the slow-motion train wreck of parents living vicariously through their kids
*When I was in little league, my coach was thrown out of one of my games for threatening to assault the umpire.
*As a pre-teen, I played a round of golf with an accomplished golfer-peer who practiced daily at his father’s behest. After missing the green on an approach shot, in a rage he broke his golf club over his knee.
*When I was in high school, during a sports tournament a parent from my academy was thrown out of a game for cursing at officials.
*Another time after a similar set of incidents, the school board from the same institution officially barred a parent from attending future athletic events.
*The father of one of my best friends eschewed entirely any endeavor contained even the hint of competition. (This spirit is well known within my Christian tribe of Seventh-day Adventists.)
*As a youth pastor, I started showing up at sporting events with a group of students carrying large banners that read “We [heart] Sports.” This, in an effort to jar some of the misplaced nationalistic/school-fandom energy in parents, coaches, and (less-frequently) athlete.
These are just a few of the story-pictures that came to mind as I watched the 2013 sports documentary “Trophy Kids” this week on Netflix. If you haven’t seen it, you could yet probably guess that the subject matter centers around the overbearing parents of young athletes. These over-invested adults stereotypically “live-vicariously” through their kids’ success or failure in competition. Dubbed a horror movie (as opposed to a documentary) by NY Post writer Bob Cook, if you've seen it you know this moniker fits about right.
The two-hour film was difficult for me to sit through. Narrated only by occasional captions, the filmmakers leave the bulk of the story telling up to their subjects. And, oh, if those subjects don’t tell us something about parenting, ego, emotional baggage, and unacknowledged motivations! “Trophy Kids” follows four different parents (and to a lesser degree, their offspring) who want nothing more than to see their children succeed as athletes on the highest level. Obviously, movie editing can do a lot to twist the reality behind any video clip – (check out this fantastic mashup of “Dumb and Dumber” if you don’t believe me, http://youtu.be/Mz-7KcfsKd0 ) and yet there is truth behind Trophy Kids premise.
When parents push their children extremely hard to succeed in a particular area of life, there are bound to be consequences; some profoundly good, some gut wrenching. Almost always, it would seem, the parent-child relationship is strained or compromised to some degree - perhaps not permanently, but not without significance. Along with that comes the psychological stress caused by such heavy expectations (in one scene in the film, a coach recounts how one of the film’s subjects was injured in a basketball game and the first response he had was not one of pain or disappointment – but fear of what his dad would do to him for allowing himself to be hurt). In other instances, parents pushing their kids this hard to succeed at the highest levels eliminates any kind of potential balance more broadly in life: in play, or in social interaction, academics, etc.
The kids portrayed in “Trophy Kids” appeared most of the time to be either openly stressed, beat down into quiet submission, or emotionally absent. For many of them, life seemed to be a chore and their parents only made things heavier. A few scenes are particularly poignant in how these young athletes clearly desire (and need) not a lot else than unconditional love from their parents, yet only receive more criticism.
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Now -- it’s easy to hate parents like those those portrayed in Trophy Kids. The archetype of the obsessively perfectionist parent who criticizes even the smallest misstep is the low hanging fruit of child-rearing criticism in American culture. As I wrote about in another post last weak (http://www.krisloewen.com/writing-blog/2016/3/22/x360ef8b43b406zdkdeqfh2k4wo49w ), confrontations between parents and their kids are rarely a ‘fair fight’ – for the conscientious, it can be painful to witness a small human shrink away even more under the vociferous critiques of his parents. Moments when kids receive disapproval and contempt in place of the encouragement they needed, these are moments of loss. When I see it in myself I feel shame. When I see it in other parents, I feel sad.
Any of us could probably wax eloquently on the potential problems of such an hyper-enmeshed and pressuring parenting style. But that's actually not what this piece is really about. It's child’s play to hate such easy targets as out-of-control, competitive, and overbearing parents. It’s harder to look a little deeper and see our own reflections in the mirror of our reactions.
When Justus’ father (the parent of a young albeit reluctant football player in the film) is castigating him during a car ride, shouting and shrieking as his son cries, begging for a drop of kindness or respect from his father, I can’t help but react. My first impulse is the desire to reach through the tv screen and strangle the guy. Then I just want to turn it off. Its so incredibly wrong on so many levels.
After he verbally loathes his sons’ “lack of confidence”, a cameraman asks him how a boy develops said confidence. The Dad’s response is telling: “I dunno man.”
He’s just is lost as he thinks his boy is.
The truth? So am I.
(And so are you.)
I remember coming home for the first time with our oldest thinking, so they just send us home? We aren't accountable to anyone? There's no instructions? If we're really honest with ourselves, we'll admit that doing almost anything as an adult is exposing - and parenting in particular. No one has it figured out - and the ones who do are blind.
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It’s one thing to react in contempt for those whose behavior we disapprove. It’s another to ask, “what do I share in common? How do I walk that same tightrope myself? What can I learn from them?"
The truth is that the film “Trophy Kids” makes me sick because I see myself in each of the parents: namely the fathers of both Justus and Amari.
