Dear Robert’s Dad,
I used to be like you.
Oh I was never quite so bad. I never yelled expletives or plotted my revenge on the referee. I never turned purple or glared at the opposing team’s parents as if they carried arsenic in their pom-poms.
But I cared. I cared so much that I couldn’t hold a conversation and my positive cheers were like machine gun bullets coming from my pursed lips. In my head I tallied every screw-up, assist, or mistake my son made and when he scored it was like I had given birth to Ghandi, so great was my accomplishment.
Note I said MY accomplishment, because that’s how it felt.
And then I got a life. Or better yet, I had a second kid and didn’t have a choice except to divert my attention from my Golden Only Child.
Because it is after all just soccer, and the accomplishments belong to your kid. You, with all your bravado and bluster, are robbing them of their own quiet moment. It’s not yours, freak, and its time to give it back. The kids on the grass should receive the only praise and they should receive it from themselves as in,
“Boy it felt good to try my hardest.”
Or,
“Gee, I really gave that my all.”
They don’t need it from twelve parents blowing sunshine up their butts like the next Pele just walked off the field wearing size seven cleats.
It’s just a game …and a ball…and grass. As I watch parents with their huge mugs of Starbucks, camping out on the sidelines with two giant coolers, pacing like wild animals, patting each other on the back and high-fiving like their sixteen year old just won the World Series, it’s not hard to figure out how things have gotten so mixed up in this world.
Don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t miss a sporting event to save my life. I love sports and I love watching my kids play them. But over the years I have come to be more proud of my childrens’ demeanor then the goals they have scored. To handle themselves himself with dignity and quiet grace. To never ever yell at the ref or play cheap or rough someone up on the side or fake an injury.
And yet there are parents who watch their kids act like punks and say, “That’s my boy.”
Yes, I think that is your boy and you should probably do something about that.
But what boy like that ever learned a lesson when he was standing on a twelve-foot pedestal.
And here is where I get to Robert’s Dad. You may be wondering, but yes, Robert’s Dad is a real person. There is a Robert’s Dad at almost every game I have been to this season, but this was the original Robert’s Dad and it was him who inspired these words.
If you are at your child’s high school soccer game repeatedly yelling your own child’s name, while turning a lovely shade of rose and verbally chastising the ref as spittle flies from your mouth, you have a problem and so does your kid.
I was at a game once where a man yelled Robert’s name fifty-six times. Robert never turned his head once. Robert is probably so sick of his Dad screaming at him that he can’t wait to go to college. Robert is good enough to get a scholarship but Robert may quit soccer entirely just to not see his Dad once a week for three months straight. Robert would just like to play soccer as bad or as good as he plays it that day and leave it at that.
But Robert’s Dad won’t let him.
Standing next to this man I want to say,
“Robert sort of hates you. Even though you are his father, he would prefer it if you shut your mouth and stopped riding him so hard. And by the way you keep telling him to run faster but you, Dad, are fat as a tick on a three day blood binge and couldn’t run three feet without a rest period, which isn’t so inspiring to dear Robert.”
I can only imagine what Robert’s Dad will have to say come play-off time.
My son once said that he hardly even heard the parents during the game, but when he did it wasn’t a good thing and he was happy it wasn’t his.
So am I, son, so am I, and I love to watch you on the field but I won’t shout it from the sidelines because nobody could hear me anyway, Robert’s Dad is too loud.
About Rebecca Suder