Boys and teasing

Two boys suiting up for hockey. One jumps up and asks the other-- hey!!! do you like singing? Isn't singing fun? Second boy says singing is stupid. First boy agrees. Singing is stupid. The parents, who are all there, do not say anything. The parents of the singer (and they must know this child thinks singing is fun) simply allow their child to confirm that singing is stupid.

And that is how it starts. That is why it is so difficult for boys to be artists in our society.

Or figure skaters.

I've seen hockey coaches making fun of the boys in figure skating (who by the way could kick most of their skaters' asses). I have seen many many skating directors push boys into hockey, whether or not the child has expressed an interest.  Even at the tot level the non-hockey classes at many rinks are overwhelmingly female. That's not an accident.

It's common to see figure skating teachers recommend hockey for kids who seem like they'd enjoy that. I have never heard of a hockey coach suggesting that a kid switch to figure skating, although it defies imagination that no hockey coach has ever encountered a child who might be a better figure skater than hockey skater. When I proposed this to a hockey coach once he told me that they encourage the kids who don't like hockey to switch to football or soccer. For real.

My son was a musician from infancy; fortunately so is his father; he also went to a school that very much honored artists whatever their gender so he never experienced the type of input that I observed at the rink between those two boys.

At the rink figure skating boys do not get anything but support within the figure skating community. But at home and in school they need positive reinforcement; the idiots who equate art with homosexuality (because that is frankly at the heart of it) need to be educated. Here are some suggestions, if you have a boy in figure skating:

Throw a skating birthday party for the boys
In addition to making skating seem like a normal thing to do, it also takes the mystery out of it. Let the hockey boys see how well your boy skates. Let the non-skaters see how hard this is. With older boys, a skating party has the additional benefit of demonstrating how popular your figure skating boy is with the girls, because God has not created an individual more popular with the girls than a high school boy who skates well. 

Bring the cub scouts
or other youth group. Figure skating is accepted for the sports pin. Many rinks partner with local girl scouts groups for their badge (girl scouts has an actual figure skating badge); see if you can get your rink to do a program like this for boy scouts, or set up the necessary documentation for regular classes. More about boy scouts and skating here. (Thanks Blue Eyed Cat for the link.)

Create classes for boys
Segregated classes, especially for middle and high school boys, has been a strategy for dance companies for decades.  Older boys don't want to look stupid to girls, and very few middle schoolers want to take a Pre-alpha class with 5 year olds. Boys also have very different pacing and learning styles than a lot of girls-- they need classes that move faster, that have less standing around, and that involve an unavoidable level of crashing into walls (just kidding, haha no I'm not). Further, by middle school, the girls are really good and the boys feel dumb stumbling around in front of them.  The thing is that athletic kids who start skating at 9 or 10 or even older very quickly catch up. You don't have to start skating at 4 to be doing doubles by high school. Get them into boys-only classes and by the time they're in high school they'll be all caught up.

Honor the boys
There are lots of pictures of hockey boys at every rink I've ever worked at. Yet even at rinks where there have been extremely successful skaters there are no pictures of boys in figure skates (we're talking Ben Agosto-Jason Brown level of success. But no pictures). This is partially a structural problem-- the hockey shrines are generally funded by booster clubs, which tend not to exist in figure skating. This is another one where parents of boys need to talk to rink management about making sure that there is an affirmative action plan, so to speak, that gets the boys recognized.

Our society needs to get over its conflating of artistic talent and homosexuality, which is what is at the heart of this. (And not to get cliche'd , but 'not that there's anything wrong with that'). Parents of figure skating boys are the front line in the battle.

What have you done to help promote boys' involvement in figure skating (and this goes for the parents of girls, too)?

Ain't Misbehavin'

As far as I'm concerned there are no bad kids, there are only mismatched (I won't say bad) teachers.

