While once we may have contemplated the merits of the philosopher king in human society, now we focus on a humbler, but quite common role: The parent coach. So many of us spend hours coaching our own kids, and I will start by stating the embarrassingly obvious: It is challenging.

This difficulty likely has several interrelated causes. For one thing, having a child prompts in some of us the illusion that we have become geniuses about many aspects of life. Sports, innocent as it may be in the context of the great cosmic wheel, is a great exemplar of this. When it comes to our own kids, it suddenly becomes obvious what needs to be done out there on those darn playing surfaces.

Then mix in a frequent by-product of age that often occurs when you get into youth coaching and have seen that clear path to success imparted by your new-found genius: Regret. If only you had worked a little harder and paid a little more attention. This regret steels our resolve that our kids will not suffer the same fate as us. Now that our reflexes are slowed and our muscles have atrophied but our understanding of athletics has reached genius-like levels, we want to communicate desperately that knowledge on our kids.

Add a dose of “the inevitable perception of the great moment”: If you ever saw your kids do something great, no matter how extraordinarily rare that event was in the context of their other blunderings, that moment now signifies their potential. How many parents have you seen shaking their heads on the sideline, muttering, “I know little Chris can play better than that. I’ve seen it with my own two eyes in the backyard three summers ago.”

Finally, toss in a helping of plain-old familiarity. When we coach our kids, simply put, we’re around them a lot. I recently read a great anthology, Coach (edited by Andrew Blauner). In it, 25 writers describe a person who influenced them, often a coach. One thing that struck me was how many of these writers remember almost never having their parents around when they were playing sports. Now, we’re in our kids’ grills all the time when they’re competing, no more so than when we coach them.

It’s easy to become a round-the-clock coach. Do your nice parent-child sports-watching moments always morph into lessons? While sharing popcorn, do you feel the urge to tell your child things like, “See how that professional competitor’s right foot was turned inward at a six-degree angle, helping to launch the whazzit powerfully toward the desired objective in just the correct fashion — with, I might add, stunningly precise spin?”

Of course we could just choose not to coach our kids at all, which some of my smart friends have decided. But like many others, I do love the coaching time together, and I love interacting with their friends in the athletic environment. So the solution is to figure out a way to strike a balance.

If every ride home and every conversation is about the competition, then the result may be a child’s quick resistance to all things competition-like (especially if these discussions tend to focus on what might have been).

Balance may not even be the right concept. Division may be more appropriate, finding ways to create clear barriers between the fields and gyms and the rest of our lives together.

Tough to do, but I’m giving it a shot, trying to separate my roles as parent and coach largely based on setting, where we actually are at the time.

For instance, I’m the head wrestling coach of my sons’ youth club. A few weeks ago one of my sons had a rough match. The match ended. There were some things to talk about.

But I bit my tongue — for two days.

We went through the rest of the weekend, and we had conversations about shark behavior. At dinner, we explored the merits of the new Wii game that arrived in my house. At breakfast the following morning, we discussed Sudoku strategy. I even came across an article about high school wrestling in the paper. I merely slid it across the table to show him the picture. Without comment. Off to school they all went.

Practice night arrived. We ate our dinner, talking about the feats of Bruce Lee (if you watch Fist of Fury and have Internet access, I promise you will be able to talk about nothing else for several days). We packed up. We jumped in the car, where the conversation revolved around a common topic: Why I have to remind them to buckle their seat belts every time we get in the car. Every time.

We entered the practice room. We sat down at mat side and put on our shoes. He strapped on his head gear and walked over with his teammates and grabbed a jump rope, which is sometimes used for actual jump roping before practice.

After a few minutes, I called him over. I stepped on the mat. “I’m on the mat now, right?” He looked up with a quizzical smile, and I beckoned him forward. He joined me. “You’re on the mat now, right?” He nodded.

“Now I’m your coach.”

And then the conversation, the imparting of my genius, began.

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Scott Warnock

Scott Warnock is a writer and teacher who lives in South Jersey. He is a professor of English at Drexel University, where he is also the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education in the College of Arts and Sciences. Father of three and husband of one, Scott is president of a local high school education foundation and spent many years coaching youth sports.

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Tags: sports, virtual children by Scott Warnock // 8 Comments »