The Monster Under the Bed, and Other Distractions

How long do you wait to talk straight with your child after a match?  If you are like me, the praise for a well-played game flows easily, but I get this guilt about mentioning something that I observed after a poor outing, probably a good thing, because emotions need to settle first.  Parents must particularly avoid the stereotypical car-ride-home-armchair-quarterback-advice syndrome (known as crhaqa syndrome, the only known cure is heavy traffic, which takes Dad’s attention away from the game).  However, our boys will soon be young men, so to me it’s phony to just ignore the uncomfortable yet important lessons in every game.

Let me be clear, unless your child is at U8 or below you should already have delegated the skills issues to the coaches.  I kick the ball once or twice a week with my son, watch an occasional practice and see his games on the weekend, but even with that level of involvement his coaches know his skills better than I do, and we don’t know exactly what the directives were to them for a match, what they wanted them to work on, etc.  We also know how painful it is to hear a parent criticize their kid by stating the obvious, like “you shouldn’t have passed that ball where they could intercept it” or the like.  So no, I’m not talking about the mechanics of the game or dwelling on a mistake that your child may already be dwelling on too much.  I’m talking about conquering fears and tuning out distractions.

Let me explain.  In my son’s second game today, I saw a distracted and maybe even a bit fearful boy, definitely not the guy I’ve seen play the game so well so many times and put in hat-trick performances this season.  It made me rewind the tape in my head to my days playing youth sports and my own fears and distractions and bad games.  I remembered another life lesson that came from a sports field.  I remembered how important it is for our kids to learn to conquer the monster under the bed.

Prior to high school I played lots of soccer and at least a couple seasons here and there of lots of other sports.  But until high school I had only played one season of Pop Warner football, and didn’t play running back, my dream position.  I wanted to test myself.  I had friends who played, and I loved playing pickup games in a yard or in the street, why not?

So, I joined the freshman football team in high school, and after initial practice and pre-season, I made it to starting tailback for the first two games.  It was tough and the coach was tough.  One time in an intra-squad scrimmage, I remember dropping a screen pass on the left flank when I was wide open (hey, a wide receiver I was not!).  Coach had just rolled that play out to us, and was pissed that I blew it.  He stopped the scrimmage, grabbed me by my facemask, screamed some unprintable things that included “when you are open, catch the damn ball!” just before throwing me to the ground by my facemask and telling me to run some number of laps before returning to the scrimmage.  But that didn’t deter me.

I scored the first touchdown of the season in our home opener on a right-end sweep, play 2-4-8 in the playbook.  So many years later, I can still see a replay in my head, the safety and I racing for the corner of the end zone, and me diving in just before him.  Then I got severe bronchitis (I had it about five years earlier, too, and both times were miserable).  I was out of school and out of practice for almost two weeks.  I had too much time to doubt myself, too much time to think, and also stressed about catching up with classes.  Could I find the resolve to go back out on the field and compete for my spot?

When I returned to school, I met with coach and told him that I needed to quit.  He tried to change my mind, telling me I was important to the team, but the monster under the bed got the best of me:  “you’re not really that good a running back”, “you are not fast/strong/big enough”, “it will be too hard to get back in shape now”.  I turned in my pads, and still hate the thought of that day 30 years later.  Sure, I was new to football and still had other sports to play, but the point is I let that voice of doubt from under the bed keep me from going for it.

There were plenty of sports that I played as a kid where I wasn’t great.  I remember wanting so bad to be a pitcher for my little league baseball team when I was 11.  I usually played outfield – I’m left handed so if you aren’t going to play pitcher or first base, out you go.  Pitching went pretty well, then once at practice we were playing a pickup game against another team and my coach was standing in as umpire.  I threw a high fast ball a little too high and caught him in the chin with it.  I found myself playing outfield after that!  I’m sure there was more about my lack of control with the ball than that one pitch, but that was the one I remember, obviously.  

I still have the first place trophy from that little-league baseball team, and the fact that I played outfield instead of pitcher for that team because of my crappy pitching doesn’t bother me at all.  I can look back at it, laugh at the funny story, and know I tried my best but just didn’t make the cut.  So I’m here to say that going for it, trying your best, but not reaching your goal will not bother you five years or even five days afterward.  It won't.  But letting your doubts creep in to the point where you don’t go for it, that sticks with you, and you hate that you can't get that chance back.

I know we parents are our kids’ number one fans, we have seen those times when they are just brilliant, and we call or tweet grandma about it.  But it’s a very rare child that doesn’t also get those periods, hopefully brief, of self doubt.  If we are attentive as parents, and approach our kids carefully when we see it, we can help them get past it.  Kids sometimes don’t know that we adults have gone through the same things as them, so it’s important to tell them our own stories in dealing with that stuff when we were young.  I sat with my son tonight, and told him the story above, about how I regret to this day that I did not conquer my fears and put my football pads back on and take the field.  I told him that at times today it looked like he doubted himself and was hesitating a lot, or trying to dump the ball off as quickly as he could after he received it.  I said I wasn’t telling him that stuff to criticize him, I just wanted him to know that if he was doubting himself, it happens to everyone, and I hoped he knew that I thought he was a really gifted player and had no reason to doubt himself.  I told him I hoped he could learn from my experience.

He sat, listened and nodded, and then we hugged before he went to bed.