4/18/2008

Let's Lighten Up On Young Athletes

I once calculated that my daughter fell about once a minute when she was learning to walk. Step, step, kerplunk. Using advanced math, I figured she was falling sixty times an hour, or about 720 times during her twelve waking hours each day. Sometimes she’d look at us with a proud gleam in her eye that asked, “How am I doing?” And like every other parent in the known universe, we’d reassure her that she was doing great. Eventually she stopped falling.

But I’ve often wondered if we could have sped up the process by being a little harder on her: “Come on, you know how to walk! We’ve shown you a thousand times! Just get up you crybaby! Billy can walk, why can’t you!?!”

Alright, maybe not such a good idea. Not only would we be poster children for world’s worst parents, but she’d have probably developed some strange aversion to walking and come to despise my wife and me.

Which is why I wonder why it is that the latter approach – the yell and berate approach – is so often the one we choose when it comes to youth sports. I’m not talking about the tough coach with high expectations. I’m talking about the tyrants. The ones who offer not encouragement and instruction but insult and embarrassment. And when coach and parent are one and the same, the result can be downright painful for child and onlookers alike.

In just this past month I’ve witnessed dads yelling at sons, moms yelling at sons, dads yelling at moms, sons yelling at dads (should we be surprised?), parents calling their kids names (including the aforementioned "crybaby") and even watched a dad turn his back on his son for the unforgivable sin of striking out.

What’s sad is that these kids turn to their parents for feedback just like my daughter did when she was learning to walk, but instead of a look that says “tell me how proud you are of me” or “tell me it’s alright,” it’s one that asks “have I let you down again?” That’s a horrible burden for a kid of eight, nine or ten to carry, believing their worth in the eyes of their parents is determined by how well they shoot a free throw or field a groundball. It’s enough to make one cry.

And in fact, it does. Over this same period I’ve seen kids cry, hyperventilate and vomit on the field of play because of the pressure we put them under. And for what? So we can brag about them to our friends? So they can be stars in high school, college or beyond?

The irony is that the best way for a kid to improve – and at this age there’s plenty of time to improve – is to love playing the game. Otherwise, it’s a chore and kids despise chores. Not only will they never realize their full potential, they’re likely to come to despise something else. I’ll let you guess who that might be.

4/08/2008

Rev. Wright's Counterproductive Anger

If what Rev. Jeremiah Wright preaches really is mainstream thought in black churches and the black community, as Adam Clark (April 8, 2008) and Nicholas Kristoff have suggested, then perhaps it would be wiser to change those thoughts than try to justify them.  Letting them simmer would seems to be counterproductive.

The rage reflected in Reverend Wright’s preaching reminds me of an interview with an elderly veteran in Ken Burns’ WWII documentary The War.  The vet recounts how it took thirty years to realize the hatred he had for what the Japanese had done to him in a prison camp was hurting no one but himself.  The Japanese he so despised certainly weren’t being hurt by it, but it had ruined his career, relationships and life.  Only when he realized that truth was he was able to retake control of his own life.

Is it possible that the same dynamic is taking place in parts of the African-American community?  Whatever injustices blacks have faced past (many) and present (far fewer), is it possible that the fury that boils within some is more damaging than the injustices themselves?  That would appear to be especially true when it comes to the false injustices regarding the origins of AIDS and crack cocaine espoused by the Rev. Wright.

Rather than justify such claims as conventional wisdom, wouldn’t it be better to repudiate them, lest a large swath of the black population find their lives consumed with pointless rage like the WWII vet?