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If you're a pro, then you know coaches.
Coaches who you could engage on friendly terms to say "Hey, can you coach my kid? And if needs be, let him down gently?" - see what they think of his potential, and if they need to be the one to tell him he is unlikely to make it, then it's going to be easier coming from then than from his own Dad. You get to look like you're backing him by sending him to "one of the best coaches in the business" and then console him when they deliver the rough news...
Regardless of talent kids should always have a backup plan. What if he broke his leg and couldn't get back into shape? Shit happens.
This way it will not be such a big deal if he can't make a football career happen.
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.
You should have known that there was nothing to gain by telling him what you did. Kids that age are smart enough to realize that if they aren't being selected to the local all-star team, it's because they're not an all-star. If they go to football camp and they aren't one of the best people at the camp, they'll realize that they're not very likely to go pro. But you decided to make it your business at a time when you didn't need to, and that makes you a jerk.
You said that you're just being objective and realistic, right, but you decided to tell your son your opinion, and not someone else. If you were actually trying to be objective, you would have told everyone on the team what you thought about their potential. Of course that would be really rude, which is the point.
What you could have done is what many other people have mentioned in the comments. Something about how there's no guarantee that anyone can make it pro, or how long they'll last if they do, because random injuries can end your career, and the median length of a professional footballer isn't very long anyway, so there's still the rest of life to live.
Did he ask for your opinion?
I'd tell him that it's good to pursue his dreams, but that it's also good to have a plan B. If he wants to do the sportsball in college, he should also come up with another thing or even two to get into. That's my opinion, anyway.
I don't think you're a jerk, but I think you've handled this badly and you're using 'objective and realistic' to justify it, but that's just code for not believing in him. Were you great at 16? Or were you merely good enough to get signed and thus benefit from decades of training and coaching that improved you? Do you not believe he will also improve? That's literally what not believing in him means.
It's one thing to inject some realism, to manage expectations, to encourage him to have a fallback, etc, and quite another to effectively say 'You're shit at this so you should just go get a job' or whatever.
When you punish a person for dreaming his dream, don't expect him to thank our forgive you.
He's right, you don't believe in him, and if he's not great at football even though he's living with a pro, that shows me how little you value him. He could be great but what are you doing to help him get there besides crushing his dreams?
If you want to salvage this relationship at all you need to apologize and do everything you can to support him. Training, encouragement, the works.
It's better that he tries to achieve his dream and have to do something else than to have it crushed out of him by his own father.
if he’s not great at football even though he’s living with a pro, that shows me how little you value him.
Some people simple don't have the ability to be good at some things, no matter how hard they work at it, no matter who mentors them. Very, very few people have the ability to be a Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart regardless of what kind of mentorship they have.
Let me give you a concrete example.
I've had a major shoulder surgery after tearing the shit out of my supraspinatus and the labrum. The supraspinatus passes through the acromium process on the scapula. The acromium process has roughly three different shapes, which are largely determined by genetics. A type I acromium process is smooth, and allows the spuraspinatus to pass through easily. Type II and type III acromium processes have pronounced 'hook' shapes--type III significantly more so--that make injury to the supraspinatus much more probable. I have a type II acromium process. Had Mary Lou Retton been my mother and coach, and I'd tried to be a gymnast, I would have destroyed both of my shoulders long before I was ever going to be going to nation-level events; the limits of the shape of my scapula would have made success impossible, given that a strong and stable shoulder is required in gymnastics, regardless of sex/gender. I would likewise be unable to be a competitive powerlifter, for much the same reason; working up to a nationally competitive snatch would have also destroyed my shoulders. (And, in point of fact, it was working on push-presses that killed it.)
People are not a tabula rasa, only needing the proper encouragement to become paragons in a given field.
You are suffering from several fallacies.
Fortunately, the world doesn't operate this way. There are people who are mediocre, and sometimes poor, at playing football professionally or other professions. Your line of thinking would lead to only one person playing football at a time, the person who is the best at it, and everyone else should give up.
