Parents' Role: Build Confidence Through Practice

When our son Nathan was a senior in high school, his performance on his basketball team had fallen as a result of injuries and inconsistent shooting. As the team was preparing for the season-ending playoffs, my son asked me to help him practice his shooting. Over the next few days, I spent a couple of hours helping him practice his shooting. The practice paid off. In the district final, he had a great game, scoring 9 points in the first quarter as his team coasted to a 15 point win. Next in line was the regional final against the #1 team in the state—the winner advancing to the state tournament. Before that game I told Nathan that I thought he would have another big game. The game started disastrously—3 minutes into the game he was benched with his second foul. Cathy and I had been praying with Nathan that if the season were to end here, it would end on a positive note for him and the team. When I saw him heading toward the bench, I sighed and prayed: “O.K., Lord, you know what is best.”

Nathan returned to the game in the 2^nd quarter. He quickly made two baskets and a free throw. Both he and the team played an outstanding game, though they lost a squeaker to that #1 team. During the second half of the game, after Nathan had made his third 3-pointer in a row, he looked over at me and smiled and gave me a thumbs up—thanking me for my help and my confidence in him. After the game, we thanked God that the season had ended well for the whole team.

As expected, kids who practice their skills are the ones who experience the most success. All a child needs is someone who will play catch with him, rebound his basketball, retrieve batted balls, transport him to the driving range. (Dads, practicing with your daughter can be a good way to connect with her if you are struggling to find common ground.)

Should you ever prod your child to practice? Certainly. Don’t you urge her to practice her music lessons? work at her studies? But here are some important guidelines:

• Keep age-appropriate expectations. A five year-old’s interest may shift after 1 or 2 minutes. Let her quit.
• Don’t use guilt to motivate: “I spend lots of money so you can play on this team. The least you can do is practice!”
• Allow older children increasing responsibility for their training so that they learn self-discipline.
• Make sure that you are also urging him to be a good brother, a committed student, a faithful child of God. Athletic skills will be relatively unimportant in his adult life.
• Check your motivation—is your child’s athletics one last chance to be a star yourself?

This last issue—the temptation to live through our children’s achievements—is particularly dangerous. Since we all have an enormous capacity for self-deception, it is important to search our motives. You might ask your child or your spouse—am I pushing too hard? Examine how you respond to your child’s performance—are you overly elated when he wins? overly discouraged when he loses or plays poorly? Remember: your kids don’t exist to fill you up—that is God’s job!

Parents' Role: Build Confidence Through Praise

The Apostle Paul’s strategy to stimulate spiritual growth was to build on past success: “We instructed you how to live in order to please God, as in fact you are living. Now, we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more.” They were headed in the right direction and he wanted them to go further down that road.

Similarly, you parents should praise what your child does well—even when you know she could have done better. If she lacks aggressiveness on the basketball court, don’t whine about her lack of intensity. Commend her for a rebound she battled for and won. If your son made an error in a baseball game, praise one of his good plays—“You did a great job gauging the wind on that pop fly you caught in the 2^nd inning. Not many fifth-graders could make that play!” Some parents withhold praise because they think it will give their child a “big head”. But most often, the braggart’s self-praise is a desperate attempt to fill his need for approval. If you don’t praise him, he will praise himself.

Commending your child’s successes, though, does not mean that you never point out his failures. Hall-of-Fame football coach, Lou Holtz, believes that American Idol is a reflection of some parents failure to appropriately criticize their children:

The less-than-skilled singers auditioning for American Idol is as staggering as it is sad. Simon Cowell, one of the judges on the show, has gained a reputation as being the “mean old bad guy” because he tells people the truth: some of them simply can’t sing. The fact that they’ve never been told this for fear of hurting their feelings is a troubling commentary on what we value today.

When parents offer “junk praise” it disrupts their child’s ability to judge accurately who God has created him to be. Your child needs help assessing his strengths and weaknesses.

Parents, it may be time to tone down the cheerleading. When your child moans over an awful performance, don’t falsely praise him by slapping him on the back and saying: “Good job!” He knows better and will resent your good-willed lie. It might be better to simply say, “That wasn’t one of your better efforts.” And you might add later: “I think you’re not improving because you seldom practice.” Or if your child has a number of bad performances, he might need to hear: “Tom, you’re a better basketball player than soccer player. Would you like to put more time into developing your basketball skills?”

