Basketball...

My son has always been active.  He will go out into the yard, any time of year, including the dead of winter, and just run and run and run.  Usually, he pretends he's playing football or baseball.

I have been leery about letting him fantasize about baseball.  The reason being that he grabs something that's not quite a baseball bat and does something that's not quite a baseball swing.  I'm afraid that this might mess up his actual baseball swing. 

I usually bite my tongue, though, and let him play.  He does the same thing with a football, but I don't see how that hurts anything at all.

I have tried to steer him into doing this sort of thing with a basketball, though.  Basketball is one of the few sports where just goofing around by yourself can actually improve your game.  He never quite took to it until just this year.

Pretty much every day, if he sees basketball, he wants to go out and play it.  I moved the hoop to behind his mom's house so he can shoot any time he wants.  If I weren't broke right now, I'd go out and get another hoop for the warehouse, so he'd have a place to shoot if it's raining.  Also, next year when the weather turns bad again, he'll need an indoor hoop.  The current one is one of those portables where you fill the base up with water.  They're not terribly expensive, but at a few hundred bucks, it's not like the cost is inconsequential.  They do wear out after a while, though.  We've already broken one of them and this one is bent out of shape from falling over before I could completely fill the base with water. 

Glad to see him do it.  He loves basketball, but he's going to have to work as hard at basketball as he does at baseball if he ever hopes to play in middle school and beyond.