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In a recent article in the New York Times, Mark Heisler nominated Marv Marinovich and Jim Pierce as the two worst parents in sports history. Marinovich, a former professional football player himself, began training his son Todd to be a quarterback before the boy left his crib.
A Sports Illustrated article about Todd the high school phenom noted that the boy never ate a cookie and began physical conditioning at the age of one. He did indeed become a talented quarterback, a first round NFL pick, but proved a bust in part because of severe personal problems that many trace to his, ah, unconventional upbringing.
Jim Pierce, father of tennis star Mary, gave his daughter a very late start compared to Marinovich, introducing her to tennis at the age of ten. While her coach on the pro circuit for four years, he earned a reputation for verbally abusing his daughter and her opponents both. At the age of 18, Mary succeeded in gaining a restraining order against him.
While Messyrs Marinovich and Pierce are certainly contenders for worst sports parent, in my book they have to settle for the silver and bronze medals. They lacked the messianic sense that Earl Woods brought to the raising of his Tiger. When Tiger was just 20, Earl gave the following assessment of his son to Sports Illustrated: “He is the Chosen One. He’ll have the power to impact nations. Not people. Nations. The world is just getting a taste of his power.”
Amusing stuff, but there’s nothing funny about the state of sports parenting. Attend a youth game and you’re likely to see any number of adults in the crowd behaving like kids – berating their own children, opponents, the officials, and one another. The world would be a far better place if the parents of young athletes observed a simple rule: Don’t be an ass.
But often times, bad sports parenting takes milder forms, sufficiently subtle that well-meaning folks can make mistakes for decades without realizing it. In his book Raising a Team Player, Harry Sheehy (a college basketball standout at Williams and now Athletic Director at Dartmouth) notes the tendency of parents to ask the wrong questions when their child comes home from a game.
The young soccer player, for example, is often asked whether he scored a goal, how much playing time he received, and whether the team won. These things matter, but prioritizing them sends the wrong message to the child. Shouldn’t the first question be, “Did you have fun?”
Perhaps you think this question follows from the others, that the goals and playing time and wins are precisely what determines whether your kid has fun. If so, you’ve failed as a sports parent (as almost all of us do, at least to some extent). Don’t you want your child to enjoy sports even on those days when he or his team struggle?
The best rule of sports parenting I’ve ever heard is this: Don’t care more than your kid. If your son or daughter is passionate about a sport, share the passion. Hit them a thousand groundballs, come to all their games, do whatever you can that seems to enhance rather than detract from their experience. But if they don’t mind riding the bench, why should you get worked up on their behalf? If they’re not running three miles a day or hanging out in the weight room or doing whatever you think might take their game to the next level, the most you should do is make a gentle suggestion. If it’s not followed, then your son or daughter doesn’t care as much as you do about their own success. It’s their life, it’s their choice.
By persisting, you won’t make their athletic life better. You’ll just make your relationship with them worse. And those who value their child’s success in sports more than their relationship with the child aren’t just bad sports parents, but bad parents period.
The point extends well beyond sports. Consider “stage mothers” who push their little darlings into toddler beauty contests or into show business. Or parents who insist that their kid be a doctor, when the kid would rather be an artist or an actor – or an athlete.
It’s a mistake for parents to live out their own obsessive fantasies through their children. It isn’t likely to end well. Better to encourage kids to pursue dreams of their own.
Good article, as the father of 3 sons I will soon have to keep this in mind as the oldest one is at the age when he is ready to begin competitive sports. As he has just turned 9 and already is 5 foot 3 and 120 pounds I am actually a little worried about his ability to dominate his age group (I myself was short and skinny at that age so I simply can’t relate) but I certainly don’t want him to go against much older kids either. Right now I am just focusing on things like swimming, biking, hiking.
I am not sure I agree with the “care as much as your kids do” as a parent we sometimes need to encourage them to do things besides watching TV and playing video games and there are some days they don’t want to have their swimming lesson on go on a hike but I make them. And I don’t want my kid riding the bench, certainly there is a better use of his time, as I said I also don’t want him dominating either, the idea is for all the kids to participate win or lose (Ok, there might be one awkward, shy child who truly wants to ride the bench to feel he belongs, I get don’t push him) . Fox news ran a mocking report where some exceptional kid was forced to ride the bench because he was so gifted but Fox news was dead wrong.
On the whole though this was a great article.
I agree with you, especially about the providing a sane level of encouragement and not letting the kids quit halfway through a season. The article does miss one of the most important point of youth sports: wearing the kids out so they sleep!
Don't Let Sports Ruin Your Parenting | FrumForum | www.kotisearch.com // Oct 29, 2011 at 6:12 pm
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The Murdoch brood and the Media Game they play jumped to my mind.
This essay should go a lot further and point out the fundamental uselessness of sports. There is no sport that is a valid subject for a university education. At best, athletes are skilled manual laborers, entitled to the same respect as a good carpenter or auto mechanic. And unlike carpenters and mechanics, athletes have no socially or technically useful skills at all. Tiger Woods can hit a ball with a stick, that’s all. Michael Jordan could bounce a rubber ball. The only justification for having sports in schools at all is for providing exercise and building camaraderie. Excellence? You can earn that in math or French class as well as any sport, plus when you’re done you can actually use what you’ve learned. Coaches like Bear Bryant and Woody Hayes were travesties that should have gotten their schools banned permanently from sports, and the same goes for those clowns who provide sex and booze parties for their teams.
If your city can afford a stadium it can afford good schools and decent teacher salaries. How about a tax on pro sports salaries: 100% of everything above what an average teacher earns in the state where the franchise is located?
I agree that extreme sports parenting is crazy and wrong, but don’t kids need a push? Practice is difficult and unenjoyable, and all but the freakishly virtuous will shun the effort necessary to realize their potential. Give most kids a choice, and they’ll shrug and do nothing.
Earl Woods. The womanizing lecher, he.
His legacy lives.
I remember reading an interview in which Earl Woods said his son Tiger could become “the most influential person in the history of the world.” Truly scary.