On Parenting to Core Values, Not Interests

?

?

“Hey, Patch, look…the older kids are playing on the field,” I pointed out to my son in the backseat, driving home from his baseball game across town.?

It was a summer night around 8:00 pm and he had already started down the path of convincing me to NOT make him go to bed right away when we get home.

“Dad, pull over,” he exclaimed, almost too excitedly.

“Are you serious?” I responded, knowing in the back of my head there was an ulterior motive at play.

The dominant part of me, the suspicious and skeptical father, let’s call him RAISED EYEBROW JEFF said, “This little con artist is using baseball against me. He’s weaponizing something I love and I’m not buying!”

The other part of me, SENTIMENTAL SAP JEFF, said, “Lean into it, go park the car.”

So, because I’m a pushover, I did.

“Yeah, go park over there,” he said, knowing he had me on the hook.

We hopped out of the car to go over and watch the game, but before I could make my move toward the field, he asked to get our mitts out of the car so we could play catch while we watched. I froze.

The kid inside me that loved watching Field of Dreams, that loved playing catch with his dad, that loved those summers listening to the White Sox game on the radio with the windows open - essentially everything romantic about a game that was admittedly, not made for the age that we live in – had his alarm bells go off in that moment. It was happening.

But a part of me – and I’m sure other parents are like this or at least I hope they are – when a kid starts to show a slight bit of interest in something we love, hope that it’s not because we forced them into it.

My wife and I have talked at length because we both love sports and we don’t want to force these interests on our kids…but it would be nice if they just happened to stumble thereafter we lay the bread crumbs.

I was what you would call, a mediocre athlete: a sports lover. not gifted with the traits necessary to have a long-standing career of athletic prowess.

But I devoured any information related to sports. If there was money to be made in regurgitating the back of baseball cards to someone, I spent my youth preparing for it. One of the first photos I have with my brother Kevin is when he was a baby and I was laying with him on the couch as I read him…the 1992 MLB Almanac. Nothing says “Welcome to the world, kid” like hearing about why Scott Erickson’s 1991 performance for the Twins was likely unsustainable.

I eventually worked in sports. I wrote about sports. I coached sports at various levels. To anyone that knows me, this isn’t a surprise. Most of my sports involvement nowadays has been relegated to catching up on games I missed, coaching youth teams, and getting slight hints from my wife that the boxes of sports memorabilia I still possess do not function well as accent pieces of furniture.

My wife, on the other hand, was a standout high school multi-sport athlete, before heading to James Madison University to play college volleyball. Some of our earliest dates involved playing basketball in the gym of the school where her mom taught followed by a dinner where we would trash talk each other and she would give me a lame explanation why she just lost again. (Notice the subtle trash talk). In fact, our first date I scheduled for a 5:00 dinner. Who schedules a dinner for 5:00 pm at the age of 25? I’ll tell you who. A guy who has to get home and watch Notre Dame versus USC

Now, she’s a high school volleyball coach who loves teaching the game and interacting with the student-athletes while her husband simply wishes the kids got her athletic genes, not his own. But we’re both competitive. And we’d like our kids to be the same way. But recently, the coach/sports fan in her conflicted with the mom in her when I received a call at work.

My wife has most of the summer off and on some of the days, she is tasked with entertaining three kids between the ages of 2 and 7. It’s not being around kids that’s the problem. It’s the entertaining. My visit to work is like vacation compared to that.

My wife was frustrated because she brought a basket of sports items (my son is at the age where I’m trying to find alternatives to the word “balls” because he laughs (parents nodding their heads) so bear with me) including a soccer sphere and volleyball orb (yeah, I just need to use “balls) and even some plastic cones to have what she deemed “mommy sports camp”. It wasn’t well received by the masses.

They preferred climbing on the playground equipment as opposed to the agility drills my wife was planning on putting them through. ?My wife was getting pumped for her volleyball season. Her competitive juices were flowing. The kids’…. were not.

