{"id":2070,"date":"2013-06-20T07:56:18","date_gmt":"2013-06-20T13:56:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/paperbacktheology\/?p=2070"},"modified":"2013-06-20T07:56:18","modified_gmt":"2013-06-20T13:56:18","slug":"watching-your-kids-fail-what-baseball-is-teaching-me-about-parenting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/paperbacktheology\/2013\/06\/watching-your-kids-fail-what-baseball-is-teaching-me-about-parenting.html","title":{"rendered":"Watching Your Kids Fail: What Baseball is Teaching Me About Parenting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>I read a great article<\/a> on kids sports and parenting at Slate yesterday subtitled, \u201cHow baseball encourages bad parenting \u2013 and how you can support your kids on the diamond without driving them crazy.\u201d I read this article thinking that this guy was in my head. Both of my kids are playing a ton of baseball right now because a slew of rain-outs has compacted the season. Dickerson is seeing the ball pretty well:<\/p>\n

\u201cHis son was pitching. Mine was batting. When my son fouled off the first pitch, the father was gleeful. When the second pitch was called a ball, he questioned the umpire. After a called strike, he roared: \u201cHe can\u2019t hit you.\u201d Impressive\u2014he was trying to intimidate a 10-year-old batter. I wanted my son to get a hit to shut him up, or maybe a line drive foul to do so more directly. In the end, my son lined out to the shortstop. In the heat of competition, I was ready to make that guy\u2019s folding chair into a bowtie for him. He was an ass. But on the drive to 7-Eleven for the traditional post-game Slurpee, I had a creeping revelation. What if I was that guy?<\/p>\n

After all, I was pretty invested in my own son\u2019s game. If I hadn\u2019t been, red-chair dad wouldn\u2019t have irritated me so. I started to catalog my own sins. I had cheered hard when my son threw a key strike; the dad of the kid at the plate probably thought I was a jerk. When my son was at bat, sometimes I yelled \u201cgood eye\u201d to compliment him for not swinging at an obvious ball. But sometimes I did this for the benefit of the umpire, who had called a ball bouncing off the plate a strike. When an umpire called a boy safe at second who was out by a distance that could be seen from space, I yelled \u201cWhat?\u201d so loudly that everyone stopped to look at me. Was I becoming the dreaded Baseball Dad?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My wife and I have talked all season about how difficult it is to watch our kids struggle in athletics. It\u2019s funny, too, because I think neither one of us really cares about how they perform. I don\u2019t care if my kids never get into sports \u2013 they could bail tomorrow and it wouldn\u2019t bother me one bit. What I care about is that their failures in kid\u2019s sports causes them emotional pain. Let your kid say, \u201cI feel like I\u2019m not good at anything,\u201d to you a few times and see if that doesn\u2019t turn you into a monster.<\/p>\n

Nothing makes you feel more vulnerable as a parent than watching this little person for whom you would literally lay down in traffic struggle and fail and experience all of the heartache and loss of confidence that comes with sports. I heard a wise man say that one day you\u2019ll wake up as a parent and long for the days when you could heal most hurts with a hug or a band-aid. I\u2019m there. When your kid struggles and fails on the field there is usually nothing a parent can do. When your kid strikes out for the tenth straight time, or makes the losing out, or gets pulled halfway through the first inning you just want to be able to help them, you know? Take away some of the hurt. Yet, nearly every article I\u2019ve ever read about the subject says don\u2019t do it. Dickerson offers really good advice.<\/p>\n

Excessive behavior is embarrassing to your child, it\u2019s embarrassing to yourself, and it teaches your child all the wrong lessons about sportsmanship, character and grace. But even if you\u2019re not risking those outcomes, there is a challenge to finding the line between unconditional love and intensity. Even if you stop short of acting like the horrible parent, there\u2019s a finer line to walk. \u00a0You don\u2019t want to smother the experience for them with too much engagement. It\u2019s their game\u2014just as it\u2019s their life\u2026 Don\u2019t quiz kids about the game immediately after it\u2019s over. It puts too much on them when they\u2019re still processing the experience or finally taking a break from the pressure of it. Let them bring it up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

And if you do talk about the game, put a limit to it. One parent never talks about the game once he and his daughter have left the field. I can\u2019t handle that, so I try to squeeze it in between 7-Eleven and home. Once we\u2019re out of the car, I\u2019m done talking. It\u2019s up to the kids to bring up their sports after that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

It\u2019s their life. It\u2019s their struggle, and struggle is the seedbed of virtue. Little league is one of the few things in a child\u2019s life where it\u2019s really okay to say, \u201cThis is your thing, buddy. I\u2019m not going to interfere. I\u2019m here to support you and I\u2019ll help you with whatever you want, but this is your deal.\u201d We have to let them navigate it. What matters most is that we are present, and that we don\u2019t try and rescue them when things go wrong \u2013 no matter how excruciating that is for the parent.<\/p>\n

Dickerson cites another great kids-sports article<\/a> about nightmare parents that I\u2019ve run into several times on blogs. The article surveys hundreds of college athletes about their little league experience. They are asked, \u201cWhat is your worst memory of little league or high school athletics.\u201d The overwhelming response was, \u201cthe ride home with my parents.\u201d When asked what\u2019s the best thing their parents said the most common answer was, \u201cI love to watch you play.\u201d<\/p>\n

I had a friend point me to this advice and it\u2019s pretty much all I say on the ride home. \u201cI love to watch you play.\u201d I also tell them that I\u2019m more proud when they strike out than when they get a hit, because it takes a lot more courage to stand up there and swing and miss than it does to stand in there knowing that you\u2019ll get a hit every time. Mostly I try to find other things to talk about and ways to make them laugh. I really hope I\u2019m not jacking this up. I know that nothing makes me do stupid things like vulnerability.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I read a great article on kids sports and parenting at Slate yesterday subtitled, \u201cHow baseball encourages bad parenting \u2013 and how you can support your kids on the diamond without driving them crazy.\u201d I read this article thinking that this guy was in my head. Both of my kids are playing a ton of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1118,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[676,675,386,105],"class_list":["post-2070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-kids-sports","tag-little-league","tag-parenting","tag-slate"],"yoast_head":"\nWatching Your Kids Fail: What Baseball is Teaching Me About Parenting<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I read a great article on kids sports and parenting at Slate yesterday subtitled, "How baseball encourages bad parenting - and how you can support your\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/paperbacktheology\/2013\/06\/watching-your-kids-fail-what-baseball-is-teaching-me-about-parenting.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Watching Your Kids Fail: What Baseball is Teaching Me About Parenting\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I read a great article on kids sports and parenting at Slate yesterday subtitled, "How baseball encourages bad parenting - 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