities look more legitimate in grown-up eyes.

Youth baseball is organized by adults, paid for by adults, and led by adult coaches and referees. Games are hosted by adults, attended primarily by adults. It makes me think of one of Alissa Quart’s insight in her book Hothouse Kids, that children’s competitions are held as much for the benefit of adults as for kids.

Doubt my thinking? Consider this: how many of those kids on the field have ever played a pick-up game of baseball? How many would be playing baseball if it depended solely on the kids’ own motivation, without any adult involvement or rewards?

That’s ludicrous, you’re probably thinking.

Then go check out a skatepark. Nary a coach to be found. Parents often read or talk on their phones nearby – no aggressive cheering/jeering here (at least in my experience). The kids work hard, they hustle as much as any baseball player I’ve seen, without some beefy coach barking at their heels. Many kids depend on the random kindness of their parents to drive them to the park. After all, there are no scheduled practices that you don’t dare miss, lest you face sanctions for not being “serious” enough. And there’s no snacks or celebratory ice cream cones unless mom is feeling extra generous.

Maybe it’s a good thing that adults haven’t taken over youth sports like skateboarding. On the other hand, I often wish that these non-traditional sports would get more respect, because that’s what drives funding for facilities and programs. And maybe, if non-traditional sports were perceived to be as interesting and legit as baseball, my family might show up to watch DJ once in a while.

Is your kid into non-traditional sports? To paraphrase Rodney Dangerfield, do you feel like non-traditional sports “don’t get no respect?”

Newsweek’s March 30th issue includes an article that gave me pause.  “Generation Diva: How Our Obsession with Beauty is Changing Our Kids” looks at the trend toward younger and younger girls doing spa days, skin treatments and even plastic surgery.

The article begins with a provocative account of a mom applying self-tanner to a 2 year-old beauty pageant contestant. “Marleigh is one of many pageant girls on the show, egged on by obsessive mothers who train their tots to strut and swagger, flip their hair and pout their lips,” the writer explains, before drawing a parallel to a Brooklyn spa specializing in the tween and younger crowd.  Then the writer drops this bomb:

Sounds extreme? Maybe. But this, my friends, is the new normal: a generation that primps and dyes and pulls and shapes, younger and with more vigor. Girls today are salon vets before they enter elementary school. Forget having mom trim your bangs, fourth graders are in the market for lush $50 haircuts; by the time they hit high school, $150 highlights are standard. Five-year-olds have spa days and pedicure parties. And instead of shaving their legs the old-fashioned way—with a 99-cent drugstore razor—teens get laser hair removal, the most common cosmetic procedure of that age group. If these trends continue, by the time your tween hits the Botox years, she’ll have spent thousands on the beauty treatments once reserved for the “Beverly Hills, 90210″ set, not junior highs in Madison, Wis.

I found this picture of the new “normal” a bit hard to swallow, and decided to ask my own in-house 11 year-old experts–my son and nephew. They attend very different schools with different demographics, yet both of them could name only one girl they knew who fit Newsweek’s description of “normal.” In fact, when I read the paragraph above to my nephew, he replied “bullshit” without missing a beat. Cursing is normal for 11 year-old boys, as far as I can tell.

On the other hand, there are spas for kids here in the Pacific NW and those beauty-obsessed reality shows litter the TV landscape everywhere, so somebody must be buying into the trend.

(And I won’t touch the seeming contradiction that even as kids are supposedly becoming more image-obsessed, they are simultaneously becoming fatter and more sedentary, if we are to believe the medical experts.)

But what happens when ordinary becomes ugly, and perfect is normal? And are we, as parents, to blame? Newsweek certainly suggests that in the title, “How Our Obsession… is Changing Our Kids” (emphasis mine).

What is an “ordinary kid?” I’ve been kicking that question around as I build this blog.

After all, an ordinary kid in rural Oklahoma isn’t going to be the same as an ordinary kid in lower Manhattan. I ran headfirst into that reality many years ago, when I transitioned from my small-town childhood to a prestigious private college filled with privileged East Coast kids.

I struggle with it today, too, as a mom. From technological changes to the global challenges, our kids inhabit a very different environment, even if they’re playing in the same streets and attending the same schools that we once did.  Sometimes I wonder how much childhood itself has changed in the past 20 years.

However, when I talk about ordinary kids, I imagine these defining characteristics:

• ordinary kids are given freedom to play and explore on their own
• they can deal with boredom
• they are nurtured as children, not managed like mini-employees
• they are valued as individuals, not investments
• they are not always building their “resumes”
• they are allowed to make mistakes and learn from them
• they have ample free time for friends
• their out-of-school activities are mostly determined by their own interests
• they get to choose whether to do something for fun or for competition
• they do not feel like an absolute failure if they are not the “best”

Do you agree with my list? What would you add?

I’m still smarting from a meeting yesterday with my son’s fifth grade teacher. I always walk out of these wanting to throw up my hands and scream, “I give up!”

Despite my master’s degree and above-average knowledge of current educational theories, despite my research background that demands evidence to back any opinion, and despite recent test results by a highly-regarded school psychologist that say–guess what–my kid is solidly average, not below, not above… despite all of this, dealing with a pissed-off teacher can quickly reduce me to feeling like a stupid mom with a stupid kid.

I should have expected it. I was there to discuss my concerns about student behavior more fit for Lord of the Flies than school. No wonder, then, that the teacher brought his own ammunition. My son’s solid academic progress, as previously reported by the teacher, had suddenly disintegrated into a litany of concerns and deficiencies. If the other kids were out-of-control hoodlums, well then my son would be the kid in the corner with the dunce cap on. Or so the conversation seemed to go.

After the meeting, my son caught me in the hallway. He was happy that I met with the teacher to talk about bullying and other social problems among his classmates.

“How did it go?” he asked.

“Fine,” I replied with a brave smile.

But I’m really not so sure that’s true.

Alec Greven is the latest pint-sized author to hit the book circuit, with his book How to Talk to Girls, published by HarperCollins.

Forget girls – Alec, why dontcha tell us adults the secret to stumbling into a major book deal?

I’m joking, of course. After reading more about Greven on the Today show website, it sounds like he’s one of those kids whose fame is the consequence of lucky coincidence, not overbearing, starstruck parents.

The same childhood innocence that makes How to Talk to Girls such a charmer, though, is probably put most at risk by Greven’s success. He’s doing the TV show circuit. The Today show article observes Greven “sitting straight up on the sofa in Studio 1A and speaking like a practiced performer.” Elsewhere, on the NY Post online, readers sometimes snarkily debate the authenticity of the book and appropriateness of the topic, with comments like the two below:

macrobsd wrote:
Dont be nieve people. I wonder what genius of a parent thought of the idea, “hey I am going to write a book about how to pick up women and say a 9 year old kid wrote it so that it gets more publicity.” Think about it….

benz981 wrote:
I find the entire notion of a 9 year-old being encouraged to concern himself with adult-oriented behaviors like getting dates, dressing to get noticed by girls, etc. just another symptom of the blurring of the lines between age-appropriate and inappropriate behavior. Young children should not be acting like sexualized adults… and yet adults are viewing this as salacious fodder for their amusement. Disgusting.

Perhaps Greven is too busy to hear the criticism. After all, he’s churning out a whole series of How to Talk to… books, according to his author page on HarperCollins site.

There’s all sorts of criticism leveled at the trend toward young “pro” athletes: they are too immature to handle the high pressure and public scrutiny, as well as the sense that they bring down the overall quality of the sport.

Do you think these same criticisms apply when it comes to kids like Alec Greven and the arts?