If a child plays sports without a parent watching…
If you see a clump of children wearing bright uniforms involved in some type of sporting activity, nearby are sure to be a throng of parents watching with great interest. It might feel nowadays that it couldn’t be any other way. It’s like the old tree-falling-in-the-forest thought experiment: If children played a game and their parents didn’t see it, did the game actually happen?
In the great little collection of essays Coach, edited by Andrew Blauner, writers reflect on people “who made a difference,” mostly coaches. Many themes emerge in these reflective essays, but one that particularly struck me was how often one of the writers, thinking back several decades about their youth sports adventures, mentions being bewildered and sometimes annoyed if a parent was “caught” watching.
Journalist and writer David Maraniss remembers a teammate calling out to him during a baseball game, “Hey, Dave, is that your dad standing over there behind the tree?” Maraniss writes, “That scene just about said it all. A parent sighting was so outlandish that it would be called out, and so out of the ordinary that it required a hiding place.” Sportscaster Bob Wolff captures a similar sentiment in remembering his youthful pickup games: “… there were no coaches, no umpires, no spectators, no fights, and above all, no parents.” Forget the arrogant self-importance of instant replay, which has infected big-times sports; in Wolff’s world, if there was a doubt about a ball or strike, they threw the pitch again. Kids made the rules and worked out their own differences.
But our culture has changed, and parents today are a regular presence at youth athletic events. They watch. They provide constant advice. They make and enforce the rules. Maybe it’s too much to think that these experiences on athletic fields will create a generation of kids who are totally dependent on adult guidance, on authority. But last summer, a bunch of neighborhood kids would gather behind my house for this hodgepodge version of hockey using gardening knee pads, lacrosse and hockey sticks, baseball gloves, football helmets, pop-up soccer goals, and a racquetball. One day, I strolled out to watch. As I arrived, the racquetball bounced into the bushes. All of the kids looked at me to make the call.
You see, despite all my high-falutin’ ideas, I could be one of the top offenders of over-involved parenting. Not only do I watch my three children, but I coach them in almost everything. Even when they are all involved with their different teams, I find myself at almost every practice. If I’m not coaching, I’m in the stands.
Is what I’m doing wrong? It doesn’t feel that way. I can’t believe how much I enjoy watching them jump, run, wrestle, tumble, kick, throw, and learn how to navigate their bodies through space. It’s pure joy for me. Still, I wonder if this might be driven by selfish reasons: I mean, I guess there’s an element of self-interest in all love — Alexandre Dumas said, ““Love is the most selfish of all the passions” — but how much of what I am doing is for them?
I’m not trying to make anyone feel guilty. Us parents raised and put up with the little buggers, so if we enjoy watching them play their games, then we should. But I wonder if we’re being honest about it. We don’t watch because they need us there, because without us in the stands the whole operation falls to pieces. No. Even if we might argue that they now look in the stands for us, that may only be because we’ve been there all along. It’s not the comfort of our audience or the support it represents as much as the normalcy of it.
I’m in for the long haul at this point; it would be a kind of cold turkey family torture for me to stop watching their performances. But if I step back, can I say that it might be better if dad wasn’t there all the time? If I really want to analyze this, might I come to the conclusion that though my cheering and even my coaching are subdued, I may inadvertently be building in them an extrinsic-driven reward structure, one in which they feel validated because I am there, rather than intrinsic, in which they take part in sports because they want to?
While there are some parents whose fan behavior is reprehensible — you know them — most parent fandom is probably fine. But we might want to think a little more about what all our spectatorship means. If the joy of the game for our kids becomes too intertwined with the approval of an ever-surveillant parent, will they have a raw moment in which they wonder why they were ever playing in the first place?
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Scott, right on point! We try to be at everything for our kids. It seems right. But I still feel bad for those kids whose parents are not there. Maybe its work maybe its not. Thanks for another great article!
Great post, Scott. In my tween years, I dreaded when my father was in the stands. His mere presence was enough to undermine my performance, for he was a silent spectator and only provided encouragement post-game, regardless of how well I played.
Scott…I like this piece so much because it makes visible the many reasons for “being there for our children.” Kim’s point really makes me think about another critical layer of this: many parents attend these events for all sorts of beautiful reasons of their own, and many parents (sometimes those same parents) also attend because they don’t want their child to be the child whose parents aren’t watching. It’s everything that you’ve said, I think: love, surveillance, stage parenting of a sort, kids looking to us for validation and accurate reflection of who they are. But also wrapped up in this complex scenario is the looming meta-narrative about the neglected child whose parents don’t bother. And there he is, playing his heart out on the field, with no love in the stands. For that child, the meta-narrative goes, the answer to your initial question is assumed: “If children played a game and their parents didn’t see it, did the game actually happen?” No. And that may NOT be the right answer for many children who truly don’t care if their parents are watching or not. But some of us are afraid that it is.
“no fights”??? Really? I still have some scars from our pick up kickball and baseball games in Willingboro… of course that was playing with older siblings as much as the other neighborhood kids.
But at least you’ve given me a new perspective to free myself from the myth of guilt if I miss a game or bout…
Scott,
When it’s organized sports (or other activities) run by adults, parents should be there regardless whether the kids want them. We know from all the recent history in our society that sending the kids to be tended by other adults poses plenty of risks that never occur when they are playing unsupervised (not that there aren’t risks for unsupervised kids.) A watchful parent is the best defense against physical or psychological abuse by an authority figure.
