The Parent/Athlete Relationship Part 1: The Usual Suspects

The Parent-Athlete Relationship Part 1: The Usual Suspects

 

Last weekend, I went to my 5 year old nephew’s coach pitch little league baseball game.  I was thoroughly enjoying the experience of watching these little kids have fun playing baseball.  A kid would hit the ball and take off down the first baseline with a smile from ear to ear.  It was pure joy.  In an instant, this pure joy turned into horror when one of the coaches ran out into the infield from the outfield and began to yell at one his five year old players.  I was in a state of shock over what I was witnessing.  “What are you doing?” he shouted.  “You have to cover your bag.  That is just stupid.  You better get your head in the game.”  The guy was in a rage and had completely lost control.  Of course, the kid was his son.  For some strange reason, he felt the need to grandstand his son in front of everyone in a 5 year old little league game.  I felt sick and had to leave.   I feared that if I saw another outburst like this, someone would have to bail me out of jail that day.  I got in my car and left, deeply burdened for the condition of the sports parent of my generation.

This event got me thinking…

I am the father of two girls.  Alivia is 11, and Layla turned 5 today.  They are my pride and joy.  More than anything in the world, I desire for them to grow into confident, unselfish girls who love life and love people.  Honestly, raising them scares me to death sometimes.  This is my first and only go ‘round’ at being a parent.  I don’t have a lifetime of experience in this field.  There is no “how to” manual on how to raise these two totally different personalities.  Both of them are unlike anyone else in the world.  However, I do my research and ask for the advice of trusted people who have done amazing jobs raising their kids.  I also observe other parents constantly so I can learn from them.  By no means am I about to tell you how to raise your kids.  I have learned a great deal by watching parent athlete relationships and counseling athletes in their quest to clear their mind of clutter.  When the mind is free, athletes play the game with joy.  This joy reduces pressure and taps into the full potential of the athlete.  They now have the best chance to peak perform.  During my life, I have been asked many questions by parents of athletes…

• How do I keep my kid from burning out?
• How can I get my kid to love the game like I do?
• Why do I have to push him to get him to do anything?
• Why does she not listen to me?
• What do I need to do to help my kid get a college scholarship?
• How can I help my kid get more playing time?

 

One of the main problems that I see with many of the questions that I am asked is misplaced focus.  It should not be about what you want for your athlete as a parent.  It should be about what the athlete wants for himself/herself.  The question is not what you can do.  It is how you can empower them to passionately pursue their own goals and dreams/ How you can create a dynamic in your relationship with your child that amplifies their own love for the game that they chose to play/ How you can nurture their own love for the process of getting better/ How you can support their own athletic endeavors in a way that brings the two of you closer in your parent-child relationship as opposed to creating distance between the two of you.  Notice the highlighted word- their own.  It has to be theirs and theirs alone.  Their game, their goals, their career, their desires, etc.   When your focus is changed from what you want for them, and replaced with what they want for themselves, you are on the path toward an amazing athletic experience that you get to share with your child.

Look, you probably have way more parenting experience than me, but I was the son of a coach.  I can tell you what it was like from the perspective of the child.  I played for my dad for NINE YEARS… and we still talk!  In fact, he was the best man in my wedding.  Was he always perfect?  Of course not.  Did I make plenty of mistakes?  Yes I did, but we learned a great deal along the way.  I have a burden to share what I have learned with you.  In the next three blog posts, we will climb the difficult terrain of athlete parenting.  We will navigate our way around the dangers that so many parents (even though they had the best of intentions) have fallen victim to.  We will look at some best practices that have enhanced parent athlete relationships as well as enhanced the athlete’s performance on the court.   In this post (the first in a 3 part series), we will take a look at some of the parent/child athlete relationships that I have observed.  In Part 2, I will share a few things I have learned from my own father.   Finally in part 3, I will focus on key concepts that can help parents empower their child athlete while maintaining a healthy relationship.