Any group of children, even one with no behavior issues, is hard to manage and control. As I mentioned in a previous post, a 16 to 1 student teacher ratio is not unheard of in a skating class, and there are no chairs to put them in so they stand still. On skates, you can move and a lot of kids really really want to.

Move.

Constantly.

Especially boys.

If you luck into a Learn to Skate level class with a lot of sweet girls who stand and listen when you speak, hooray. It does happen, but it's pretty rare.

More common are classes where about half to 2/3s are kids who can focus and stand still even on the ice. The rest of the kids will be what I call noodles (no muscle control), exploding brains (Must. Say. All. Words. Constantly.) and astronauts-- they're in outer space. You have to radio them to get their attention. "Earth to Suzy! Come in Suzy!"

I recently watched a coach explain at length how to create beautiful stroking using the entire blade and stretching then pointing the toe to create power, grace and line. It was a brilliant description of the art of stroking.

Delivered in monotone, with no eye contact, to a group of 8 year olds.

Who all wanted to just watch the tots next door playing some sort of boisterous and obviously engaging game.

I've seen sweet young coaches make kids stand still for 5 or 6 minutes while taking attendance. Five or six minutes is an eternity in a skating class, especially for a child with what I call the "exploding brain"-- they cannot stand still. Cannot. Not "will not." Not "don't want to." They Cannot Stand Still.

Don't make them. Let them move. Give them something to do that isn't "oka-ay. Let's do one foot glides. Oka-ay. Let's do that again. Now lets do swizzles! I'm not going to offer any specific advice for those of you struggling with this, we're just going to keep going back and forth until Xan claws her eyeballs out!"

Like the trope says, you don't teach the skating class you wish you had, you teach the skating class you get. If you get one with an astronaut, two noodles, an exploding brain and a kid with oppositional defiant disorder, you better have strategies ready to keep that class engaging for all of them.

Boys

I have it on the best authority-- the father of a 4 year old-- that figure skates make you gay.

This intelligence was offered to me when I suggested that the child, decked out in full hockey regalia for a tot skating class, would be better off in figure skates, as he couldn't stand up in the hockey skates (this is common with very young children, and everyone else). The dad flatly refused, citing the above problem. Of  course I laughed, but no. He wasn't joking. Figure skates at the age of four will fatally determine your sexual orientation later in life.

Who knew.

I just started at a new rink that takes gender segregation on the ice to a whole new level. In my five classes, there are more than 60 girls, and 6 boys.  Four of the boys are in hockey skates, and they are being steered out of the skating classes and into the hockey classes, sometimes against both their and their parents preference.

This switch is promoted as "he'll be happier in hockey," "he just wants to go fast," and of course the tried and true-- figure skating is for girls, and hockey is for boys.

Of course there are also several girls in the classes who would be happier in hockey and just want to go fast, but I don't see anyone suggesting that they try hockey skating.

Because they're girls.

My radical proposal is that going over to the other side be a test requirement at around the Gamma level, or its hockey correlation, the travel team tryouts. Want to take a Gamma class? You have to spend a month in hockey skates learning what that's like. Want to try out for a travel team? Same deal-- a month in figure skates. And then we need to let them choose, to not make the boys feel like they're less than male for choosing the "wrong" sport.

Furthermore, we seriously need to give our boys the ability to choose. I was talking about this with my musician son the other day. He went to a nurturing progressive school where his musical ability was very much honored and yet he apparently still felt pressure about doing a "girl" thing.

We are losing a lot of talent. The boys who go into hockey who ought to be in figure skates don't become fantastic hockey players. They just quit altogether. The girls have a little easier time of it, as a lot of figure skaters switch to hockey in their teens in order to qualify for college scholarships (and that's another whole essay). The beginner girls who ought to be in hockey wash out at the more precise demands of figure skating-- they don't knuckle down, they just quit.

Let the kids do what they do well. Their private parts have nothing to do with whether they skate with toe picks or shoulder pads.