need advice for a young catcher and his dad...

at 8 yrs old you may want to think about allowing him to develop other position skills too. he has plenty of time & who knows what the future will bring .. even if he stays behind the plate as he advances, utility/if/of skills would make him a better all around player and more valuable to his team

jmo

Yeah, I guess looking at the question now I am being kind of short sighted. He is 8 after all. He does play a lot of differnt positions and only catches a couple of innings a game. Actually doesn't get much practice catching other than with dad. He just love sto catch so much right now that I thought playing catch or practicing with the mitt on might help him get more comfortable with the mitt. I'm obviously putting more thought into this than I need to. It's hard being a parent of a young one and knowing when you are over the edge.

Is there a 12 step program for this stuff somewhere?

I would let him use both mitts. Never know where he will be playing. If he ends up with his primary position being a catcher he will have plenty of time to make the adjustments. 12 steps to parenting?? --- or ---- catching??
You're on your own with the parenting ---- catching you might look at this website.
Fungo
the art of catching

Interestingly there is at least one local college team that has its catchers take infield grounders in full gear before a game - at SS! My son's catcher coach thought it was an interesting idea with merit. I believe they drop to block balls etc rather then field the ball at SS. However that might be going a little to far at your sons age, but it does resolve the choice of glove issue!

fungo, thanks. Parenting a young ball player to be more specific. I try hard, but there are times when my eyes get opened and I realize I am taking this way more seriously than I need to. I want him to have fun, period.

I've learned in just the past few weeks just how badly I'm hooked. He started this season with what to me seemed like very little desire. So much so that I decided not to coach this spring thinking maybe he needed a break from dad. The thoughts going through my head of wether I was pushing to hard, wanting him to play more than he wanted to. Did he just not really want to play? Was he really not intersted? What did I do that made this game become less fun and more work? I thought for sure that I had muffed this one. He's a kid. He spends his days having all the fun he can handle and there are going to be times when he's just not as enthusiastic as I am when I get home. I spend my days at the office or out working, all the while building up this desire to get home and play with him.

Now two games into the season all he can think about is baseball. I get home and he's in the front yard with our gloves and a fungo bat. We leave practice and he wants to go to the ballpark and watch a game. I'm spinning!!

But I love it.