Finally, it is also important that we don’t over praise

athletic achievement. Educator and coach Bruce Svare praised his dad for emphasizing what was most important: “I am almost certain that my father was more proud of my academic accomplishments than he ever was of anything I did on the basketball court or football field.” Think about it: Do you show (at least) as much interest in your child’s academics as you do in her sports? Even when our sons were in college we tried to maintain a balance during our visits to their schools—we not only attended their athletic contests but also sat in on their classes.

Parrents As Interpreters, Part 3

The Failure of Success

Don Simpson, one of the co-producers of the very popular Tom Cruise movie, Top Gun, said that he and his partner, Jerry Bruckheimer “side with the winners; we aren’t interested in the losers—they’re boring to us.” These filmmakers reflect the predominant cultural view: You are hero if you win and a bum if you lose.

When the culture worships winners, kids feel pressured to succeed. Psychologist Roni Cohen-Sandler in her extensive work among teen girls has found that no matter what the age or social status or educational ability of the child,  almost all tell her that "they feel stressed by pressures to excel.” Many of them believe that to be successful they have to be extraordinary. When the bar is set so high, many girls report being “totally stressed-out,” “overwhelmed,” and “completely exhausted.” They “think that besides acing every subject, they must also star in their school plays, shine in  music, excel athletically, be popular, and win awards.” The path to success is dangerously steep for many kids.

One of the U.S.A.’s top marathoners, Ryan Hall, was almost a casualty to this pressure to excel. Hall set very high goals for his running. But his “obsession” to make the 2004 Olympic Team led to burn out. Some mornings he could barely get out of bed. Hall explained: “There wasn’t anything wrong with my body; I was just emotionally and spiritually wrecked.” When he changed his goal to being faithful to God, he found freedom and greater “success”. He told God: “Whatever you want to do, do it. If you want to take me to the Olympics, great. If You don’t, that’s great, too.” Running became a delight again because he had the “freedom to not have to achieve.” He could run for the sheer love of running.

Like Ryan Hall, our son (see previous post) wanted to be successful in basketball. But he had to learn that in God’s world, he is successful when he is faithful: It is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. He was successful when he practiced hard, when he refined his God-given skills, when he didn’t grumble about his coach’s decision, when he cheered his teammates (even the one playing ahead of him!). His performance might not look significant in the team’s season ending statistics, but God keeps a different set of books!

Parents As Interpreters, Part 2

“The Success of Failure”
When our son Jered was a junior in high school he was playing behind a boy on his school team who wasn’t nearly as talented as our son. (This wasn’t just a parental prejudice! A college coach thought similarly). After a game in which he played little, he grumbled: “I work hard, practice extra, play well when I’m in the game, but get little playing time. Other guys never do any extra practicing, play just O.K. and get lots of playing time. I’m not sure I want to play next year.” Our discouraged son needed help with his perspective.

Initially, we reminded him that his extra practice had paid off—he was leading the team in field goal percentage. We also pointed out that his team had been playing weak teams and that he would have an opportunity to shine when they faced stiffer competition. We also encouraged him to think about God’s purpose in all of this. Was God teaching him how to be content “in all circumstances”? to love his teammates? to trust God for playing time?

The following week, one of the boys Jered was playing behind was injured and wouldn’t play in the next game—a game against a difficult opponent. We asked several people to pray for our son. We prayed together as a family. The result? He played little and poorly. Did God answer our prayers? Definitely! As a result of his discouraging performance, he went to his closet and dug out some information he had received at a Fellowship of Christian Athletes’ camp about how to deal with adversity. Our son was learning how to connect with God in his pain.

As the season continued, Jered had highs (e.g., a critical role in the district final win—10 points and 0 turnovers) and lows (e.g., little playing time during state tournament games). But he—and his parents!—were learning again and again to put our hope in God, not in his circumstances: “Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him.” (Ps.42:5) If the source of an athlete’s happiness is praise or playing time or plaques, most will experience a great deal of unhappiness.

But losing can be a powerful instrument for growth. Our son’s “failure” became the basis of his “success”—he grew in ways that would not have happened had he been more successful on the court.

