this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2025
250 points (94.6% liked)

No Stupid Questions

39784 readers
1299 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I have a 16-year-old son. I'm in my early 30s (had him very young) and a professional footballer. My son also dreams of becoming a successful footballer (he's been playing since he was 6), but he's just... not great. He's good, but not great - and in this extremely competitive industry you need to be at least great in order to even stand a chance. So I told him, as someone who's been doing this for a very, very long time & is active in this sphere, that he should find another, more attainable dream. He took it as me not believing in him, but I'm just objective and realistic.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Jimmycrackcrack@lemmy.ml 4 points 16 hours ago

I don't have kids and I don't know anything about sports. If you continue reading after those disclosures, I'll offer a perspective anyway, since you put this out to the internet for comment.

There isn't really a way you could have put this to your son that would be taken well, it's evidently sensitive for him and despite your intentions it'll feel like a tragic monent. It's just hard news. Whether it's right to break that to him, well I'm not sure but I think maybe you're putting too much emphasis on this one interaction like it was your one shot and there was a definitive right it wrong way to do it. What will matter most is more likely to be what you do generally moving forward. You may have your doubts about his ability in his chosen path and perhaps they're well founded but you can still encourage him and be rooting for him whilst gently suggesting having backup options in times when he appears uncertain. If you consistently do all you can to help in whatever way you can with whatever choices he makes, then if they don't work out and he has to abandon that dream, he'll at least know you supported him all throughout despite your concern and that should count for a lot. If somehow he ends up unexpectedly rocketing to success in football he'll also remember you'd been there all along encouraging and assisting. It's ok to counsel against putting his eggs all in one basket, but just don't push it, you must respect his choice whatever it ends up being and he there to help pick up the pieces if those choices don't make him happy.

Much like with football fans, you support your team by just showing up to every match and cheering on. Perhaps he didn't like the uncomfortable dose of reality today but so long as you are consistently a positive and helpful force he'll hopefully come to appreciate what you've been trying to do for him.