Your Kids and Competitive Extra-Curricular Activities: Don’t be the Psycho Parental Phanatic

If you have read some of my other articles about my toddler Isaac (links below) you will know that my wife and I are neck deep in the “new discoveries” phase of his young life. More and more each day he is learning new words, phrases, abilities and becoming more and more adept in his use of his new found language as well as far more coordinated performing his new activities. As pleased as I am to watch him develop and grow with his new found abilities it also got me thinking about what his future will bring and how we as parents will ourselves learn how to handle ourselves in situations where our child is faced with competition.

My wife are both from backgrounds from which we participated in many competitive sports in our younger lives and to this day still enjoy partaking in, if not viewing from afar, our favorite sporting events. Each of us, as we moved through the ranks in any number of the sports we took part in, witnessed and experienced varying degrees of parental involvement in our teammates and competitors sporting lives. On one side were the absentee parents who generally got their kids involved in sports as a means to bridge the time from the end of the school day to when they got home from work. They were happy their kids were involved with a physical activity but weren’t actually that interested in how it was going for them. On the other extreme were the parents who attended or partook in ever practice and never missed an opportunity to scream at the coaches or referees if they felt their child was being done a disservice. If I had to choose between the two to model our involvement in Isaac’s extra-curricular competitive activities I would begrudgingly choose the passive approach. If it is at all under our control, I would choose to never become the Psycho Patental Phanatic (PPP) as there are far too many examples of the damage that can be done to a child’s psyche at a very young age.

Before I get comments on my lack of spelling abilities I will mention that yes I know that the word fanatic is not spelled with a PH but being a Philadelphia sports fan, a town that boasts both the Philadelphia Phillies and their mascot the Phillie Phanatic, I defer to this much more interesting spelling. Also, I couldn’t have shortened my subject parents to PPP and would have to type out “psycho parental phanatic” a few dozen more times. However I digress; as hard as it is to control our emotions for anything having to do with our children it can prove to be amplified by a multiple of 3 when it comes to competition and our child’s place within. As our children move from a world where fairness is preached and everyone gets their turn to a world where the emphasis is on winning at all costs, we as parents have to adjust our expectations and temperaments in a not dissimilar way to which our children will be required to do the same. This doesn’t mean that our children shouldn’t be taught to do their best and work as hard as they can to achieve their goals. All it means is that our children and their parents need to know that despite this hard work, there are no guarantees of more playing time or praise. When parents chronically go overboard toward their child’s coaches, referees, peers, and even their children themselves it does a disservice to the spirit of competition and to their children as well. Putting undue pressure on your child to be the best before they are fully able to embrace themselves as human beings can backfire and even lead to severe burnout like the case of former USC, NFL, and CFL quarterback, Todd Marinovich.

To get a comprehensive story about the life and times of Mr. Marinovich, check out the following link to his life’s story by Esquire Magazine: Todd Marinovich: the Man Who Never Was. In the interest of brevity, Todd Marinovich was the child of a PPP. From a very young age (see photo in esquire article) he was being groomed to be a professional quarterback. Not that large aspirations from a parent is a bad thing but it is reported that his father controlled every aspect of Todd’s life including his diet, every activity he partook in other than football and according to Esquire “…began studying Eastern Bloc training methods…and before (Todd) could walk had him on a balance beam” (Todd Marinovich: The Man Who Never Was). The article went on to describe Todd’s father as stretching his sons hamstrings while still in his crib (presumably to start early to guarantee his athletic prowess). All of this led ultimately to what Todd’s PPP father wanted, his son to be a superstar. Todd went onto star as QB in his high school and in college at the dominant University of Southern California (USC) program while becoming a highly coveted draft choice winding up on the NFL’s LA Raiders under the late owner Al Davis. Little did many know, Todd was about to implode and ultimately only spent a few seasons in the league as a professional quarterback succumbing to alcohol and substance abuse. In an interview on ESPN’s Dan Patrick radio show, Marinovich talked about how he once cut his hand on a crack pipe at halftime of a CFL game in the locker room bathroom. He is just now, at the age of 42 resurrecting himself as an artist having now reached 3 straight years of sobriety.

Of course this is an extreme case of an athlete who had an overbearing former professional football player father and amazingly high expectations put on him from a very young age and throughout his young adult life. Failure was not an option until it was the only option. As a parent I want to somehow find the middle ground between this sort of behavior and the extreme opposite over coddling that could be an easy instinctual reaction to dealing with your child in sports, especially if you experienced a high degree of undue pressure yourself. I think the important things to try to do as a parent are as follows:

1) Encourage your child to put in the effort if he or she is going to participate in the sport or find another activity they are more interested in doing

2) Show interest in your child’s progress as well as their setbacks and be there to listen and provide advice.

3) Don’t let the highs get to high or the lows get to low; If you are overly ecstatic when your kids succeeds and unduly disappointed when they don’t your kid will feed off of these emotions and possibly be unable to function consistently

4) Make sure your kids are having fun. When the sport stops being fun it may be time to scale it back a bit.

5) Remember that your child is an individual: Don’t live vicariously though them or their success and failures. It puts far too much pressure on them for your happiness to be dependent on their success or failure in an activity they should be enjoying on its own merits

In the end, all we can do as parents, in sports or other competitive activities, is to find the right balance that reinforces the importance for our children to put in their best effort without putting too much emphasis on success or failure.

A-Ball-and-A-Skill-Set-The-Problems-of-Youth-League-Sports by Ithabise