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.
1 comment:
There was another example of parental excess at the batting cages last night. A boy of ten or so stepped into the 55 mph cage and immediately swung and missed, prompting his dad to start yelling, "Hit the ball!" And I mean yelling. I'm sure there was nothing the kid wanted more than to hit it. Even when he made contact, his father complained that he was under it, late on it or suffered some other flaw. When the kid was done, good old dad sarcastically suggested he get in line for the 45 mph cage because "you can't hit anything, anyway."
While dad was great at pointing out the kid's mistakes, he was unable to make a single suggestion to correct them (for example, telling his son he was swinging underneath the ball prompted the kid to uppercut. That's the opposite of what you want to do). In any event, what I'm sure the dad did best was instill a disdain for the cages. So sad.
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