While meritocracy is a nice thought, that the best inevitably rise to the top, it's not necessarily true. Just as there's circumstances that keep talent from succeeding, like financial background, biases against people, and luck, those things also can lift up the less talented. There's many celebrities that aren't as talented at acting as someone stuck in a small town.
As far as you know, op could be wrong. Maybe the kid plays great and OP is too critical, you don't know. This could be a critical mistake on OP's end, and making the kid give up doesn't help regardless.
If this were true, no one would need to practice anything. You said Mozart succeeded because of his mentoring, but then argue for people having lack of natural talent leading to failure.
It was also tempting to throw in the argument of verbosity. But your shoulder injury, or that some people are incapable of physically doing things, isn't relevant. The kid is physically capable of playing football. It's a false equivalence.
You presume that this kid will only have the ability he is at, and that even with training, won't get better. This ties into your belief in natural talent a bit, but it's still pretty foolish to assume professional football players play at the level they did at 16, so it's also foolish to assume that 16 is where this kid will peak.
This is where you missed the the bigger picture. There's more on the line than just success at football, there's a whole relationship at stake, and a kid's mental and emotional health.
So that all said, look at it this way. There's four scenarios that could've taken place, with four factors. Kid gets encouraged, let's shorthand that to E. Kid gets discouraged, D. Kid succeeds at professional football, S. Kid fails at professional football, F.
ES is obviously the best. Kid gets support, becomes professional football player, everyone's happy.
EF is disappointing, but salvageable. The kid gets the attitude of not giving up and at least Dad has his back. Maybe he tries something else after not making the cut, and has a great career at something he's able to do, but at least he tried. He's not going to be able to try forever, but he can at least try something new with a solid foundation.
DS is a tragic hero. Kid gets there but doesn't have a great relationship with Dad. Success is tainted by bitterness, and every win is to prove Dad wrong. Doesn't have a great relationship with Dad, and probably has a lasting issue because of it.
DF is the worst possible outcome, and at this point it's the most likely. Kid has an even worse issue with Dad, dreams are crushed, and he grows up bitter and resentful. He's taught to not try for anything he's interested in, and lives a life of miserable mediocrity.
It's my opinion that it's better for parents to encourage their children in their dreams, because the success rate is probably higher and at the very least they get the support they need to try something different. It's almost never a great idea to discourage a child because that leads to resentment and lethargy.
You aren't saving anyone by telling them to give up. That's a decision they should make on their own. This is even more true for a child who is still developing who they are and how they see the world.
You're making a ton of straw-man arguments.
You don't have to be the best. You do have to be good enough to get scouted by a professional team if your goal is to play professionally. I never at any point said that it wasn't worth playing if you couldn't be the best or do it professionally. I spend a lot of time shooting competitively; it's likely that I will never make Master or Grandmaster in anything, and as a result I'm never going to be sponsored or be able to earn a living at it. (...Not that the money is very good anyways.) So what? I still have fun.
In sports, playing professionally is a meritocracy. Socioeconomic class matters insofar as having more wealth and privilege means that you'll have access to better training prior to becoming a professional. But the child in question already has access to training, through a parent that plays professionally. But that's all the farther that socioeconomic class gets you in sports. People from poorer backgrounds often get to go far in sports, if they have the skill.
Yes, OP could be wrong. On the other hand, OP is claiming to be a professional in the field, and is therefore more likely to have an informed opinion.
Success is a combination of directed effort, an inherent capability; it's not one or the other. If you lack certain inherent capabilities, then all the directed effort in the world won't get you where you want to be. You can have all the gifts to achieve greatness in a given field, and yet fail completely if you don't carefully direct your ability in that area.
See above. The kid already has access to top-tier training, and is not making the grade necessary to perform at a professional level. Ergo, the part that is lacking is capability. ...Which is why my anecdote is relevant; it's not my unwillingness to work my ass off that has limited my power lifting aspirations, it's my physical capabilities. (And yes, I really did work at power lifting. And will again once my shoulder finished healing, even though I'm never going to be competitive at any level.)