So, she was frustrated. My son had a baseball game just a day before where his focus, or lack thereof, forced to him to turn around just before a ground ball was rocketed by him. So, I was frustrated.

That led us to having an extensive conversation about harnessing our own desires and admitting it was us who were in the wrong.

He’s 7. Of course, he’d rather be on the playground playing than dribbling a ball around cones. Of course, one of his buddies talking to him in the field is going to force him to turn around. Kids that do have that focus are the exception, not the rule.

The sports culture for kids has changed for the worse. The pressure to start competitive sports at an early age has consumed a lot of people. The costs are skyrocketing and in reality, we should be slipping economics or science books in their hands and telling them, “Go get ready for the job market.” But it’s made parents feel the pressure mostly.

I’m sure, like many parents, we are faced with a number of the same questions when it comes to youth sports:

·????? How many sports do we expose our kids to?

·????? When should they begin to play more competitively?

·????? Should they specialize in a given sport?

·????? How do you instill a love of sports in them?

Put simply…sports are fun when they are left to be fun. They are to play with friends. Learn teamwork. Have others teach you things. Instill a work ethic and discipline. And most importantly, it should be the kid who wants to do it.

During my then 4-year-old daughters’ last soccer game of the season a little over a year and a half ago, one that was riddled with refusing to go into the game due to concerns about the cold weather despite the best efforts of Coach Mike (who was a damn saint), she declared that would be her last outdoor soccer game ever.

A bold claim for a 4-year-old, but not the first on-field retirement from a kid who had yet to reach the age of 10. My nephew Emmett, during a rain-soaked soccer game, came off the field mid-game and subtlety said, “yeah I think this is my last game.” And guess what, it was.

But now that 4-year-old, now almost 6-year-old, is hopping back into the soccer game because… wait for it…her friends are doing it. And that’s what makes it fun to her.

Kids need to learn to make a commitment and stick to it. They need to learn to develop a work ethic. But that comes in time. While my wife and I were having this conversation about “parenting more than coaching our kids”, a sign we have hung prominently in our house “Work hard and be nice to people”, came into view. That really crystallizes everything, our parenting mentality in particular. Parenting around our core values instead of our own interests is the way to go.

We’re raising kids to be good individuals. We want them to find their own way in this world. We want them to find them something they love, someone they love. We simply want them to be happy. Not to push my beliefs on others, but I don’t think it’s very controversial to say, that’s all any of us as parents should want.

Back to that night at the park. We grabbed our mitts and headed over to the field to take in a little Glenbrook North versus Mundelein summer league ball. We sidled up to the fence along the first base line and watched for a half-inning or so. Then Patrick, realizing his attention was waning, and me again realizing, “Yeah that checks out because he’s seven”, grabbed his mitt and ran across the grass next to the park, creating enough space between us to launch some fly balls.

“Dad, throw one,” he yelled. So, I did. Again. And again. And again. And again. Fly ball after fly ball was chucked in the air by me and fly ball after fly ball was tracked down by him.

“Higher, Dad! Higher!” he yelled as my rotator cuff felt like it was being held on by silly string.

?Fly ball, after fly ball, until 45 minutes by and the only illumination still being provided was the indirect light from the baseball field. And one of us physically couldn’t take it in anymore. I’ll let you decide who it was. ?But he was still handing out marching orders for me to throw. And it was the best.

He says today he wants to be a baseball player when he grows up. Great. But that will probably change tomorrow. But in that moment, I didn’t care if he ever played baseball again. Because I’d always remember that moment that came from him simply wanting to throw the ball around *by way of prolonging bed time.?

I’ve only been a parent for almost eight years now. This stuff is on the job training. There is no book that prepares us for every eventuality. There are no set rules that get your kids from point A to B. Development isn’t linear. For parents and kids alike.

But one thing I’ve found is that the best moments with your kids, can happen organically. They’ll find their way. And so will you. Even if it doesn't always feel that way.