alan_atwood said:Where are the parents? Good question; I don't see many of them
anymore. There's lot of people masquerating as parents, but people
that actually raise their children in a responsible manner are few and
far between nowadays.
I like your style Alan - hope you hang around here.
Quoted message said:Any person with a head on their shoulders would
tell their kids at a very early age that drugs are bad, and reinforce
that fact if the child is experimenting with them. But too many
"parents" nowadays depend on others (i.e. day care and baby sitters)
to raise their kids while they continue their professional careers or
do anything else that requires them to be away from the family. Think
a nanny's going to tell the kid not to take drugs; yeah right.
When I was racing with my daughters one thing that struck me was that
there were parents (well, relatives) who were teaching their kids how
to use dope. And plenty of others who were berating 14 year olds
because they couldn't win the sprint!
Quoted message said:AC is right; kids should do whatever they want and have fun -- that's
the way I handled it when I had a significant amount of junior bicycle
racers a number of years ago. Some of them aren't racing anymore,
others have gone to world championships -- but they all enjoyed their
experiences and they all know that winning isn't everything. And for
the majority of them I didn't have to teach them that; their parents
did that job already, as they should have.
It's hardest of all to keep girls interested in racing. Boys look up
to other boys who are athletes but girls ostracize athletic girls
quite a bit. That requires parents to stay on top of the situation
because kids are likely to take performance enhancing drugs but for
several different reasons.