Of course the kid isn't going to be at the same level forever. But he's not on track to be at a level where he's capable of playing professionally. A 16yo that's capable of going pro--esp. when they have access to high-level training--would be expected to be performing at a certain level. According to OP, he isn't. The probability is that, while he will continue to improve (up until age catches up with him), he is not going to be at a professional level in time to make a career of it.
You're drawing a false dichotomy between being honest/realistic with your children, and having a relationship with them. I'm gathering, from what you're saying, that you don't believe that the parent should give their child a realistic assessment of their performance, and should simply be encouraging; it that correct? It seem like you believe that putting all of your effort into a goal, and failing to achieve that goal would not cause deep bitterness on its own; am I reading that correctly?
"It’s my opinion that it’s better for parents to encourage their children in their dreams [...]" I partially disagree. I think that parents need to encourage children to set realistic goals in life, and goals that can be stretch goals. Maybe that looks like going to school to become a biologist, and going on to medical school if biology ends up being fairly easy for them. Maybe that looks like going into a trade if they're good at working with their hands. Playing professional sports--or being a touring musician that makes enough to live on, etc.--is like winning a jackpot in the lottery. Sure, you gotta play in order to win, but for every person that wins there's millions of people that don't. I would hope that you would say that anyone planning for retirement by buying lottery tickets was a fool, even if that person was your child. But even so, you can play sport for fun.
This is incredibly bad advice
How? You're saying it's better to tell your kid their dreams suck and they shouldn't try? What a great parenting strategy.
If he doesn't have what it takes, and he keeps encouraging him to go for that anyway, then he'd be encouraging his son to live in a fantasy world until he gets mowed down by the real one. That would not be a favor to his son. It would be a failure in his duty to prepare him for adult life.
As a pro, you know better than most that any professional athlete should always have a back up plan. Pursuing academics, degrees, and skilled trades alongside the sport is critical for the very real possibility of a career ending injury.
Emphasizing that to your son alongside his play is an easy right move to make. At some point, if his skill doesn't improve, he will naturally stop advancing in ranks. The reality will take care of itself, and as a father, the emphasis you imparted about other professional avenues will bear fruit without having to deflate anyone.
Is he good enough to be a coach? Or a trainer? Or work in sports tech? Media?
Maybe he can find a way to be invoked without being locked in on being a player on the field at the top level. If what he loves is the game, he can be a part of making the game better or safer or reach more people.
Get one of your professional contacts to honestly evaluate him.
You can’t objectively evaluate him since he’s your kid, and any advice he hears from you will be subject to scrutiny since you’re his parent.
If you’re right then your message will be more believable from a third party, and if you’re wrong then they will hopefully catch that.
Either way, you are right to try to set him up for success; that’s your job as his parent.
I love this idea.
at 9 my mother called me stupid and that I wouldn't go far unless I tried harder
at 12 a teacher told me that I wouldn't amount to much because I was a loser
at 15 my father gave up on me and stopped trying to teach me anything and just yelled at me everyday calling me worthless
at 20 I left home and moved in with a batshit crazy girl, became homeless on my 21st bday.
I moved back home. got called a failure, a lot.
got another job. they trained me. they supported me.
met a girl, she believed in me, supported me
moved out together, went to college.
got a degree, and a job
got married, had kids
I now make six figures. own a large house. very successful, mostly happy(state of the world concerns me).
I tell you this as someone who has been told "the truth".
To a kid, what their parents think of them means everything. they see you as the example, not only, but a hero as well.
what you just did broke the image they had of you. you're not the hero anymore. you're just like every other obstacle they see every single day.
as a parent you must support your child, but you can be creative with it. share their hobby with them, start a new one with them, talk to them about what their backup plans. use your own life experience to help guide them to a decision of their own.
brutal honesty gets you two things
apologize to your kid. you want to share some brutal honesty with them? share how big of a fucking moron you are with them. share how hard you try to be a good loving parent but still make mistakes.
be vulnerable with your child, because you stripped away their armor and now they feel vulnerable around you.
only then can you move past this and help guide them to where they want to be.
I didn't have this life trajectory, but I have another experience and don't really agree with this. My parents have always been loving and supporting of me. They saw me majoring in science and encouraged me. Once or twice my dad told me he thought I'd be a good audio engineer, but I never really took him seriously.
