A friend just sent me a video of a reality tv show style YouTube series about youth wrestling and told me to skip to a few parts with parents. I watched an 11 year old kid pin a former state champion and proceed to get yelled at by his dad because "he didn't spend all this time for a 30 second match." Cue to the kid balling and the parent yelling at him more.
I skimmed the rest of the videos and, surprise, surprise, that kid gets emotional in every match. And the dad sits on the mat, yelling at him. And they interview the dad and he's like "I don't know why he's always crying, he's such a Martha." He then explains he nicknames his kid Martha because he thinks he's a pussy.
Like gee, maybe the kid is under an intense amount of stress because he has no idea how to make your dumbass happy.
Youth sports is insane. When I was a kid, my parents basically forced me to go to basketball tournaments off season and I fucking hated it. You felt like you had to go because everyone else was going and then you get sideline coached/yelled at by your parents.
I love how younger generations are always classified by older generations as "lazy" or "wusses" or whatever. You're the ones raising them you fucks.
Maybe stop living through your kid and let them choose what they want to do. I quit basketball after sophomore year and was instantly happier. If your kid likes a sport they're going to end up hating it because of you.
Thank you for listening to my Ted talk.
it's insane. i'm in my 40s now, but from age 4 to 14 i played youth baseball and for about 3-4 years early on, i played youth soccer. i was permitted to quit in high school, because i could articulate that i knew all the kids who were trying out for the team by then, and 95% were hypercompetitive jerks.
youth sports was part of my [single parent] mom's plan to keep me out of trouble by keeping me busy, but also her way to get some time to herself. i walked/biked or was dropped off to all of my practices and games. it was less common than today, but even then, there were parents who were far more emotionally invested in the games than the kids. yelling at refs, screaming at their kids. i remember feeling embarrassed for them and glad my mom wasn't like that.
i remember coaches even back then had way more issues with disruptive parents than any of the kids.
most of my cohort has kids of course, and i swear, so many of them are just plain up their kid's ass 24-7. like, not in a helpful way, but in that over involved/my child is a referendum on my existence/every second of the day is a teachable moment type of shit. like goddam. they're just little humans. stop trying to make their development so much about you and i guarantee they won't hide important shit from you later in life, when the stakes are actually important.