I like to keep up with the news on a day-to-day basis here. Some things are extremely over-written about: See articles on Economy, Elections, California Wildfires. And then there are some that are extremely wild...literally: See article on coyote found in Sears in Lower Nazareth, Pennsylvania...he would make a great mascot.
However, the latest news in my New York Times message box has revolved around the World News of: Athens, The Entertainment of: Twilight, and the Science News of: DNA testing to determine what sport your kid will be good at. My previous two posts were about the first two mentioned stories. Here is my post on DNA testing....
Freedom of choice. I always loved having this right in my family when I grew up. I love having the right to choose which party I will vote for, and the right to choose which vegetables I want to eat, but more than anything I have appreciated my right to choose which sports I want to play. Maybe I have been lucky to have parents who gave me that choice, or maybe I am just lucky that there was never a DNA test when I was little to tell me which sport that I should be enrolled in because it would be the one that I would excel in.
After reading the recent New York Times article, “Born to Run? Little Ones Get Test for Sports Gene,” I couldn’t help but laugh. Had my parents been able to have me tested to find out if I would be good at a certain sport or any sports for that matter, I think the test might have told them “couch potato.” I am not your ideal athlete. I am not petite, I don’t have the quickest feet, and my numbers during athletics testing never appear high. You see numbers mean nothing to me. If you put me in a game I have cat-like reflexes, I can get down the field hockey field quickly, I can read passes and see things develop, and I can step-up my game 110%. Maybe it is adrenaline or maybe it is skill, but nothing can test your ability like a real game, and that includes DNA testing.
It is one thing to test for a disease that may be treated; it’s another hedge your child’s sporting bet. It also raises another subject that has already been a concern: the elitism of contemporary youth sports. Not everyone will be able to afford such a test. Can you imagine the kids on the court mocking the others, “My test was basketball positive, yours wasn’t.” or “I got tested soccer positive, and you couldn’t even get a test…you suck.”
And as for the parents reactions. I can see the latest headlines now: “Father drowns son after DNA test.” The story to follow would read something like this: “On Monday afternoon, little Tommy was running around his backyard playing stickball with the neighbors. By Wednesday morning, Tommy was found in the river. On Tuesday, Tommy’s father, Tom Sr. brought his boy to the doctor because he wanted to make sure his son would be the football player that he had been in high school. The DNA test came back saying the exact opposite. The DNA test actually read: sorry Tom Sr. your son will be in the Nutcracker ballet one day. This drove Tom Sr. to throw little Tommy in the river.”
Then there is the idea of choice. Say little Tommy goes and gets his DNA test done and it tells Tom Sr. that his son will be a football star. Then Tom Sr. goes home and says to his son, “NO MORE STICKBALL,” tapes a football to his hands, and says you run back and forth across the yard with this, eight hours a day, because you are going to be a running back for the Packers one day. Little Tommy becomes tall Tommy who would be much better fitted for basketball but is sitting on the bench of the junior varsity football team because his dad never let him have the choice. Poor Tommy.
Of course this is an extreme case. I would hope no father would be mad enough to throw his son in the river, and I would hope that no father would tape a football to his son’s hands to a football (how would he eat, write, or read anyway?) But I think that DNA testing to determine what sport your kid will be best at is better off left undone. What if Michael Phelps parents had brought him to the doctor and they told him that he would be the fastest man alive, and the parents took that as if he would be the fastest track runner—not swimmer. Then we wouldn’t have our world record holder from the 2008 Olympics!
A mentor of mine told me she was very lucky to have the parents she did, because they let her choose her hobby of choice. She could have chosen finger painting if she wanted, but she chose field hockey. It was up to her to figure out what she was best at and do it, and she found that thing and she was great at it.
A friend of mine’s little brother is enrolled in every sport there is, and now his problem is that he doesn’t know which sport he will ever pick at the high school level because he just likes them all too much!
Last, a friend of mine was a natural swimmer, a state champion as a freshman, but will be going on to play field hockey at a Division 1 school instead of swimming because it is what she loves. And no DNA test can read what you will love.
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