Pushy Parents

Pushy Parents

I am what they call a basketball lifer. During the season I will play a couple of times a week, I coach a local boys team and I am involved in the administration of the local club. I’m lucky that my wife also plays basketball so there is some tolerance of my borderline obsession. Still, she understands me reading books like The Jordan Rules and The Miracle of St. Anthony’s [can’t recommend it enough] about as much as I understand why she won’t miss an episode of Glee. I play in a social game over the summer and was catching up with an old team mate that I hadn’t seen in a few months last night. [We’ll call him Truck in case I need to refer to him later, he will never be mistaken for a finesse player.] He was asking about the boys and asked had I bought them a basketball yet on the assumption that I would be encouraging them to play the game.

Pushing them to play a game that I love is something that I am quite nervous about. When you read about people like Andre Agassi and how he hated his father for how he pushed him to play tennis from a young age, I would almost prefer that they never played. Then you see someone like Richard Williams with Serena and Venus and you think about all the opportunities that tennis has given them [not to mention the financial security] and you think that it would be a good thing. Yes, I am assuming that should my boys play they are going to be elite athletes! Seriously, I’ve made great friends from the sport and it has given me health, confidence and social skills that I may not have otherwise had. How could you not want that for your own kids?

Encouraging them to play a different sport that I don’t know as well might be a good compromise but I keep finding reasons to prefer basketball. Soccer seems like a good choice but Ireland does not have the kind of climate where I look forward to shouting encouragement on a windswept pitch in January. Worst part is that in order for their soccer career to reach its logical conclusion, [superstardom naturally!] they will probably have to go to an English club in their early teenage years. Somehow I can choose to gloss over the fact that basketball superstardom means sending them off to the US at some point. Rugby is the one professional sport that could keep them in Ireland but it promises a future of me shivering on the side wondering if cauliflower ears are an acceptable alternative to concussions or dislocated shoulders. Canoe Polo is very popular in our locale but Weill’s disease looms large over that. It all makes you want to wrap them in cotton wool and leave them play Xbox in the relative safety of their room except then I will fret over lack of social skills and poor posture.

The fact is that they will have every opportunity to play basketball. From the time they have been old enough to leave the house they have been dragged along to games I was either playing or coaching and I don’t see that changing while my knees are still strong enough to get me up and down the court. Hopefully they will like it and hopefully I will be encouraging and supportive without pushing them to do the things that I always wanted to do within the sport.

My other dilemma is about encouraging them to develop their burgeoning musical talent. Again, the assessment of this talent is taken through my parent tinted glasses and this post should be viewed in that context. Monkey Boy is a singer though. He can’t pronounce the words but he will sing along to The Wiggles and comes in at the right places in the right tone [so I’m told, he didn’t inherit any musical talent from me, I love music but am tone deaf]. Lately, Hannah has been listening to the song Hey Soul Sister by Train. MB loves it. He cheerfully blabs along to the song and complains loudly when the next one comes on the radio. While I am nervous about them playing basketball, encouraging them to follow an interest in singing downright scares me. The reason being that every time I see a young kid on “Britain’s Got Talent” or equivalent “talent” show, I take an instant and passionate dislike to them. I’m not even sure why I hate them but I definitely do hate them. Child stars raise an urge to violence in me that few other things do.

It reminds me of a time when I saw Chris Rock being interviewed. He was talking about how when he was young he used to look at the rich kids around him and how he hated them, mostly out of jealousy. Now, he looks at his kids and obviously they lead a privileged lifestyle and there is a bit of Chris that still hates the rich kids, even when they are his own flesh and blood!!

I don’t want to be conflicted like that. I don’t want to bring my sons to a recital and teeter between parental pride and a violent loathing of the cocky little kid on the stage. The best example, [or worst] is those kids on Barney. They are completely unbearable, the nicer they act, the more they irritate me. The quickest way to aggravate me is to say that my boys could one day grow up to be the next Jedward. The world doesn’t need the original version of these over-enthusiastic, under-talented wannabe’s, never mind a sequel.

Then again, maybe it’s just arrogance on my part to assume that I get a say in these things. The sooner I accept that my job is to support and encourage them no matter what they choose to do, the better for all concerned. This unconditional love thing is difficult to get used to!

You can follow the further adventures on the boys' facebook page.
http://tinyurl.com/27ehb8y

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