THE VIEW FROM THE SIDELINE
My young son Jack plays youth soccer down at Bellamy Park. His mother and his sister are his coaches.
It’s the same field where, 20 years ago, I watched his older brother play youth soccer.
And t-ball.
And where we’ve had Homecoming games these last two decades.
Two decades in which it has been my great blessing to watch my children play sports. Soccer, track, dance, swimming, karate, horseback riding, cheerleading, basketball, racquetball, golf, rugby, softball. I’ve stood in snow and sweltered in natatoriums, baked in the heat and been deafened in country gymnasiums.
We’ve driven a lot of miles, worn out several folding chairs, made friends with successive batches of parents and coaches.
It has been one of life’s joys.
And if my 2-year-old’s rambunctious nature is any indication, it’s not anywhere near over.
We’ve had a state champion and a couple of sectional champions and some captains and MVPs, with plenty of trophies and patches and pins, and in recent weeks certificates and medals for running 5Ks.
Which makes me happily like half the parents in America. My kids play sports and I get to bask in their joy.
And learn.
And I wish I could whisper a little bit of what I’ve learned into the ear of some of the parents I see down at Bellamy Park.
Namely that it’s about fun.
Our children in youth soccer will be kindergarteners in the fall, or first- and second-graders. They are young and enthusiastic and ungainly.
And no good at sports.
Soccer at this stage is a happy flock of youngsters chasing around blissfully after a ball. They have no idea whatsoever what they are doing, other than having fun.
Some stand awkwardly, bashful and nervous, others run blindly with complete abandon.
Left to their own devices, they do fine, learning the lessons of social interaction and budding competition that will serve them all their lives.
But they are not left to their own devices. Sometimes there are tense parents looking on and intervening, sometimes the things yelled are not happy encouragement but shrill rebuke.
What’s happening is that the parents are feeling anxiety and embarrassment, and they are reacting to that by being sharp to their children. Instead of feeling happiness, they feel anger.
And they lash out.
You can hear it in their voices and see it in their children. The children become more tense and less sure, sometimes they cry, sometimes they are scolded. Usually you can see the anxiety of the parent imposed on the child and watch it build until the child, out on the field, is a nervous and emotional wreck.
It is very sad, and completely unnecessary.
It is a result of bad parenting.
And my advice is to relax. Relax, encourage and enjoy.
And remember that the purpose of sports is to teach. In our children, sports is an extension of the home and the classroom. Sports is a way to learn lessons that apply to every corner of life.
Lessons of fitness, sportsmanship, competition, hard work, character, duty and loyalty, friendship, obedience and courage. All of these things are learned on the playing field, and they are taught by victory and defeat. Properly handled, the best and worst days of sports teach you something and make you a better person.
Sports will not make any but the most meaninglessly small fraction of children any money, nor will it bring them a college scholarship. They will not be elite athletes throwing all their waking hours into their sport, they will just be regular kids who grow up to be more well rounded and capable.
So it doesn’t matter whether your 5-year-old is any good at youth soccer. It doesn’t matter whether he or she is afraid of the ball or knows what to do when it gets close. It just matters that they take the field and that they look over and see smiling and loving parents.
After that, everything else takes care of itself.
Because the purpose of sports is not to win the game, it is to win life. To gain the confidence and coordination that life require, to learn to achieve a goal and develop a skill, to win and lose with class, to never quit or give up hope.
Sometimes, parents can accidentally cheat their children out of learning those lessons by making sports miserable. By scolding them and pushing them to tears, by spoiling the pure joy of the thing and making it into a hellish torture.
I pray the few confused parents will soon learn a better way, so that their children will have a better life.
So that all of us can follow our children through their years of sports, basking in the wholesome joy of it all.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2010
