I think Mary hit it right on-"If your child likes racing [and steering], you are going to have to give up your own racing for maybe years to take your child to Opti regattas. Most catamaran sailors are not willing to make that sacrifice."
My daughter is years behind most Opti kids in her skippering skills since she "wasted" so much time crewing for me, and she started THAT late compared to the Optis. It's going to take her a long time to catch up, and maybe she'll never do that because she still doesn't have all summer to race. We also don't have a local yacht club with a junior racing program (I don't count one hour each way as local). I did give up some of my "good" racing early on by training up a young crew (and a 10 year old girl on a Hobie 20 is NOT the optimum crew), and now I'm giving up more possible success by letting her steer when we still sail together (although maybe she'll be better than I am pretty quickly; She's starting earlier than I did.) Big plus again, though, provided we both find crews, we can double stack the 16 and 20 and both of us get to race. We COULD do that in Lasers, too, but both of us prefer real boats :-) I love to come to work on Monday and all the other parents are talking about spending all weekend watching soccer, and I say, "I raced WITH my daughter." OK, I'm selfish, but that time together has to count for something, right? I know firsthand she earned those bruises :-)

All I know is that when we were able to "share" a youth event with the Optis, all those kids came in for packing up and coaching debriefs (with a nice breeze still blowing). The cat kids stayed out for another hour on their own, reaching back and forth and trying to flip. Looked like fun to me. I also heard one young lad tell his mother "Those Hobies look cool, Mom", and she replied "Yes, but they may be too fast for us". !! I think she made a convert right there; just may take a while :-)

I say let 'em train on the Optis, then move in and steal 'em.