| I'm an Olympics junkie. My favorite sport in the summer Olympics is gymnastics. It's an incredibly difficult and dangerous sport, but really beautiful when done well. The Chinese are fielding the best gymnastics team this time around. But I saw something that really got my attention as a parent. We've all seen that sports programs in communist countries are state run. And children who are especially talented often get moved from their hometown to a facility where they can have the best training. The other night it was mentioned that the leader of the Chinese Womens team had been removed from her parents' home when she was four years old so that she could get the best training. She can only go home to see her parents once a year. Sometime when she was older she had called home and told her mother that she wanted to come home and her mother told her no. Now I realize that we are dealing with many things that are different from things in the US, culture, economics, etc. Her family may be very poor, who knows? I do know that it's not only very prestigious to have an Olympic athlete in the family but that the family also receives some kind of stipend... |