 

The Usual Suspects: Common Parent/Child Athlete Relationships

 

• THE FRUSTRATED PARENT AND THE LABORING ATHLETE

The parent is frustrated because their kid just doesn’t want it as much the parent does.  I use the term labor because that is exactly what the athlete is doing.  The game is work to them. They are expected to get in the gym and pushed by their parent to work intensely on their game more than they want to.  The problem is that they just don’t love it.  That is okay.  They may have a passion for something else that is being completely squelched because they are complying with their parent’s demands.  They do not want to let their parent down.  I have never known a child that did not care whether their parents were proud of them or not.  Often times, they conform to who they think their parent wants them to be (even if it is not who they are).  The result is labor.  The athlete is just doing a job.  One question I get asked is, “How can I get my son to want it for himself as much as I want it for him?”  My answer- You can’t.  Here is why…  It is not his dream.  It’s yours.  He is not going to have the desire to pursue your dream as much as you do.  If it was his dream, you would never have to ask the question.  For the passion and drive to be real, it has to be the kid’s dreams and desires that they are pursuing.

 

• THE DICTATOR AND THE BEAST

“How can I help my kid avoid burnout?”  Stop coaching them so much.  A problem arises when a parent coaches their child athlete too much and for too long.  The athlete wants to make their parent proud, but, in their mind, nothing is ever good enough for the parent.  The athlete starts to shut down.  Many parents have asked me to work with their kids because “they just don’t listen to me anymore.”  “They need a different voice.”  To those parents- I commend you.  You needed to let go and change your role in their career.  It can be so hard to let go, but there is a time when we must.  My dad always was intentional during my childhood about making sure that he outsourced the majority of my coaching.  It was a very wise move.  Eventually, I would become a high school player in his program.  He would be coaching me every day.  He knew that if he was always the only one coaching me during my childhood, there would be a good chance that we would be completely sick of each other by the time I was in the ninth grade.  So he did his homework.  He found and recruited specialists to work with me on my game.

There is another issue that arises with this type of parent.  This athlete is a beast.  The fire is in him.  He has the capacity to be self-aware, coach himself, and take the steps necessary to solve the problems that arise in his game.  He would improve on his own, but he keeps being micromanaged by his parent’s constant coaching.  As a result, he doesn’t “think the game” as much because he knows he can just sit back and be told what to do.  The parent becomes a crutch.  The motivation to improve is now external.  The fire in him that was once a massive forest fire that grew on its own becomes a steam locomotive furnace that runs on the coal the parent shovels in.  I say let the beasts be beasts.  This does not mean this parent does not help the athlete from time to time, but it should be more of a consultant type role.  This ensures that the committed athlete’s game is their own.  They will be more likely to peak perform because they do not feel as much external pressure to improve or perform well.  Sometimes less is more.

 

•  THE TRUSTED ADVISOR AND THE PEAK PERFORMER

This type of parent athlete relationship is the healthy version of the Dictator and the Beast.   The coach is the coach, not the parent.  The parent may have played at an elite level in college or even professionally.  The parent may have a wealth of basketball knowledge that he/she shares often with their child, but they have placed them in the hands of the coach.  They let them get coached.   The parent’s knowledge is shared when the player asks for it.  Don’t worry, the player will ask for it.  He’s internally motivated.  In the words of Eric Thomas, “He loves the process as much as he loves the prize.”  He will view the parent as a trusted advisor in whom he seeks valuable golden nuggets of basketball wisdom that will help him on his journey to becoming his best self.  This parent doesn’t randomly picking apart their child’s game.  They build trust with their athlete by supporting him and being there when he needs them.   The athlete will actually often ask for the parent to pick apart his game, and he will see it as advice instead of nagging.  This parent empowers the athlete.  The athlete knows that the parent believes in him and is willing to help him get better.  He will see his parent as a fan of his work, and he will take pride in that work.  This player will be likely peak perform because he is not worried about his parent picking him apart after the game.

“Real lions like to hunt.  They love the process just as much as they love the prize.”  -Eric Thomas

 

• THE FIXER AND THE UNPREPARED ADULT

The fixer has the best of intentions.  They hate to see their child suffer and they just want to make everything okay.  Look, I get it.  You love your child more than anything in the world.  You may be able to make everything okay, but at what cost?  One of the greatest weapons in an adult’s arsenal for life is resiliency– the ability to get up after being knocked to the canvas.  Disappointment, failure, mistakes, unfairness- these are all necessary evils for the development of a person who has the resiliency to meet life’s challenges head on and keep pushing forward.  Yes, I know it hurts.  I know it wasn’t fair, but do we really want our kids to grow up thinking life has to be fair?  What happens if they throw their soul into a job and some clown who has put in much less work than they have gets the promotion because he is the C.E.O.’s cousin?  Are you going to step in then?  Are they going to quit?  Or are they going to grind through disappointment and work even harder to prove their immeasurable worth to the company?  We have to change our views on disappointments.  They are the best learning experiences.  You don’t have to be the fireman.  Let them go through the fire for the greater good- Their life.

