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“One night, my 3-year-old asked me if she could sleep in my bed. I told her no. She said, “That’s not fair! Why does Daddy get to sleep in your bed?” READ MORE
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Editor’s Note: Should you really be a parent-coach? Writer Bill Levine considered the question. “Of all the common parental roles such as parent/chauffeur, parent/valet, parent/proofreader, parent/personal banker, parent/contract negotiator and parent/abominable no-man, the most difficult role might just be parent-coach. I came to this conclusion after a season of coaching my son, Mattie’s third- and fourth-grade youth league basketball team. I started the season with hopes of being the Phil Jackson of the 8 1/2-foot basket. Instead, I ended up realizing that there are dilemmas in coaching your own kid that combine to create a perfect storm that blows away opportunities to be a successful leader. Here is my story:” Just like in the NBA, a stretch of ill-advised shots, bad passes and temper tantrums has hurt my team of third- and fourth-graders. On the sidelines, dissension has set in. “You’re hogging the ball,” says a less gifted teammate to the team’s high scorer. “No, I’m not. You’re not open for me to pass to,” says the high scorer. As assistant coach, I rush to quell this disruption by uttering standard coach-speak, “Come on you guys, we’re a team. No fighting. Let’s work together. That’s the only way to win.” But I feel disappointed. The high-scoring ball hog is my son, Mattie. Certainly, as Mattie’s father, more than just coach-speak is called for. I should have told him that from youth league through to the NBA, not liking your teammate is no excuse for not passing to him. As the team’s coach, though, I know that our success calls for Mattie to shoot a lot and not be overly concerned with lesser lights on the team. Episodes like the above during last winter’s youth basketball league season made me sadly aware that it is very difficult to be a great team strategist, an inspiration to your team and son, father of the year and connoisseur of your kid’s exploits when you coach your own child. Maybe I didn’t have quite those lofty goals when I agreed to coach Mattie’s team with a friend, but I wanted to do better than Cal Ripken Sr, who coached both sons, Hall of Famer Cal Jr. and Billy, as manager of the Baltimore Orioles. Cal Sr. was ultimately fired. I was determined to not coach like the overly paternalistic dad-coaches of my Little League days whose mantra to their sons was “practice, practice and more practice and if that doesn’t work, you’ll play a ridiculous amount of time anyway.” Occasionally, the coach-dads set up a batting order that featured their son batting every inning. In those days, dads went into coaching out of self-defense, just to ensure that “no other little cheater, except my slugger, gets to bat every inning.” Despite the incentive of witnessing the seven highly ineffective habits of dads who coach too much, I never did become the Phil Jackson of the 8 1/2-foot basket. This was because I faced too many central dilemmas. One is that with your child, your coaching authority is often compromised by your parental relationship. As mentioned earlier, I occasionally observed that Mattie’s point guard play consisted of distributing the ball expertly to himself. As a coach, I would have simply admonished, “Stop dribbling and pass the ball to your open teammates.” I knew, though, that sensitive Mattie did sometimes see himself as capable of being a one-boy team, so I exhausted my creativity in developing a convoluted, not-so-positive reinforcement strategy: “It might be a good idea to pass, Mattie, when you are quadrupled-teamed because a teammate might just be open.” I found that as Mattie’s coach, I had to favor the clipboard over the pom-pom. My inner cheerleader wanted Mattie to score a humongous number of points in each game, but as coach I cringed when Mattie hoisted shoots from unmakable land. The parental-coaching dilemma did make for both bad parenting and dubious coaching. To my credit, there were a few instances when I performed well as a parent but didn’t create the life lesson I hoped to achieve. In youth basketball, playing time is divided up more or less evenly based on number of periods played. Some kids will get an extra period of play based on the math, and Mattie, because of his ability, almost always played an extra one. During one game when we were way ahead, I decided I would sit Mattie out an extra period, allowing other kids to play more. I hoped that this would show him that there was an equality among teammates regardless of how many times someone shoots at the wrong basket and that his dad, for recognizing this, was a truly fair guy. Mattie unfortunately reacted to his reduction in playing time as if the missed period was a weekend grounding. He had the audacity to call me unfair. He moved off the team bench (if we had one) to take up position in a lonesome corner of the gym. I had clearly broken his illusion that I was coaching solely to guarantee unlimited playing time. During a game late in the season, it occurred to me that I could still salvage my coaching-parenting season because there was an opportunity for a priceless morality moment worthy of Bill Bennett’s attention, if you could somehow pry him off the slots. The moment occurred because Mattie was guarding the fourth-grade’s Mr. Basketball. Throughout the game, Mattie was a step behind Mr. Basketball as the hotshot drove to the basket. Lunging from behind, Mattie often got all body, resulting in several fouls. I was keeping track of our fouls and noticed when Mattie drew his fifth and disqualifying foul. He had fouled out of the game technically. In youth ball, the five-foul rule was on the books, but it was benignly ignored like grass at a Dead concert. Here, though, was my chance to impart to Mattie the utmost in sportsmanship and redeem my compromised parental approach to the coaching role. I did feel I needed to share my unusual intention to foul out Mattie with my co-coach. I gingerly mentioned to Steve that Mattie had committed his fifth foul. “So, shouldn’t we take him out?” Steve was respectful of my proposal but not supportive of it. Mattie wasn’t disqualified, but I disqualified myself from parent-coach of the year honors. Despite a disappointing year of coaching last winter. I will be back as coach of Mattie’s team this winter. Hopefully, I’ve gained some coaching and parenting experience. But if not, I have the solution for having a better experience for both Mattie and myself: I will trade him to another team. Bill Levine writes from Belmont, Mass. |
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