But kids need time to play hard away from adult eyes. It’s the way they learn to socialize, to deal, for example, with a bully and to understand the bedrock nature of right and wrong. And it is necessary well after pre-school.
After watching one of your recent wrestling matches, I was reminded of how, when I was a kid and we all worked in an apple orchard, we would spend a good deal of our “working” hours wrestling each other down in the grass and the mud. There were no adults nearby. We strained our young bodies, skuffed our knees and banged our noggins while learning to follow the rules of the little community that was ours. I’m glad that I had that opportunity back then. It would have been fun to have had some organized wrestling too. We didn’t. But I don’t know what life would be like now without those hours in the orchard.
Scott, Joe and I are firm believers in letting them be on their own. We go as a family to the big events; playoffs, senior day, etc. With four children, we just can’t be everywhere. One of our children plays soccer (2 teams), golf (club champ), tennis (also champ), softball (2 teams), basketball, volleyball, track, and swim team. I can count on one hand how many times I saw her play any of these sports last year. I coach 4 softball teams, so I am involved in one sport with each child (two for the eldest, as I am also the school coach). I haven’t seen Claire play soccer in 3 years and she was heavily recruited in the sport for High School…so I guess she is good. What I do think is important as a family is to participate in sport together. Joe and I love to take the girls out for a round of golf whenever we can. We say to them all the time; “We don’t ask you to come to Daddy’s work and watch him, you do this for you, not us. We will pay for it and get you there.” Every family has their own dynamic, but Joe and I both had parents who never watched us (my Mom never saw me play D1 softball in college), and we never thought twice about it. They had their lives and we had ours. Lisa
There are layers upon layers to this. It’s great for kids to have unsupervised, streetball-type play to add to their character profile. But things have changed. The streets are less safe (or at least we think so because we don’t know our neighbors), the kids have more options, and their schedules are too full; there’s precious little time for free play. Once we’re talking about “organized sports”, the breakdown has often occurred before you get to the issue of parents. In the organized youth sports I’ve seen, there is over-coaching, micro-management, undereducated bureacracy, personal politics, and misplaced priorities in regard to sportsmanship, attitude, problem solving, learning-by-doing, etc. I enjoy watching my kids compete, and I make no apology for being tuned in to the level of product and the educational atmosphere which I’ve bought them into. Is free play, or competition, preferable? It is if you want your kids to be tougher, more independent, and more successful in sports. Look at the ratio of pro athletes with privileged to underprivileged backgrounds. But I say if we’re not willing to trade in our comfy lives, sign ’em up, go watch, foster good attitudes, and accept who we’ve become. (And I believe there were more fights when the parents weren’t there).
All my kids hear from their friends is, “Hey, is that your Grandpa or your Dad?” Lol
I would never miss a game, a dance, a match, not because it makes me feel good, but it makes my kids feel good. They know that what they do is important to me, as it should be, weather they win, loose or fall on their face. Sports are important to them, and they are important to me….
this should be about them not us. what has changed in society that makes us helicopter parents? is it the media letting us know of every tragedy, kidnapping, or child abuse case? so what do we do to protect our kids , we never leave them out of our sight. it is our responsibility to teach them, guide them, encourage them and to not live in fear. i think there is a learning curve on how to deal with kids and their activities/sports. i totally agree on letting them play among themselves… work things out on their own… if necessary duke it out .. and forgive each other the next day. in my neighborhood we didn’t start organized sports till 9-10. i’d like to know the idiot who started tackle football for 5yr olds!! what ever happened to the days when you ask your dad for some nails and a hammer and you and your buddies make a scooter from old skates and a wooden crate from the grocery store…. without mommy & daddy!!!
Ok Scott, I’m a bit late to the dance, but here goes. As always a very interesting and thought provoking commentary by my favorite local essayist. I find the commentary perhaps more interesting in that some seemed to move in lock-step with your analysis, while others chose a more self-serving message. Strange how the same words can elicit such varied responses.
This one really made me look inward to my behavior, my coaching and the reasons behind my “encouraging” my son recently to continue playing basketball and baseball.
Their entire lives I’ve been consistent in my commentary: “find something you LOVE, something that you will have passion for and then go for it!!” So when my son says he LOVES soccer, but doesn’t want to play the other two, WHY do I then say “Nonsense! You’re SO good at the others. You should keep playing – ITS FUN”. To use the kid’s parlance OMG – IS it fun?? FOR WHOM?
You wrestled with success, I ran track. All these years I’ve patted myself on the back because I was letting the kids find their own place in the world of sport. I insisted that I wouldn’t push them into running simply because it was what I did. Unbeknownst to me, while one part of my brain lauded me for this unselfish parenting, another part was plotting against me! “Ok, so they won’t be runners” it went, “but they can gain success and notoriety in other sports”. “Surely you will be celebrated once again, and your ego thereby basking in the glow of renewed recognition of the family name.”
Needless to say, these weren’t conscious thoughts and I’m exaggerating, but what is it that drives my insistence that he play? Again, part of me says that I push him because it teaches discipline and teamwork. That quitting leads to laziness in the rest of his life which could then rub off on his school work, which then….blah, blah, blah, blah.
Damn it Scott!!
I now feel the need to move to Key West and turn inward. Must figure this thing out. Do you mind watching my kids while I’m gone?