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While watching the men’s gymnastics all-around with two fantastic Ukrainian athletes, I commented to my son that it must be strange for these young men because everyone else their age is fighting. He rightly replied that it must be hard for *all* the Ukrainian athletes, not just the men. So we started talking about that war specifically, and war in general, and trying to live “normally” when you fear for your family, friends, home…. heavy stuff. Got us looking at conflicts going on in different parts of the world right now— also a lesson in humility for all of us living in safety and privilege.

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I love this. Thanks for sharing.

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I've been watching the Opening Ceremony over the course of several days with my 5 y.o. We find the countries on the globe and talk about what language they speak. He's very excited for all the countries that speak Spanish because he's in a Spanish immersion program.

We've also talked about the different performances and why they are there -- who was Marie Antoinette, what is a drag queen, etc. We've watched lots of the events as well.

I loved the Olympics as a kid and having a kid has given me the opportunity to love them again without cynicism for the IOC.

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Oh yes, the performances are such good opportunities for conversations too!!! Good idea!

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Mine is only 4, but we watched men’s gymnastics together. We used the falls to talk about how everyone falls, you just have to get back up and try again. I also pointed out how team USA were always cheering for their teammates while they were up.

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Oh, I love the idea of talking about falls that way! Need to do that with my kid. Last month we were playing mini golf and he was initially very frustrated at his "bad luck" and the way we turned things around was to sit down and let a couple groups pass us and point out that other people were losing balls outside the lines and even into the water and that it takes practice. Using the Olympics to reinforce that is such a good idea.

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Yes! I was marveling at one point at how calm the athletes were after they messed up (the gymnasts in particular), and then my husband said "well that's because they mess up ALL THE TIME! That's how you get to the Olympics, by trying hard and messing up a lot." I loved that.

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Every time I see opponents shake hands / hug / or generally show good sport-person-ship to an opposing athlete, I point it out to my 5 year old. Look! They're shaking and saying "good game, thanks for playing with me" just like we do when we play a board game.

Also, we're Canadian, and there has been unending media covering of a cheating scandal involving our women's soccer team. We have had A LOT of conversations about cheating, why people do it, why it's wrong, and what the consequences are for various people involved.

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Ohhh I love this. (Not the cheating! But the convos.)

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I've been following the refugee team on Instagram (although haven't seen any of their events on the main NBC coverage, unfortunately) But we have used that to talk about refugee experience and why they might need to leave their home.

We also like flags, and pointing out smaller countries competing.

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Oh that's such a great reason to talk about refugee experiences. Thank you.

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There’s Olympic refugee team?!? What’s the IG handle? I gotta follow…

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Refugeeolympicteam on IG

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We haven’t watched much, but while watching men’s gymnastics a conversation about the war in Ukraine began. Trying to explain that to a 6 year old was a challenge. :)

While watching the women’s gymnastics team competition, the fall of one of the competitors at the beginning of her routine before coming back to crush the rest of the routine opened up a talk about how even people who are the best at what they do make mistakes and what options we have when we make mistakes.

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My kid has never been into watching sports, so I've been just trying to get him in to see even little snippets of all different things, to see the incredible range of things people do -- kayak slalom, platform diving, etc. And we talk about how hard people work to get that good, because he's been a little discouraged at feeling like he's not great at any sports.

When you watch the races where they're all really close together, it can be hard to understand how fast they are, so we made sure he watched the last few laps of the women's 1500, pointing to how far ahead Ledecky is and making sure he understood that the other people in that pool were among the fastest in the world.

During the Olympic trials he also became at least a little invested in Gabby Thomas, because I get really excited about her because she grew up in my hometown and even went to the same small private high school I went to. (Obviously she's much younger than me!) So he was asking about when the track races will be.

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Oh, also, I had a conversation with my kid around the Olympic swimming about how I was a high school swimmer. He was asking me how fast I was, and the answer was complicated -- I was an average at best high school swimmer, and I should have been a lot better. Every so often something would focus me and I would get a whole lot better all at once, and that showed that the rest of the time I probably wasn't trying hard enough. So I was not very fast for a competitive swimmer, but that still made me a lot faster than most people. It was an interesting conversation about how it depends who you compare yourself to.

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Our family of 4 has been glued to the Olympics! Like the other Canadian in this chat we have had a lot of conversations about #dronegate, obviously it’s a great lesson to teach your kids about cheating but we have also had a lot of really healthy conversations about speaking up when someone asks you to do something you don’t think is right and how as a player you may face a similar situation, where you are presented with an option to cheat and to take the easy road but in the end no one ever wins. And lastly we have talked a lot about the resilience of the Canadian soccer players and how their organization has let them down, but they are still fighting and refuse to hang their head low.

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We talked about the history of sex testing in the Olympics, since that's what I was writing about in my newsletter this week. This amazing podcast series starts with the story of a teenager. https://www.teenhealthtoday.com/p/watching-the-olympics-you-need-to

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It’s interesting to be an American living in France and see which events are shown on TV. Much more judo than I ever saw in USA! And handball & men’s field hockey were probably never shown. Luckily they still show gymnastics and beach volley ball 😊

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