Well I probably wasn't cut out to be a STEM worker, or at least I haven't figured it out yet and I'm getting pretty old. Just working dead end jobs and being too anxious to try for better jobs.
Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I listened to my dad a little better, or if anyone had been able to tell me while I was struggling in my stem classes, that maybe I was aiming at the wrong thing, and to keep looking...
There's no way your dad could have known what was going to happen. There's no way people around you could have known that you were in a career path that wasn't going to work out well for you. Nobody can guarantee the future like that.
The other thing is that even if you're working in STEM, to follow up with your example, there are thousands of different jobs that all feel totally different to people working them. It's quite possible that you could initially hate the field, then make some lateral shift, and find a position that is halfway decent. Here again, nobody knows what's going to be good for you.
If you want responsible career advice, it's quite simple. Because there aren't guarantees, you might want to develop several different skill sets, so that you're in a better position to deal with unknown future changes. If you think you can learn how to do one simple thing and then have 45 years of happiness doing it, flip a coin and hope luck is on your side.
I'm sorry, but the irony of not becoming an audio engineer because you didn't listen is really something.
Hehe that is pretty funny thanks for that :p
speaking as a parent this is one of my worst fears. I want to help support my kids in whatever drives them. I know though, at some point that my kids will make their own decisions that have their own life changing repercussions. the best I can do is impart my own wisdom on them early to allow them to make better decisions when that time comes.
I'll impart some of my own worldly knowledge on you if you don't mind. You're never too old to do what you want to do. it won't be easy, but nothing that makes your life better ever is. I was in my 30s once I turned my life around. I'll never be where I wanted to be, but I'm a lot further than I would have been had I never tried. find what you're good at and drives you and don't ever be ashamed of wherever that leads you. to thine own self be true.
I'm sorry that you didn't get the support you needed, but as an adult remember, our parents are only human and make mistakes too. this doesn't mean what they did was acceptable, but rather allows you to acknowledge the actions and move on from them.
I accepted my father some years after his death, and have acknowledged my mother's shortcomings. what has driven me to that point is my own failings as a parent. I realized that I was making the same mistakes they were just by trying to not become them. my goal as a parent was literally "don't be like mom or dad". now, my goal is "be the dad my kids need".
They don't always get what they want, but I'm always willing to listen if it's important enough to them. I love my kids, would do anything for them if it's in their self-interest. I hope they look back as adults and realize that so they don't have to waste years on battling the same demons I had.
thanks for sharing.
Eh, yeah, a bit of a jerk.
It's not the facts that matter, it's how you deliver them. If you don't focus on what the kid doesn't have, and focus on what they'd have to do to make it, you'd get the same thing done.
If you add in that they're expected, while still under your responsibility, to also work towards a secondary goal that's within reach without needing a ton of luck on top of talent, you set them up to both work on their dream and have a realistic fallback plan.
Doesn't really matter what it is, when the kid's dream is one that they can't make it purely by working at it, it's our job to prepare them for the possibility of success, no matter how unlikely, as well as presenting reality.
I partially raised a nephew years ago. He wanted to be a musician or a pro skater. Talented in both (more as a musician), but both of those fields take more than ability to make work. Even skating, which isn't mostly about who you know and what contacts you can make, you gotta bust your ass every single day practicing like a pro does, and start competing. I explained all that, showed him how to find information for himself, and said he still had to make school his first priority until he was an adult.
Well, turns out he didn't actually like competing, so skating went to the wayside a year or so later.
He started focusing more on music, and started doing small shows here and there, and liked it. But he did hit that wall where you have to not just hustle, but have the right contacts, or make them. So he switched gears like a lot of creative sorts do and got a job he thought might be interesting in the short term while he worked at music as a secondary.
He ended up enjoying that job enough that he decided to do music more as a hobby. Still does. He still skates too, and he's almost in his thirties now. He's also starting his own business in the industry he liked, and went to school to get a basic business degree per my advice.
You don't have to ride their ass, or insist that they abandon a dream. You just have to give them the best advice you can, and let them do their thing as long as they're meeting core necessities along the way.
