On Acceptance

I love my son. To death. My son loves to skateboard. I really dislike skateboarding.
I’m having an issue with this right now. I am trying to accept and support my son’s love and passion for skating, but for some reason I keep getting caught up on some issues I have with it and find myself (still after 2 years of him being obsessed with it) not wanting him to do it. I do see this as a character flaw in myself. I just can’t let it go. I can fake it sometimes, but deep down it’s there and I know he can sense that I’m not paying attention or not interested that he ollied an 8 stair.

Here are my pros/cons in what I think is order of priority, tell me if I’m being stupid and selfish.

Cons

My son won’t wear a helmet. I tell him, I make him take it, but he does not wear it. I know this because he shoots videos of himself and he’s not wearing it.

I don’t like the boys being off for hours unsupervised. They jump off of things that are private property (stairs, garbage cans, whatever).

I don’t know all the boys he hangs around with so I don’t know what they are in to. Based on how they look, I can’t help but judge them. Long hair, tight pants, the typical skater look (BTW-my son looks the same, but he cut his hair last November). I feel like most of them are at an age (12-14) where they’ll start experimenting with sex/drugs if they haven’t already.

The only local skate park is outdoors and about a 20 minute drive and it’s typically crowded. The indoor skate park is about a 30 minute drive. The fact that I don’t really like him doing this does not motivate me to take him, so he usually goes with other friends and another parent.

He spends more time skating than he does doing his homework.

His knees get totally bruised up and he falls a lot so he constantly has cuts and bruises. Once we had to take him to get stitches on his eye brow.

I don’t like listening to the clackity clack of the board. When we go to public places and he wants to skate, I feel like the sound is loud and might be bothering other people, maybe it’s just me?

Lastly, I resent the fact that he quit playing baseball and decided he was going to skate. He played baseball for 5 years and was really good, but hated his coach. Baseball brought our family together because we would all go to the games and practices so it gave me more time to spend with him.

Pros

He’s really good.

He loves what he is doing.

He is getting exercise.

So as a mom, I’m asking for advice from other moms that may have similar situations. How can I suck it up and get over myself? Really get over myself and not just fake my way through? Like I said, it’s been two years and I can’t change who he is and what he wants, how do I just accept it and be a supportive mom? My son means the world to me and in the past we used to spend a lot of time together and now he’s my youngest and growing up too quick. I feel like this is dividing us and I can’t stand it.