 

•  THE ENABLER AND THE EXCUSE MAKER

This type is so painful to watch.  The parent truly believes that their child is being victimized.  They yell at the officials.  They talk bad about the coach in front of their kid on the car ride home.  They blame losses on their kid’s teammates.  Kids are so impressionable.  In most cases their parent is their hero and has been the primary source of knowledge in their young lives.  What is this parent really teaching them?  It is always someone else’s fault.  They are enabling their child to shirk personal responsibility and allow themselves to make excuses.  This type of parent is not a recent development.  They have been around as long as kids have been competing in sports, but I have noticed an explosion of enabling parents onto the high school sports scene in the last ten years.  I am not trying to be over dramatic, but, if the trend continues, I fear for the future of this country.  Do we really want to live in a country run by a generation of Alphas who always have an excuse when things go south?

 

• THE CHEERLEADER AND THE RECREATIONAL PLAYER

Not every child is meant to be a college player (If you want to see the odds of playing in college, see my post Bring Back the Fun).  In fact, the vast majority of players play recreationally.  They simply do not have the passion or the unique drive in the depths of their soul that makes a player special.  The cheerleader parent is self-aware enough to recognize this and allows their child to enjoy the game.  They love to watch their kid compete.  They do not force their dreams or passion onto their child.  The player plays because he wants to.  He plays hard because he knows that as long as he gave his best effort on the floor, mom and dad will be proud of him regardless of his limitations in the skill department.  He is also more likely to have an impactful career for a good program because he will embrace his important role on the team and be a great teammate.  I played with some guys who were recreational players that played pivotal roles on championship teams.  These guys got the most out of their ability.  Their parents did not try to force them to be someone they weren’t.  They just loved to watch their kid compete.  They understood the value that their kid was bringing to the team even though it probably wouldn’t be mentioned in the newspaper the next day.   They celebrated that value with their kid at home.

 

• THE COACH AND THE CONFUSED

This parent is coaching their kid nonstop.  They coach at home and they coach from the stands during games.  Most of the time the coaching that a player is getting from the parent is a stark contrast to the coaching the player is getting from his actual coach.  This leads to a confused player.  “Dad told me this, but coach said…”   It becomes impossible for the player to have a clear mind when they play.  One thing I know from experience- It is impossible to peak perform without a clear mind.

 

• THE LIFE COACH AND THE WINNER

I believe that every parent should be this type.  Athletics is a valuable tool to teach kids important principles that will make them better people.  Many of the lessons that I learned while I was competing in basketball have carried me through my adult life.  The problem is that learning opportunities for athletes are missed at times because the focus of the parent is on something trivial that will be completely meaningless in 10 years.  How many of these learning moments do we throw away every year?  The value of hard work, focus, being coachable, being a great teammate, celebrating the successes of others, resiliency, determination, self-sacrifice, embracing a role… the list could go on and on.   What could be more important to the development of a child than life lessons such as these?  However, the focus of many parents and athletes is misplaced yet again.  The focus is placed on temporary validation that only serves to boost the ego (trophies, starting spots, scoring average, who got more shots, etc.).  Let me ask you this, will that piece of gold plastic and wood matter to anyone when your kid is forty?  The life coach parent never misses a chance to drop a learning moment on their child.  They are not blinded by the things that don’t matter.  They focus on the principles a child can learn through sport that will carry over and make their kid a winner in life.

 

FINAL WORD

If you want a quality, act as if you already have it.”  -William James

What category do you fall into?  Does this line up with the type of sports parent you want to be?  If not, by all means, make some changes.   It is never too late to get outside yourself for the good of your child.  A simple change of focus is all it takes.  Ask yourself, “is this their dream or mine?”  Kids are capable of amazing things when they passionately pursue their own dreams and are empowered by the belief of their parents.  Most importantly, they could change the world with the life lessons they learn through sports.  Let’s make sure they do not miss out on a single learning moment.

“Every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around.”              -Penelope Cruz in Vanilla Sky

 

Coming Soon…

 

The Parent-Athlete Relationship: Part 2- Playing for Pops

 

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