Submitted 1 day ago by entity@reddthat.com to [deleted]
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.
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…
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.
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
!lemmysilver
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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 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.
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.
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.
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’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.
‘Objective and realistic’ is just code for not believing in him, though. 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 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.
“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.”
Did he ask for your opinion?
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.
This is a life at stake. Don’t tell this guy to be a pushover to spare a feeling. It’s way WAY worse to fuck a whole life thinking you’ve got a career that your parents know something about when you DONT.
This is a shitty, entitled take. Some people are good at some things. Some are good at others. Don’t gaslight your kid to think he’s an astronaut and let the world teach a lesson. That makes you a SHIT parent.
Life at stake?
Eh no, not knowing that you should have a backup plan if you want to do stuff like football is far from ruining a whole life.
Let’s say that they figure out that football is a no go at 25 or something ridiculous like that, what happens? Nothing. They can just do something else, they can even study and get some good education if they want. Switching careers isn’t impossible like you make it out to be. Hell, depending on where you live you might even get paid by the government to get a better education.
Let the kid do football but encourage them to do other stuff too (like getting a good education).
I see we’re using the big dictionary today. words like gaslight and astronaut. I bet you were even excited to use the word unicorn.
feel like you cut me down a few notches? put me in my place, did you?
got news for you, you’re going to need to try a lot harder than that to cut me down.
your attempt was pathetic tbh. 20 years of mental abuse killed something inside me that makes people like you weak and forgettable.
I found my strength, can you say the same?
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…
I’m sorry, but the irony of not becoming an audio engineer because you didn’t listen is really something.
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.
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.
Generalized animosity from a parent to their child is the not the same as seeing a niche interest that most likely won’t work out based on facts.
You’re giving survivorship bias for two completely different situations. He’s not telling his kid he can’t do anything. He’s being very specific, and that specific thing is also already very difficult to obtain for anybody, let alone those with great skills.
And you’re saying the lessons from one thing aren’t directly applicable to the other when they are. It’s like saying no one who was ever physically abused as a child can ever talk about why hitting a child is bad because they’re just giving survivorship bias for two completely different situations. The lack of belief still hurts whether it’s an isolated incident or a pattern, and OP needs to know that.
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?
Rocket surgeon?
I can fix rockets no problem.
Cam whore?
Dont shame me for having a nice dick :)
You had a catastrophic accident that lowered your mental facilities enough to allow you to drive trucks?
What do you even mean by this?
Demon king ?
Only when I play metal!
Astrophysicist?
I watch the stars…
Shift manager at Panera?
The pay is shit!
Gigolo?
Dishwasher mechanic?
YouTube teaches you this.
You teach other people to drive trucks?
Sometimes
Stand up comedian?
I should be.
All the above
fluffer?
Marine?
If only I was younger and dumber
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.
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.
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.
The kid is growing up in a World on fire. People his age are screwed.
Let him have fun & do what he wants.
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.
You’re doing him a favor. Even if he was just as good as you, he wouldn’t be guaranteed to have as much luck as you did. Might never be seen by the right people at the right time. He needs a realistic career plan regardless of whether he tries to make it professionally.
Since you are a professional who has happened to make it with some level of success, you know firsthand that there are a lot of excellent people who didn’t manage it for one reason or another. (And it’s not always because of lack of talent, they might have just gotten the wrong injury). How did they manage things when they finally came to terms with the fact they wouldn’t make a living doing that? What did they have to fall back on? Are they coaching? Teaching? Selling real estate or insurance?
There is nothing wrong with him chasing his dream, but make sure he has an alternative planned. Make him talk to some of those people, and find his own path. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.
16 is not too old to not learn to be much better.
For professional football, I think it is too late.
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.
Better than lying and feeding him a line of BS that he can be president or an astronaut or something when the likelihood is so low. Tell him he would make a great accountant. Is he good at math. LOL.
When you punish a person for dreaming their dreams don’t expect them to thank or forgive you.
The best ever second generation footballer out of Lemmy.
Probably not the same kind of footballer, but this also seems relevant…
By July
You’d made a whole bunch of brand new friends
People you used to look down on
And you’d figured out a way to make real money
Giving ends to your friends and it felt stupendous
Chrome spokes on your Japanese bike
But selling acid was a bad idea…
Sometimes when people lose their dreams, they replace them with more unhealthy dreams…
Did you go straight into being a pro footballer? Or did you have back up plans? Like “if this doesn’t work out, I’ll be an electrician” or something?
I’ve never had super lofty goals, but my parents always supported me in what I wanted to do. They never tried to steer me, but they did ask pertinent questions about what I was planning at various points. Probably to hint at bad idea.
