Ah, March Madness!  It’s a fun extended family tradition in our house, connecting siblings and cousins across generations and across the US as we share our best guesses (and a lot of random selections) in our personal brackets.  All for bragging rights, and maybe some free ice cream.

We got our boys in on the action this year, with our ten year-old checking out the ranking system (coupled with some of his personal team loyalties), our eight year-old comparing team colors, our five year-old showing we may need to brush up on our Geographic awareness as he selected “Virgeorgia” as one of his teams, and our two year-old showing a clear penchant for the underdog, selecting a #10 team to take it all home.  (I guess that’s what happens when you fill out the bracket with a series of “this or that” questions.)

Filling out the brackets as a family made for some questionable life lessons, such as my husband’s comment that, “You don’t have to make a good choice, you just have to make a choice.”  But one of the lessons March Madness always brings to my mind is the importance of a good coach and what time outs should really look like.

Trust me.  It really does have something to do with child development.  (Incidentally, this basketball analogy may be the post most frequently referred from wives to husbands.  Go figure.) [Read more…]