The negativity. The resistance against offering verbal praise. The outbursts of anger. The lecturing. The over-identification with the child’s success or failure. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
Perhaps I’m the only one. But my hunch would be that if each of us looked carefully and with an open heart, we’d find that some of our negative reactions to such parenting archetypes are rooted in our own foibles and pasts.
We always possess part of that which we fear most in ‘the other’.
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You guessed it, that's me!
Now let's take it a step further - think about the scenarios proposed in “Trophy Kids”. Athletics.
Kee the character and substitute in a different childhood-oriented activity in place of sports. In the film, one parent quips about his son something like, “He doesn’t know what he wants! He thinks he wants to hang out with his friends, but what he really wants is to have a college degree and a stable life - he just doesn't know it. So what he needs is to invest in basketball so he can have a future. He needs me to push him. He can decide what he wants once he’s an adult. If I don’t don’t keep on him now, he wont have anything to choose!”
In the context of the movie scene, the father’s impulse comes across as incredibly controlling and unfair. We feel the implicit appeal put across by the filmmakers: “come on dad! Just let him have fun! Let him do the things he likes! He’s missing out on the joy of the teen-years!”
But what if we were to insert ‘doing homework’ or ‘attending school’ in place of basketball in the same circumstance? Do we think the same way about the dad who says something like: I don’t care if she doesn’t want to go to school. Too bad if she just wants to hang out with her friends at the park and have a good time. The truth is that she doesn’t really know what she wants right now. She needs me to help her invest in her future so she has options to choose from as an adult! If she doesn’t have me insisting on being responsible with her school work now, she’ll be severely limited in her options in the future.
To my ears, the reasoning in the second paragraph isn’t that far afield from what we’d hope for from most parents. That's the kind of accountability that we all need frankly.
It’s not uncommon for me to have conversations today with friends and fellow parents who say things like: “Man, I wish my parents would’ve pushed me harder to…” [you fill in the blank]: practice this musical instrument more emphatically, reach for higher grades, learn a second language early on, etc. I am still good friends with more than one of my childhood friends who early on were pushed to their max in the spheres of academics or especially music. I distinctly remember conversations with more than one of them in which they expressed frustration or even contempt against their parents’ prodding and pushing. They too, just wanted to have fun with their friends. But their parents had (sometimes strict) rules they had to follow. And yet, as adults, more than one of them use those skills developed back then, today as professionals. And I’d venture to guess that each of them has, at minimum, peace with how they were encouraged to perform as kids, if not appreciation. As children and adolescents, they didn’t have the willpower, drive, or foresight to recognize the lifelong payoff for the pain of hard work at the time. As adults today, many see those former investments as a boon to the joy they now experience in life.
Although the examples in “Trophy Kids” might be considered extreme on the surface, they’re representative of points along a broader spectrum – and perhaps not at the furthest edges. We as parents have the prerogative to engage a little too completely, to disengage altogether, or some combination.
In my (perhaps incorrect) judgment, the ideal place lies somewhere in the middle: where parents are wise, confident, emotionally present, leaders in their kids’ lives. This requires adaptation as kids mature – it requires individual attention and empathy – it demands from the parent hard decisions at times. It’s not helpful to a kids’ growth when her parents are peers – nor when they are absent – nor when they are distant dictators.
My wife and I routinely come back to a leadership model for parenting. As a dad, I have been blessed with the role of being a leader for each of my sons’ in life. And just as in any other leadership position, a fraction of influence is earned by title; the majority of it is earned by relationship, mutual dedication to the task, emotional investment, vision-casting, etc. I am not in control of my sons’ decisions. I am not morally responsible for how they choose to live their lives. I do, however, have the job of setting the stage for them in this: as much as possible, teaching them how to make good decisions, holding them accountable, helping them reflect on past and future decisions so as to develop their character, pointing them to the bigger Reality we live within, walking with them in ever deepening relationship. I have a responsibility to serve them well – and yet I am not ultimately responsible for how they choose to live their lives.
For those of us who tend to be a overly involved as parents, studying the difference between dictatorship and leadership would be worth our effort (and I do use ‘our’ deliberately here).
I’d love for my boys to mature into adulthood fully equipped for the problems and decisions that will come their way. I want them to become men who will make the world a better place, love well, serve fully, breathe deeply. And the present reality is that I’m not perfect, and neither are they – nor will either of us ever be! More likely than not, they will make decisions (among others) that will disappoint or upset me. More likely than not, they will face scenarios for which they are unprepared, choosing to go forward in confusion rather than clarity. More likely than not, they will make mistakes (or have successes) that limit their future options. No human being is perfect, my sons and myself notwithstanding.
I see my job as their dad to be present with them along that path. To involve and interest myself in their lives as a support and guide, while also setting them free to be what the world needs them to be: what God made them to be.
The poem on children by Kahlil Gibran comes to mind as I close this post. In it he writes,
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.
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So get ready (really, you'll need it) and go watch the film if you have not yet. Here's the link again: https://www.netflix.com/title/80033946. Then react with me on Facebook, Twitter, or right here in the comments section below.
What do you think?
How did you react to the film yourself?
Which parent do you identify with the most?
Where do you find yourself on the spectrum I attempted to illustrate in this post?