Monday, March 15, 2010

The Benefits in Life Due to Skateboarding


When you think of skateboarding, what are your feeling about the sport? To skaters, it is a way to express themselves and is an activity to do for a source of entertainment. Skateboarding can teach you important lessons in life, and it is seen as a positive activity. To many parents, however, the views on skateboarding are negative. Most of the skating that is advertised on TV today gives the idea of mindless teens that are involved with drugs and causing trouble within the community. Many people believe skating will lead to negative behavior, but these people have not experienced or learned about the positive aspects of skating.

In her blog post, “Better Parenting Through Skating,” Karen Rennie explains various reasons as to why she believes skateboarding has made her son a better person. Having people constantly question her thoughts on allowing her son to skateboard, Rennie uses this blog to explain her reasons. Karen and her husband also skateboard, so they use skateboarding as a source of togetherness. The skating keeps the family together and allows them to spend time together.

Rennie says she is writing as a response to the many people who disagree with skateboarding. She explains how people believe her son will be experiencing bad habits, such as foul language and getting into trouble, but she completely disagrees with the suggestions. Many people believe skaters are a problem in the community; these people believe skaters are rebellious teens that enjoy causing crimes. I personally believe the shows you see on MTV such as “Viva La Bam” and “Jackass” has created many negative feeling towards skateboarding, due to the reckless behavior. These shows portray skateboarding in a bad way, so people often overlook what young kids can learn from the sport.

I chose to respond to this blog because Rennie describes how skateboarding has taught her son some very important lessons about life. In previous posts from Rennie, she describes how kids can learn valuable lessons in life from skating. One lesson in particular is to work hard and to never give up.

Skateboarding is not a simple sport; it takes time for your skills to progress. You will fall, but you must get up and try again. If at first you don’t succeed, you will then realize what not to do the next time. Through my experiences, I can agree with her ideas because when I started skating, just riding down a hill was difficult. There were several times when I felt I didn’t want to skate anymore, but I kept practicing and got better. Skateboarding teaches you that the key to success is to work hard and never give up.

Rennie explains how her friends feel skating will introduce her son to irresponsible kids by leaving him at the skate park alone. Being a skater herself, Rennie knows that this is not always true. When I go to the skate park, I tend to notice the respect the young kids get when they show up. Just like in Rennie’s post, the young kids such as her son get just as much respect as anyone else.

The skate park is a very friendly community; when someone is trying a trick, the others encourage you to land it. Rennie states, “When Chris did finally land a trick he had attempted for days, the other skaters would cheer-not because he was doing something no one else could do-but because he achieved a personal best.” As long as you don’t come to the skate park with a bad attitude and behavior such as yelling at others and telling them to get out of your way, you will receive the amount of respect you deserve.

These valuable lessons in Rennie’s post portray the positive aspects of skateboarding. People such as Rennie’s friends, may disagree with the idea of skateboarding, but many times it’s due to what they see on TV. Rennie’s post is a good example of what kids can learn from the sport, and provides a better idea of skateboarding in general.

Rennie knows that many parents often look down on skating, and do not want their kids to be involved with the sport. These people overlook or do not understand how the positive aspects of skating can leave a positive impact on their child’s life. Looking deeper into skateboarding, you can see that the positive aspects outweigh the negatives. I believe that over my several years of skating, I have learned some profitable lessons of life that I know will help me in the future.
                                                                 The Rennie Family

3 comments:

  1. I have to agree with you on the statement that most people look at accuse skateboarders of being bad. They say thing like you don’t want to get mixed up with that kind of crowd and stuff, but really most skaters are nice. I had three friends in high school who were skateboarders, one who actually almost had all A’s for one of his grade cards. Skate boarding is just like any other sport and people need to start treating it like one. Yeah not every person in the sport is going to be a good role model, and that goes for people in other sports as well. So you just have to teach people who’s a good role model and who isn’t.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete