The plans of teenagers

For the last two years, my son has talked about playing tennis in high school, and ultimately in college. He's not a great player, but he is pretty good. Last year we hooked him up with a pretty good tennis program. One that challenged him, but wasn't so expensive that we were forced into eating pasta for every meal. It was still a pretty big financial commitment, and it meant that we had to drive him 30 minutes (each way) every Sunday for his 90 minute tennis clinic. However, we knew that he liked it and that he was committed to playing the game.

Yesterday, on the way home from tennis, he told me that it really wasn't that much fun any more and that he didn't really want to play tennis for his high school (now that he was actually in high school). I was stunned into silence. Part of me thinks that he realizes that he'll never really be 'great', so why bother. Part of me thinks that he knows that playing on the high school team will involve huge time sacrifices. He recently pointed out that the school team had two or three matches every week for the ten to twelve weeks of the spring season that the sport runs. We then pointed out that there was no way, with matches and practices that he could have a job; however, we said that he could make plenty of cash over the summer so it shouldn't be a big deal.

I guess I should expect that his interests are going to shift. To me it may seem 'out of the blue', but I'm sure that he spends some time considering the implications.

All through elementary school, he played guitar. He was pretty good, but he grew to hate the regimen of practices. Finally, in sixth grade my husband and I got tired of nagging him about the practicing, so we let him stop taking guitar lessons. A few times in the last couple of years, he's picked the instrument up again and diddled around with it. He's currently preparing for a performance at his church youth group's annual coffee house in February. It was totally his idea. Maybe he'll start playing the guitar for fun now. That would be great.

His latest interest is actually academic. His school runs this program called "The Academy of Finance" for students interested in careers in the financial industry. K is fascinated by the machinations of money and the stock market. The last few years he has done really well in social studies, and is highly interested in the democratic process. (He's big into Obama, while his parents currently favor Clinton ... and we have seriously discussed the ins and outs of both candidates.)

"The Acadmey of Finance" means taking a lot of accounting and economics classes, which doesn't seem to bother him (at this point). But, he pointed out that it can also lead to a paid internship between Junior and Senior years in high school, and potentially to scholarship money for college.

It seems like he's thinking about this stuff seriously. I know I should encourage him, but that I should not invest any strong hopes in any of his plans. They are HIS plans, and they can and WILL change. No doubt.