Parents' Role: Parents As Interpreters, Part 1

When I was my son Andrew’s soccer coach, I played him as a midfielder. Though he scored an occasional goal, I told him his job was broader than that—he also had to think defensively. But Nathan, his older brother, was a scorer. After one game in which Nathan had scored two goals, he gave the family a very animated description of how he had scored. Near the end of his story, Andrew leaned over to me and whispered: "Dad, I'm not supposed to score goals, am I?" I whispered back: "No, Andrew, your job is to get the ball from our opponents and get it to our scorers." Andrew became content not scoring because success had been defined to match his talents and his role.

The ability to interpret life accurately is fundamental to maturity. People are not so much shaped by circumstances, as they are by their interpretation of those circumstances. When my middle son felt uneasy listening to his older brother’s exploits, I helped him interpret his experience in the light of truth. When your child encounters one of these significant events—scoring a winning goal or unfairly fouling out of a basketball game or striking out with the bases loaded—she may need you to help her interpret these highs and lows.

 

Jesus claimed that the eye is the lamp of the body.  If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. (Matthew 6:22f). One of our jobs as parents is to help our children with their sight. We can take them to the "Eye Doctor" for the corrective lenses that will enlighten their world.

Parents' Role In Children’s Sports

Introduction

The first year I was old enough to play organized baseball I tried out for a Little League team. Though I didn’t make the team, I was blessed with a splendid alternative. The city organized a league with four regional teams all coached by two brothers. We played three mornings every week and there were NO watching parents. In this low-pressure environment we boys learned how to play baseball. Many of us became the stars of our high school teams.

Fast forward to 2014. I have a friend who referees for high school summer-league basketball. Though it is supposed to be a low-key experience for the kids with minimal coaching, my friend explains that the games are witnessed by 20-30 adults (mostly parents) who are constantly shouting to the players: “Block out on the rebound!” “Watch your passes!” “Don’t let him have the baseline!” “Com’n—hustle out there!”

What has happened? Many parents today are tempted to have their “fingers in every mud pie their children make.” They do this for reasons that feel solid and unselfish, desperately wanting what’s best for their kids. But kids don’t need parents' hectic, exhausting, non-stop supervision of their lives. Parents, you are coaches, not players. Your children have to run the race.

There are two dangers for the helping parent: over-involvement or under-involvement. Though in past years I mostly encouraged parents to increase their involvement, today I encourage some parents to decrease their involvement. In the next few blogs I want to look at what are appropriate—and at times, inappropriate, ways to help your athletic kids.

Loving God, Part 6

Modeling Godly Passions

The Ark of the Covenant, the gold covered chest that housed the tablets of the Law and the presence of God, was the most holy item in Israel’s worship. Not long after the Philistines captured it, David restored it to his people. During the ark’s homecoming celebration, David danced before the Lord with all his might, ... leaping and dancing before the Lord. He was so unrestrained that his wife, Michal, was embarrassed and called him a vulgar fellow! But David was resolute: I will celebrate before the Lord. And I will become even more undignified than this.

Where do people today become so “undignified”? While attending a high school football game, one observer heard “deep-throated yells, violent exhortations, giddy screams, hoarse whoops. The people in the stands lost all sight of who they were and what they were supposed to be like, all dignity and restraint thrown aside because of these high school boys in front of them, their boys, their heroes.” Doesn’t that sound like David? They “lost all sight of who they were and what they were supposed to be like, all dignity and restraint thrown aside.”

We must think clearly and creatively about how we can model a whole-hearted love for God to our children. What do you model when you attend a worship service—are you reluctant to shout an “Amen!” or raise your hands in praise? You may decline, claiming you aren’t a demonstrative person. But didn’t I see you throw your arms in the air and hear you scream, “Touchdown!!” during last week’s NFL game?!

Though my boys saw my passion for the sportsworld, they also saw my passion for the spiritual world. During our family’s Easter celebrations we played David Meece’s resurrection song, Today Is the Day, repeatedly and loudly. That energetic song became a staple of our Easter traditions as we sang and marched around the house rejoicing in our risen Savior. May God increase our freedom to love Him with our whole selves.