Soccer
Sarah coached a team of 7-year-olds in soccer this year, and today being their last game and banquet, I went to show my support and such. First of all, the kids were really cute and though I'm not nearly as good with kids as, say, Alex is, it's still pretty delightful to be around ones so young and bright and full of energy and excitement.
The game and people at it brought to mind, though, a conversation Sarah and I had a couple months ago. I was extolling the virtues of moral absolutism, and saying that the relativist apologists are the cause for so much self-victimization that's crippling our society and keeping us from being strong. I said that people must be held to their successes and not be allowed to excuse every shortcoming, to coddle themselves into complacency. Her response was that especially with kids, you can't urge them to succeed so much that they become hyper-aware of their failures or they'll become stagnated in their shortcomings. I thought she was suggesting coddling people so they don't get too hurt, so it took us awhile to reach a consensus. That consensus ended up basically being that everybody should be aware of what they're doing well and what they're doing poorly and be able to take advantage of that knowledge to improve themselves, using the knowledge of their failures to work towards improvement and the knowledge of their successes to provide the self confidence they need for that improvement. Or something like that. She said it much more eloquently than I am.
Anyways, there was a girl at the game whose parents, while being rightly supportive of her teammates, were quite literally screaming at her from the sidelines for somewhat minor things all throughout the game. The girl, in turn, was then hyper-aware of every time she did something wrong, and resorted to immediately making excuses every time she couldn't take the ball back or didn't block a goal. I was pretty put off by it, seeing as these kids are 7 years old and it's not like she wasn't trying. This reminded me of that previous conversation and I got concerned that maybe I was some kind of apologist, that next I'd start thinking we should transfer all prisoners to some kind of rehab facility where they can feel comforted that it's okay to commit murder so long as they later learn the error of their ways and feel bad. So, I rehashed the conversation with Sarah (she didn't know what I was talking about, because I'm probably the only person who remembers commonplace conversations for two months) and she put it perfectly (again, and as always) when she said she doesn't think you should apologize for people's shortcomings, that you should be aware of them and work through them rather than just forgetting about it. The key phrase for me was "not letting them indulge in self pity," which comforted me to think of it not as a concession to weakness but as a commitment to strength. It's a great way of putting what I'd been thinking all along and realizing that we were arguing two sides of the same point. So, yeah. I guess that's all I've got on this one.
The game and people at it brought to mind, though, a conversation Sarah and I had a couple months ago. I was extolling the virtues of moral absolutism, and saying that the relativist apologists are the cause for so much self-victimization that's crippling our society and keeping us from being strong. I said that people must be held to their successes and not be allowed to excuse every shortcoming, to coddle themselves into complacency. Her response was that especially with kids, you can't urge them to succeed so much that they become hyper-aware of their failures or they'll become stagnated in their shortcomings. I thought she was suggesting coddling people so they don't get too hurt, so it took us awhile to reach a consensus. That consensus ended up basically being that everybody should be aware of what they're doing well and what they're doing poorly and be able to take advantage of that knowledge to improve themselves, using the knowledge of their failures to work towards improvement and the knowledge of their successes to provide the self confidence they need for that improvement. Or something like that. She said it much more eloquently than I am.
Anyways, there was a girl at the game whose parents, while being rightly supportive of her teammates, were quite literally screaming at her from the sidelines for somewhat minor things all throughout the game. The girl, in turn, was then hyper-aware of every time she did something wrong, and resorted to immediately making excuses every time she couldn't take the ball back or didn't block a goal. I was pretty put off by it, seeing as these kids are 7 years old and it's not like she wasn't trying. This reminded me of that previous conversation and I got concerned that maybe I was some kind of apologist, that next I'd start thinking we should transfer all prisoners to some kind of rehab facility where they can feel comforted that it's okay to commit murder so long as they later learn the error of their ways and feel bad. So, I rehashed the conversation with Sarah (she didn't know what I was talking about, because I'm probably the only person who remembers commonplace conversations for two months) and she put it perfectly (again, and as always) when she said she doesn't think you should apologize for people's shortcomings, that you should be aware of them and work through them rather than just forgetting about it. The key phrase for me was "not letting them indulge in self pity," which comforted me to think of it not as a concession to weakness but as a commitment to strength. It's a great way of putting what I'd been thinking all along and realizing that we were arguing two sides of the same point. So, yeah. I guess that's all I've got on this one.
posted by Roger W. at 10:26 AM
4 Comments:
Roger,
I think this post needs some work. I didn't have any idea of what the hell you are talking about. In terms of moral absolutism, right is always right, and wrong is always wrong. A reading of the 10 Commandments is instructive, and there is nothing there that any thinking person can disagree with.