I feel like I could have asked them for money/support at any point for any of my projects/ideas/whatevers, and - after making sure I was serious - would have helped out however they could.
I have a very unique career at this point, and I am only in this position because of the eclectic experience I have.
Ultimately, he is growing up. He’s going to have to make mistakes.
I’d say you have to be prepared to support him as much as you can in his dream of being a pro footballer.
Maybe he won’t be a pro footballer, but he might get a satisfying career out of being football-adjacent. Medic, science, coaching.
Or maybe he will try it for 5 years and eventually realise it’s not gonna happen, and be an electrician.
Or maybe he will struggle for 2 years, realise he needs to double down, and make the cut a year later.
I had a friend when I was growing up that dreamed of being an RAF pilot. Everything he did was around that.
Due to some unfortunate life circumstances, that dream was ripped away in the space of a week. Completely out of anyone’s control, but he could no longer qualify as an RAF pilot.
He was heartbroken. He’s now an engineer/mechanic in the RAF and seems happy.
He shouldn’t find another dream.
But he should be aware that dreams don’t always come about. And if this dream doesn’t, would he be happy in an adjacent career? Or something else entirely?
Help him research the backup plan.
Could he have any interest in taking on other roles, like management? If he’s doing great in school, and has a direct connection to learning the ins and the outs of the industry through you, he could have a significant leg up.
Sounds like you have had a very productive life! Your son is very lucky.
Encourage the education. But there are loads of good careers that don’t need university degrees.
And all the while, he can try and achieve his dream.
From personal experience, university wasn’t useful for me - other than giving me time to figure out what I don’t want to do, and meeting friends that are still friends to this day.
But I could’ve easily done an apprenticeship, or gone straight into some industry/company. Some days, I wish I had. Other days, I wouldn’t want to be doing anything other than what I am atm.
Dream case, he makes it.
Best case, he figures out what he wants to do by 21.
Worst case, he’s still figuring it out when he’s 25.
I wasn’t making decent money until I was late 20s. Even now, I can’t guarantee I have enough work next year. It’s extremely likely, but I’m self employed so…
Knowing my folks will still support me means I can continue pursuing interesting, useful and innovative things, even in my 30s - even tho that’s not longer required.
Maybe talk to some of your contacts in the football industry.
See if they have similar “football or nothing”, or if they had backup plans.
Talk to some managers, coaches, sports scientists, medics etc.
Ask them how they would get into pro football. Ask them what happens to pro-football aspiring players that don’t make the cut.
Use your experience and connections to help and support your son. And be there if it doesn’t work out.
You might know better, but he still has to learn. The best lessons are mistakes.
You have make the call about your opinion of his talent. We can’t know.
If you are looking to ascribe a pejorative term to your behavior the consider this.
If you are wrong you may a dumbass, but since you are doing your best to help the kid, you are certainly not a jerk.
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.
I wouldn’t say “jerk”, but maybe a little insensitive to supporting his dreams. The hard part about being a parent is that your kid needs to fail sometimes, and your protesting to the failing will only create a divide between you two. Offering advice once is totally fine, but continuing will make the situation worse. He will likely fail pursuing his dream, and reality will hit him hard afterwards, but that’s ok. Just make sure he has your support, and he knows you love him.
It doesn’t matter that you’ve learned this life lesson already. He hasn’t. Sometimes, you have to learn the hard way for it to stick.
IMO, maybe a jerk, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I think more people need to hear news they don’t want to hear from someone they trust.
What I’ve told most teens looking at the future post high school is, have more then one career/life goal. When I was in middle school, I thought I wanted to be a professional chef. Only to discover I like cooking. I love cooking for friends/family… I loathed the toxic “professional” setting (especially thanks to Gordan Ramsey, who 20 years ago glamorized being a right jackass in the kitchen, pretending that was acceptable). Now I’ve worked in IT for nearly 2 decades and what I’ve done in my field has changed a lot.
I think lying to him and saying, “You can be anything, you can do anything, you’re amazing!!!” type of parenting is going to lead to problems if/when the plan doesn’t work out and they have no fallback. Personally, coddling your kid and lying to them just because it’s a short-term positive emotion (or you’re afraid of saying the truth), IMO is bad parenting. You’re not there to make sure they get the “right feels” or to be their best friend. You prepare them for the real world. Final note: you hear a lot of professional sports players say “I had a deal with my parents that if <sport> didn’t work out, I’d do <something else>.”
I’m impressed that a pro footballer found Lemmy. Welcome!
amorpheus@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Regardless of talent kids should always have a backup plan. What if he broke his leg and didn’t get back into shape? Shit happens.