“Pushing Too Hard”

Mark Shriver wrote a memoir about his father, Sargent Shriver. As Mark’s dad was nearing the end of his life and was suffering from Alzheimer’s, Mark took him to a lacrosse game that his 10-year-old daughter, Molly, was playing in. Mark tells the story:

The day dad came to her lacrosse game, he sat smiling and marveling at the scene in front of him: young people in the prime of their lives excelling in the sport on a gorgeous day. That is what he would’ve thought 10 years prior, I knew, but now I assumed he just sat there smiling as the sun was warm on his face and he was with us.

I, on the other hand, was constantly yelling instructions. About halfway through the first half, dad suddenly said to me, “Hey there.”

I looked at him. He wasn’t smiling, and I became instantly alarmed that something bad was happening. He looked straight at me. “You’re yelling a lot,” he said.

“I know dad,” I said, relieved that there wasn’t a crisis. “This is a really close game. Molly has to move or else we could lose.”

A minute or two passed before he said, “Hey there. Did I yell like that at you, too?”

I looked at him. He hadn’t spoken in an accusatory tone. It was just a matter-of-fact question. I was stunned. Had he suddenly remembered that I was his son? Did he know Molly was my daughter, his granddaughter? I didn’t think he had that cognitive capacity anymore.

“Did I?” He asked again, never once raising his voice or changing its tone.

I didn’t answer. “Of course you didn’t, Dad,” I thought.

Even when I was getting crushed in high school tennis, he never said a negative word. Even when I didn’t start for the first three games of my senior year on my high school football team, he had never yelled or expressed disappointment.

“No, you didn’t,” I said to him. He smiled.

“Good,” he said and turned back to resume watching the game and smiling in the sunlight.

What had just happened? I asked myself. Was he telling me not to yell? Was that a moment of insight, of clarity, of him being my father again, or were they just random words?

As we drove home I tried to engage him, to see if he could come back one more time to be there with us, but he didn’t bite. Instead, I talked with Molly – praised her and analyzed certain plays for her. It was the best postgame trip home we had ever had.

Why are so many of us parents like Mark Shriver, relentlessly pushing our kids to achieve in the sports world? And who will correct us when we need correcting?

Many children today feel intense pressure from their parents, their teachers, their culture to perform. Many of them believe that to be successful they have to be extraordinary. The bar is set way too high for many children today. Can we let them be children?