Everyone hopes their kids to be the next big thing, but fail to draw the line as to where to stop pushing.  In earlier discussion, there was great debate on Amy Chua’s tiger mother parental teaching.  Sure, most Asians excel in academics, arts and sports because their parents push them to be the best in everything and in most cases they do surpass their peers.  But when should a parent stop trying to push greatness out of their child?  Sometimes, although as a parent it is not something that we would want to admit, your child is just a complete failure and cannot become great or even decent due to their low learning curve and lack of motor skills.  With the popularity of snowboarding, every parent wants their kid to be the next Shaun White and are pushing their kids to start early and to hit it hard without regard to the child’s safety.  It’s great that parents are starting their kids young but only if the child wants to because you cannot force someone to like something that they do not have a passion for.  We have parents taking their kids out as young as 16 months, but if the child enjoys it then kudos to the child and parent for finding something in common to do together.  However, there are the parents that ruin the fun for the child by pushing them and yelling at them for not being good enough like the mother who yelled at her young daughter who was scared to go down the steep mogul trail.  The mother didn’t care for her safety but angrily told her to just go down.  There’s a difference between pushing someone with no talent to be great versus pushing someone with talent, while it’s another thing to be talented but not have the passion to follow through.  Eitherway, you cannot force your passion onto someone else because your child will not enjoy it anymore, if they did at all.  Roman, like many of other kids that I know, his parents sent him to school as early as 2 year old at a cost of 2k a month plus karate, dance, and singing classes because he enjoys it.  If the child enjoys it then encourage and support your child even if they suck horribly because not everyone can be great whether they are born with it or trained.

It was very unfortunate that I was not able to attend the Jib for Japan charity event, but it was still deemed a success and were able to raise over $10,000 in relief funds.  Japanese riders came out to Bear including Olympian Kazu from Japan.  It may not seem much since Japan’s recovery will take more than that amount to bring the country back to it’s original state, but every little dollar counts.  It is unfortunate to hear Japan was hit by another earthquake with a magnitude of 7.4 and another tsunami warning has been issued.  Luckily no one has been reported dead so there’s no need to add to the 25,000 body count from the first tsunami.  Japan just can’t catch a break, but luckily the people have not lost their senses and resorted to looting unlike in the US.  Whenever something goes wrong, you loot.  Whenever something goes right, you loot.  It was pretty interesting to read an article as to one of the reasons why the Japanese are so orderly was due to the yakuzas.  Despite being thugs and gangsters, the yakuzas hates the act of stealing so they make sure the people do not steal and the reason for that is because the syndicate cannot profit if there is chaos amongst the people.  You may hate the yakuzas for dealing with drugs and prostitution, but without them, the people would be disgraceful as Americans.