Rethinking Education When Your Kid Might Go Pro in Sports

In our society, there's an ingrained belief that university education is the only path to success. But what if your child's passion lies in becoming a professional rock climber or excelling in a particular sport? So today, we're diving into a critical topic that demands our attention: how to properly educate our athletes to help them reach their highest potential.

As a parent, we must challenge the prevailing paradigm of non-traditional education invalidity and recognize that the prime years for nurturing an athlete's potential are during their teens and early 20s. Investing in their athletic training and development can offer a wealth of invaluable life lessons, discipline, and teamwork skills that extend far beyond traditional education.

Instead of mindlessly following the societal pressure to enroll our children in universities, let's reevaluate our priorities. Why should we pour exorbitant sums into an education that lacks direction or purpose when we could invest in their athletic pursuits? It's time to break free from the student loan cycle and consider the remarkable opportunities our current era presents. Today, we have the flexibility to pursue multiple careers and acquire knowledge at any stage of life. Let's empower our children to embrace their true passions and chart their own paths to success. Let's challenge societal norms, make informed choices, and unlock the incredible potential within our young athletes.

We challenge the default path that sends every teen to university, especially when a young climber’s prime performance window is now. We share why targeted training can deliver life skills, clarity, and future options without closing the door on education.

• peak athletic years and timing trade-offs
• funding training versus funding uncertain degrees
• life skills from sport including discipline and resilience
• navigating peer pressure and being an outlier
• setting goals, milestones and family guardrails
• flexible education paths and multiple careers
• building a support network and reviewing progress

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review, share this with your friends, and let's talk about this

About This Podcast

It takes a village to raise a pro athlete.

For the first time ever this channel takes you behind the athlete’s ‘unspoken’ road what it really takes to raise athletes.

What to expect when you listen:

Real, Raw Truth

Laughter

The Struggles & Successes

ABOUT YOUR HOST:

Marina Kuperman Villatoro, a mama who is on a mission to help her sons reach their athletic (rock climbing) goals and dreams.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Core Premise
• 0:17 Why Athletic Peaks Happen Early
• 1:14 Challenging The University Default
• 2:31 Life Skills From Serious Sport
• 3:16 Family Dialogue And Peer Pressure
• 4:20 A New Model For Education
• 4:43 Invitation For Feedback

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to Raising Rock Climbers Uncensored. This is your reality check and home for uncensored trusted advice. Today we're going to be talking about educating your athlete. This is probably going to be one of many episodes because this is such an important topic. So today I want to just start to talk about it, the general understanding, what it how to best train and educate your athlete for them to become their highest potential. I'm Marina, your host, mother of two aspiring rock climbers and wife to an extreme athlete. So let's talk about this. A lot of times you'll hear people, oh, university. And when you say, well, what if, you know, my kids want to become professional rock climbers? Oh, yeah, that's just a hobby. What if it's not? The thing is, this is what I am really, really trying to express, is that our kids, or we humans, have you know, different stages of our lives. Obviously, the younger you are, and in your teens and early 20s, that is when your strongest capabilities, your strongest potential, if you want to be a professional athlete, that's when you have to nurture it the most. Yet with this societal paradigm of universities, you have to go to university, doesn't it matter if you know what you want to do or if you don't want to do, you need to go. It's okay in the US, somehow, rationally, people are like, it's okay to spend$60,000 a year on an education that your kid doesn't even know what they're doing, versus, oh wait, my kid actually has commitment, abilities to be able to become, you know, really strong in this particular sport and invest probably a lot less, or even similarly, in that for now. It's not only about your education. I mean, what you guys get from the from the training and the discipline it takes to be an athlete, even if your child doesn't actually ever become pro or doesn't pursue a career in that kind of a sport direction, the discipline, the education, the teamwork, there's so much that is life for a life that is just these benefits that you don't get from your traditional, you know, universities or even schools. So you need to really consider that and wonder why is it okay to literally throw money out the window when your kid doesn't know what they want to do for a university or after high school, versus you know, investing in them for their sports and training. You have to think of this. There's these questions that you need to really ask and kind of open your mind to because otherwise you can just get stuck on that same, you know, hamster wheel, the student loans, all this horrible debt, and it's not even fulfilling, it's not even direction where you want to go. So you need to have that discussion with your family. Your child needs to really come, you know, it's a lot of thinking, considering. I see my own son who just graduated high school, and he's feeling a little bit lost because we, on the other hand, are completely committed to our kids' athletic training for climbing, completely 100% on board. And even he still has like, well, maybe I should go to school, you know, because he's feeling a little bit like a little bit out of the norm, right? Being an outlier is a little bit weird. And we're telling him, okay, well, what do you want to study? I'm not really sure. I'm like, well, I'm not gonna give you money to go just for the sake of going to university simply because you feel like that's what the next step should be. When here we are completely on board, you know, supporting your climbing direction, and he gets it and he's all over it. But it's this societal peer pressure kind of thing that can really disturb and just disguise like move people in the wrong direction. So stop that paradigm societal thinking and really just look at what's in front of you, right? Today we are in this amazing age when you could have multiple careers, you could get educated at any time of your life. It is not, you know, like what they did in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s, right? And I'm sure that even that 90s it was already starting to break. I mean, that system is pretty broken. And you have the power to do the right thing with your child. I'd love to hear your feedback. What is the conversation going on in your house for this? If you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review, share this with your friends, and let's talk about this.