I spent my morning (a really, really early part of it) sitting in an ice arena being what I thought I'd never be - an arena parent. Banana had a ringette game at 8:30 this morning. This equates to being there at 8 am to suit up, which means leaving the house at 7:15 in order to find this arena I've never been to, which means waking up at 6:45 am on a weekend (! ! !) in order to have a shower and brush my teeth so I can stand myself.

As I was sitting in the stands, one of the fellow parents spoke proudly for about fifteen minutes on how he is teaching his eight-year-old daughter to be more aggressive and competitive.

Yikes. Couldn't we just let our kids play without pressure to win? Banana enjoys being part of a team and her skating and stick-handling skills are improving at a fantastic rate. This, I find, is much more worthy of boasts than some kid being trained to want to beat other kids.