Walking Cliche
By Glinda
The Munchkin has completed his first week of Little League, in the Tee-Ball division. This division has got to be the cutest one in the world, never you mind that many of them cannot catch the ball with their gloves. Minor stuff, just minor.
Anyhoo, the team is made up of five and six year olds, all of whom have varying degrees of enthusiasm/experience/willingness to listen to the coach. A few of the six year olds are in their second year, and the differences are quite obvious between them and the newbies.
I was perched in my trusty folding chair, watching the team practice, when I saw him.
Trouble.
This is the dad who intensely instructs his six year old to “keep your head low and your eye on the ball, son” while he is practicing off the tee and hitting into the backstop.
This is the dad who, after his son threw a ball at his teammate especially hard, and said teammate complained, said sotto voce to his wife “He shoulda thrown it harder, that would have shown him how hard he can throw.”
This is the dad who expects perfection at every turn, even in practice.
This is the dad who arrives a half hour early with his son to practice even more than the hour he gets with the team.
In other words, the dreaded “Sports Dad.” This is the male counterpart to “Stage Mom.”
I watched him with dismay and wanted to shout at him, “Don’t you realize you are a walking cliche? Don’t you realize that you are pushing your son so hard that he is going to hate baseball by the time he is twelve? Either that, or he will go around thinking he is the best player in the universe, only to be crushed when he finds out that there are hundreds of players better than him?”
Yes, I wanted to shout all that.
But I kept my mouth shut. Because even though Glinda is opinionated, she will hold her tongue when it comes to how he deals with his own child.
However, if he utters even a peep to someone else’s child about how they shouldn’t have dropped the ball, or ran the wrong way or whatever, Glinda might have a much harder time maintaining her silence.
February 10th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
It’s critical for the adults to set a sporting example for the children. Have you thought about peeing in his beer?
February 10th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
I second Raincoaster’s excellent suggestion.
It’s one thing to communicate a love for an activity to your child. It’s quite another to push so hard the kid can start to wonder if they will still have the parent’s love if they don’t share the adoration of baseball/football/playing trombone/train watching.
My father played the violin as a child and insisted my brothers and I all take lessons. Not one of us can imagine picking up a violin again. Luckily for the world, this is a blessing because we all stank on ice at the violin.
February 10th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
lol @ raincoaster’s peeing suggestion! I’m beginning to think there’s a rule that all kids sports have to have at least one. So too was one at Lil Man’s soccer practices last summer. Ugh!
February 10th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
I remember competing in a nowhere/nothing skating competition when I was 12. There were four kids in the group and the ten-year-old came off the ice sobbing and collapsed into her mother’s arms crying, “I’m sorry! I’m SO SORRY!” because she hadn’t nailed the double lutz. I mean, we were all doing bunny hops. She went on to be a national-level skater at 15, in residential treatment for a breakdown by 17. Never skated again.
February 13th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
I linked to your blog on this one. My son turns 4 soon and those days are fast-approaching.
February 13th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Thanks for the link! Best to warn them now…it gives you a couple of years to take judo first.
February 14th, 2008 at 3:36 am
One of the punishments for needing money to attend college was the summer “scholarship” work program. I was assigned to be a playground supervisor for 4th to 8th graders. My job was to organize baseball games and various other sporting endeavors. This matched my background of musicals and Shakespearean theater to a tee. What I was not prepared for was the “sports parent” (don’t lay this on just the dads!) In those days, this was the parent who screamed at me to get the “retard” off the field and let their failed 4 grades neanderthalithic spawn play. (this included physical threats and references to “I know where you live”) I can’t say I was the strong, confidentially depressed, cynic that I am now. I use to go home in tears over the criticism and verbal abuse until my dear mother encouraged me to play on my strengths. So instead of practicing baseball that summer, I bribed all of the kids to secrecy and spent the summer rehearsing the Pirates of Pinanze. We sucked as a ball club but the last week of summer camp, we put on a mean musical. The looks on the parents’ faces when lumbering Johnny was capering up and down the stage was priceless. I actually had some parents later blame me for making their kid gay… Some experiences are priceless…
February 14th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Well, you did, you know.
Wasn’t this a Jack Black movie? It should be!