It's even perfectly fine to tell them that there's limits to what you'll do and provide while they chase a dream; support doesn't mean you have to let them stay in the basement with no actual source of self support on a practical level. It just means that you give them the room to get there if they can while also navigating regular life.
Hell, it's perfectly fine to be blunt about their chances of making it at whatever. Telling your kid that he'd have to reach a level of skill that would take more work than realistically possible is fine. Telling him that he's got an incredibly long and impractical road ahead of him if he decides to try is fine. And it's definitely fine to say that he's got to do it on his own merits, without any nepotism or favors involved. You can even give an honest evaluation of his skills and athleticism, though you gotta be gentle with that.
What never works is telling than that they can't, that it's utterly out of the question and you'll never have their back. That's a recipe for a kid you never get to see as an adult.
Shit, man, who says you're even right? Get some outside opinions on the kid's skills if you're going to play the heavy and be sure you're right.
This was a long, but great read. Listen to this man. I have had similar experiences and outcomes, though not nearly as deep as the OP above me.
/c/bestoflemmy
"You know i believe in you but i also believe that bad luck can strike anytime. I have seen it myself, one bad tackle and you are done. I have to insist for you to have a back up plan."
Years ago I met Bernard King a guy who was capable of shutting down Michael Jordan in college and in the NBA for a bit. King blew out his ACL and had addiction issues. When I asked him if he had advice for a 21 year old kid it was "make sure you get a degree because even if you make it to the big leagues you might not stay and you'll need that education". Your advice isnt terribly different.
Looking at this with adult eyes, no I don't think you're a jerk. It sounds like you're trying help him see the reality of the situation before it causes him any undue emotional (or financial) suffering. It's not, however, very hard to imagine how from his point of view he might feel like you're being jerk, or maybe a bit hypocritical.
Is there any way you can get him playing with kids who are good enough to go pro? If he can start playing against people who genuinely have the goods, it's probably not going to take him very long to figure out for himself whether he can keep up or not. And that way you don't have to set yourself up as the bad guy as much, and you can play a more supportive role and be there to guide him to an alternative path once he gets sick of the other kids running circles around him. At least that's how it worked for the couple of kids I knew growing up who were good enough at basketball or American football that they really thought they could go pro. It was playing against people who were the real deal that made them realize they didn't have the shot they thought they did. It was pretty obvious that these other kids had something extra, and were playing on a level my friends felt they were probably never going to reach.
He has to learn for himself. You learn from mistakes. My mom told me I'm too smart to drive trucks. Guess what I do 20 years later?
You had a catastrophic accident that lowered your mental facilities enough to allow you to drive trucks?
fluffer?
I love music, and was able to earn money as a teenager doing it, instead of flipping burgers or bussing tables, like my friends. But hanging with all those older, professional players taught me that I didn't have the talent to hang with the pros as an adult. Rather than delude myself, I realized that I loved records (it was the olden days) and steered my career and education toward Music History, with an eye on a career in the record biz. I did that for 30 years, until the record industry imploded around 2000.
Perhaps rather than break his heart and look unsupportive, teach him to be honest with himself, and then put him up against truly talented players so he can realize that he doesnt have what it takes. At the same time, encourage him to look at other options in the business, like coaching, administration, scouting, PR, announcing, etc. He can still be part of the sport he loves without being on the field.
Was he asking you directly if you thought he could make pro? Then no, I think your honest opinion is the right answer.
If this was just unsolicited parental advice then yes, jerky thing to say. He will figure it out soon enough, right? 16 is when recruiters start looking and if he doesn't get attention then he should know, I don't think it's the kind of thing you have to point out.
My kid who was a good - not - great athlete leveraged it for a good high school career and a scholarship to help with college, and an alright college sports career, there's no reason to squash him down, if he enjoys the sport it can still be good for his life.
16 is not too old to not learn to be much better.
By 16 you should have an idea if you have a chance at all. I was all state in my sport at 15. I knew by my junior year I wasn't going to be competing in college because the skills just were not there. Most kids who have a chance to go pro know way before 16.