However, morality has very little relavence to the way that parents act at sporting events. In my opinion, people invest way too much time and energy into micro-analyzing every action that happens on the field at that beginning level of play. They expect their small children to have the level of understanding that adults have, and that is just unreasonable. A child doesn't have the physical ability, coordination, experience, or cognitive ability to be able to perform like some of those parents expect. The consequence is that the child feels they have failed if they have not met the unreasonable expectations of their parent. This certainly doesn't seem like a way to engender a love of a game or competition.
I've seen it countless times. Back in the day when you and Alex were competing in sporting events, Max Gaumer was often a coach. I want to say that Max is a good guy, and he always treated my sons well, (in my opinion). I can't remember his son's name, but I can remember how terrified he was of not meeting his dad's unrealistic expectations. If he didn't do perfectly, he got screamed at. The end result of the screaming was tears and unhappiness. That is bullshit!!! and it is no way to teach a young person about competition, sportsmanship, fair play, and love of the game.
Having said all that, I don't think morality enters into it at all, unless you feel the parents projecting their own wants and needs onto their kids is immoral. That may or may not be, but that is the way life is! Parents want to keep their offspring from repeating their own (perceived) mistakes, and that is not a bad thing. In our family, I didn't yell at you guys in T-ball or basketball because I didn't have any idea of what you were supposed to be doing. I had no interest in baseball or basketball, and no experience or information to impart to you. I always felt that I had failed you guys in that respect. If they had intramural drag races or shooting competitions I may have had something to say. What I always wanted to impart was the importance of always trying to excell no matter what you were working at. I have always felt that if it is worth doing, it is worth doing well. What is important to keep in mind is the level the learner is at. It is of no use to berate a young person for not performing at a level of expertise that is much higher than they could reasonably be expected to perform at. Those unreasonable expectations are self defeating.
Anyway, I kind of understand what you mean. Let us talk further, because this is an interesting topic.
Love,
Dad
Ooooooooooookay. Look at this, I'm using capital letters. You should feel special. I meant to bring this next point up before, but was so distracted by those adorable little faces that I forgot.
In discussing the expectation for children to succeed, I think people often get confused about what can be considered success for a child. Let's take soccer for example. As an adult, the goal (pun intended) of soccer is to do anything and everything legal in the game to help your team win the game. However, children are not just little adults. People aren't just born having all of the skills and knowledge necessary for such a goal. So, the goal for children playing soccer is learning a much more complex series of lessons. Kids spend a lot more time learning the game than adults would have to; your dad made a good point as to why. So what I'm saying is that you have to not only adjust the speed at and ways in which a child is going to have successes in things like soccer, but you also have to adjust what success means for kids in such situations. If a child has effective goals, there is no reason why you shouldn't expect him to achieve those goals at his own pace, but you can't expect a child to achieve adult goals on an adult timetable. A lot of parents on my team were overly obsessed with winning and their kids' attitudes reflected the same obsession.
Unrelated to soccer, the same goes for childhood in general. Children are not little adults- the goal of childhood is ultimately to learn all of the very complex rules and strategies of adulthood. I could go on about this, but I think you get the point.
I'm glad your dad was confused because his confusion is exactly what mine was. How does this connect to moral absolutism? Was this the same conversation (I believe it was at Village Inn) in which I was trying to make the point that social welfare should be more directed towards children rather than adults? I think I was trying to say that the state should be less concerned for caring for adults who have gone astray and more concerned with making sure that every child, by the time he reaches legal adulthood, has a certain level of education and moral, psychological, and social development. If adults started off on a more level playing field, it would be easier to hold them all to the same expectations...There was so much more to this argument, but I'm not even sure that it was the actual connection, so I'm going to stop now.
Hope you had fun at Maquoketa!
Well said, el buble!
El buble for the win! Actually, I'm now confused. It's a vague connection indeed, but basically I'm saying absolutism is the foundation of judgment. I'm taking relativism as the cause for saying generally "everyone's a winner" whereas absolutism is the cause for deciding that one performance is better than another. I suppose my point was that I had a hard time reconciling the idea that I could be an absolutist with the recognition that all these wildly different children's performances must be judged by the merits of the child's attitudes rather than their athletic prowess. That reconiciliation came when it occurred to me that, as you said, the goals of young children playing soccer are quite different than the goals of ideal soccer played by professionals, and that it doesn't invalidate my ideals as an absolutist, because the attitudes are what must be judged absolutely and not the athletic performances.
Post a Comment
<< Home