SUZANNE MATSON begins her Oct. 31 op-ed, “For parents, gridiron isn’t just fun and games,’’ with a sarcastic comment about parents coddling children’s brains “to lift their offspring’s IQ into the Ivy range.’’ Perhaps organizing an entire family’s August so that one 8-year-old can play a game (football is a game, isn’t it?) eight hours each week is coddling of an even more dangerous sort than the academic enrichment Matson smugly cites.
Matson’s son’s description of football as the only thing in his life “that has meaning’’ suggests that Matson has allowed her son’s enthusiasm for one activity to deprive him of developing other interests and maybe of any sense that other family members have interests, needs, and desires that are as important as his desire to play football.
Allowing a young child’s hobby to dictate a family’s schedule and sense of what is meaningful is dangerous and shortsighted coddling indeed.
Helene Simon
Sudbury 
