One of the issues we have is that when our children leave home and walk out the door, who’s influencing them? One of the big influences in our lives are our coaches. These are the people that our kids go to and look up to. Our coaches are like the mack daddy of that sport our kids want to do. It was probably two years ago when my son was playing football for the first time. Our team was up 40 points, and my son had yet to play in that. When he finally got in, I set my timer. He literally played the entire game for 1.5 minutes; that was it. I didn’t want to be that parent, like I don’t want to go to the coach and say, “Excuse me! Can you please put my kids?” It’s not fair.
As much as I wanted to do it, my husband kind of gave me some words of wisdom and was like, “Let’s just take a break. It’s the first game; let’s see how this plays out.” Then, what happens in the second game? Same thing. There were so many points, and my child was not getting played. I’m not one of those parents who believes that everybody on the team needs to get a trophy. I do believe that you’re going to have MVPs, and they need to be spotlighted. We need to be rewarded for what we are doing. We don’t only need to be able to teach the sport; we also need to teach the love of the sport and how to play the game. I have a belief that you have to get into the game, play the game, and learn the game.
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