Photo by Monique Schoenfeld, Town Crier
Los Altos Hills mom Elizabeth Still buckles her youngest of four children, Eleanor, 3 1/2, into her car seat before she takes them to the grocery store after getting haircuts. The trendy term "soccer mom" has often been connected with a sought-after political faction. These active moms are devoted to their children.
Town Crier Staff Writer
Local mothers work hard to enrich their kids' lives
Elizabeth Still
"We are so busy," said Elizabeth Still, a Los Altos Hills mother of four. "We're constantly on the go - rush, rush, rush."
Almost every day of the week she is bundling her four kids - 9-year-old twins George and Finley, 7 1/2-year-old John T. and 3 1/2-year-old Eleanor - into her white Suburban and heading off to activities.
The kids play soccer every day at school during recess, she said. So after-school classes don't include soccer.
Instead they have etiquette class on Mondays, "Clay-plus" art lessons on Tuesdays, watercolor lessons on Wednesdays - "we've been on the waiting list for two and a half years" - and cooking class and tennis on Thursdays.
"I simplify," she said, by sending all three boys to the same classes.
Eleanor goes to Bible study on Tuesdays and will be starting ballet or gymnastics, she said.
The afternoon we visited in the family room of her Los Altos Hills home, the twins were off at ice hockey in Cupertino.
"Why am I always so busy?" she wondered aloud. "Children in this area are expected to excel in every area, as athletes, as students. There's pressure to be great in everything," she said.
Her three older children attend a small private school in Los Altos, Canterbury Christian School. There's one class for each grade, kindergarten through grade six.
Still loves the school. But many of the after-school activities she chooses for her kids, she said, are "supplementing with the arts."
She keeps her kids' schedules organized with the help of her Filofax organizer. "I live by that," she said.
Even with a busy soccer-mom type schedule, she finds time for herself. She's a tennis planner, in a book club and she's in a Scrabble group.
"We have tea and Scrabble," she said.
Her day starts early, folding laundry and making lunches, and ends with "time with my husband."
Still is a gentle mom with a quiet voice and loads of patience.
When they moved into their 1920s-era home five years ago, which they have since remodeled, Still was turning the water on and off in the master bath - for a whole year - "with pliers, because there were no handles on the faucets."
The day she brought Ellie home from the hospital, "I lost my kitchen for nine months," as the remodeling began.
Janet Maher
"I wouldn't classify me as a soccer mom because there are so many other things we do," said Janet Maher. We sat on a bench and chatted, under a tree at the Hillview soccer field in Los Altos, while her 4 1/2-year-old son Matthew played soccer.
This Los Altos mom takes daughter Kristen, 8, to dance lessons three times per week. Maher is a Brownie co-leader for Kristen's troop at Loyola School.
That morning, Maher took Matthew to speech class at Whisman School in Mountain View, where he goes two mornings a week.
Then she headed to Palo Alto to stand in line at the Winter Lodge to sign up for an ice skating activity for her Brownie troop.
"I was No. 99 in line. No. 1 came at 2:30 a.m.," she said, her eyes wide. She never made it to the front of the line. After soccer, after a lunch at McDonald's, she planned to head back, in her mini-van, to the line at the Winter Lodge.
"Why do we do this? Why so many fitness activities?" she asked herself.
In the public school system, she said, some schools may be down to "only one physical education activity per week," she said. So the extracurricular sports are important to her.
And, maybe even more significant, "I find it enjoyable to visit with friends and enjoy a conversation," she said. She chats with other moms as they sit together watching a soccer practice.
Los Altos soccer
"These are just moms who have a love for their kids and recognize it's (soccer) a place any kid can succeed," said Christopher Trevisan.
He teaches soccer classes in Los Altos and throughout the Peninsula. His business, Kidz Love Soccer, is in 13 cities. "It's caught on," he said.
Based on national Parks and Recreation numbers, soccer is "the number one growing youth sport in America," Trevisan said.
In Los Altos three-fourths of the kids will try soccer, he said.
He said soccer moms are so interested because soccer is a large-motor skill sport, with "running hitting and kicking." So it's an activities at which little kids can be successful.
Soccer also teaches cooperation, Trevisan said, "the team-thing." And it's a sport where size is not a big deal. Even small kids can succeed.
In addition to the soccer classes taught by Trevisan through the city's parks and recreation department, there are leagues for older kids with games on Saturdays.
The soccer program in Los Altos, "it's large," said Bob Rayl, recreation director for the city.
Kate Dolan
No question. Soccer is big. But you don't have to have your kids in soccer to be a soccer mom.
Just ask Becky Eatherly. This 43-year-old Los Altos mother of two young children believes the soccer-mom concept applies to mothers "who are very engaged in taking care of children. You're on the road. You're taking them to this and that. It's a powerful segment of our society," she said.
"These are very busy moms, with great brains, juggling so much," she said.
Some have called soccer moms of the 1990s the super moms of the 1980s. They are the women who kicked off their high heels and pulled on their Nikes® to go watch their kids.
Politicians sought them in the 1996 elections "as a huge swath of suburban female voters," according to the New York Times.
But the soccer-mom concept, of the caring mom working hard to bring her children a well-rounded and enriched life, has endured and become much more than a political buzzword.
The Town Crier visited with some moms in the Los Altos area, some with kids in soccer, some not, to check out the concept.
"I'd like to think I'm not a soccer mom," said Kate Dolan, a Los Altos mother of two. Some kids today "wouldn't know how to get up a neighborhood game," she said, because they live such programmed lives.
Her 9-year-old daughter, Olivia, does not play soccer, Dolan said. But she did in first and second grade. Then she decided she didn't like soccer, that basketball was her sport.
She has also played baseball and softball - in addition to her dance and piano.
Now Olivia's focus is dance, her mother said. "We got interested, and it sort of snowballed. You get to a certain level, and it requires more time."
Olivia dances four times per week and also takes piano lessons.
"Luckily the piano teacher comes to us," she said. Carpooling is not Dolan's favorite activity.
She drives her girls, Olivia and 5-year-old Carina, to their activities in the family's white Volvo station wagon.
"I'm thinking about a van. I never thought I'd say that - and here I am saying it," she said.
She reflects on her kids' schedules.
"If you don't get (lessons) started when they're young, by sixth or seventh grade everyone (else) is better," she said. "You have to start young, stay with it or you'll get behind.
"College needs more than a 4.0 (grade point average). There are so many with a 4.0. They want to know, 'What else can you do? Can you sing? Can you dance?'"
Even though Dolan worries about her kids being overprogrammed, she also believes "you need some activities, some lessons. This is the time to learn, to be exposed to many things," she said. Then her girls can choose what they like.
So every year they try something new and let something go.
On Saturdays, Carina takes ballet and tap. And dad drives. "He's right there with me," Dolan said.
For Eatherly, soccer mom is metaphor for busyness. The soccer mom provides organized enrichment for her kids, a one-woman support system for the children as they discover the world.
As Eatherly believes, "Soccer moms are really with it." Let's kick to that.