Nightmare Parenting

I read a really interesting article in Yahoo Sports about parents who behave badly to their children when they play sports, though not in the way most of us might think. In the article, they asked college and pro athletes what their worst memory of playing sports as a child was, and the unanimous answer was the drive home after a game with their parents. The reason? The parents would lecture and question them about their game, and it really bummed the kids out. Their fondest memory? Being with their grandparents after a game, who tend to indicate that they love just watching their kids, irrespective of the outcome or their performance. Go grandmom and granddad!

Anyway, as you might have guessed, who do you think is guilty of being an annoying parent? You got it, yours truly. The article points out that the parents have the best of intentions, it’s just misguided parenting that inspires them to stick their noses in too far. It made me realize that the kids hate hearing the lecture from us, and we should just put a lid on it and let them unwind after a game.

I have to confess, I was a little embarrassed about the whole thing, and fortunately R and I have one another to watch each other’s backs and monitor our respective behavior. I will say this, this past weekend when we drove home from a game, I kept my comments to a minimum, and only talked about how much we enjoyed watching the game. Boy, parenthood sure is complicated.

One last note, when I was kid, my parents had zero interaction in my game. They drove me to the park and watched my games, but they didn’t really have a clue what was going on, so they couldn’t offer constructive criticism. I don’t know if this was a result of this, but I loved sports and did just fine. I didn’t have the nightmare parents that they describe in the article, at least not for sports. They may have been a nightmare in all other aspects of my life, but not sports.

My point is, kids will evolve into the athletes they were meant to be irregardless of what the parents tell them. It’s the job of the coaches to train the kids and teach them to be good athletes, and maybe parents should just chill and enjoy the game... yeah, right.

Until the next time, thanks for reading, and thanks to betinhalm for the pic.