Durable Dad with Tommy Geary
The Durable Dad podcast gives men the skills and tools they need to be rock solid for their family, their work and their community.
Durable Dad with Tommy Geary
068: Build a Bond Through Your Kid's Sports
It feels like a reasonable thought to not want your kid to fail – To not want them to be disappointed.
BUT, that leaves us over-advising before and after their games, and trying to minimize their crushed spirits when they lose.
Since disappointment is an unavoidable emotion, it’s more helpful to teach our kids how to manage it rather than avoid it.
Listen to today’s episode to help you lower the stakes at your kids’ games and connect with them during failure.
This is the Durable Dad Podcast. I'm your host, tommy Geary. This show is gonna give you the skills and tools you need to be a rock solid man for your work, your community and, most importantly, your family. All right, what's up? Episode number 68. I wanted to bring up a subject that we talked about on a leadership ruck that I was on. So this F3 workout group that I'm a part of, every Saturday morning, bunch of guys get together and we ruck for about an hour and we have some type of leadership discussion, and last week, the topic that the guy that was leading brought up was youth sports, and we talked about the good stuff and the bad stuff, and I'm going to dive into it today.
Speaker 1:My daughter our oldest, is only six years old Haven't gotten too deep into youth sports. I don't know if we ever will. She's not a huge fan of sports. We've tried soccer, we've tried basketball. She likes dance, she likes gymnastics. That's cool. I say that with like 90% of my heart. Part of me is disappointed because sports was such a huge part of my life, but if it's not going to be a part of hers, that's cool too. The other night, though, there's like been glimmers of hope, where I get really excited about maybe her being a baseball player or a softball player, because two different occasions she's like, hey, can you come outside and throw this to me so I can hit it with this? And she's holding a baseball and she's holding a bat. Sure, let's do it, go outside. Crazy thing is throw her one pitch and she rips it. And she was just as shocked as I was and she was, wow, I'm good at this, maybe I could be on the White Sox one day. And I was like, hell, yeah, you could do it. And that was a couple nights ago and she hasn't asked to go out there again. Maybe I should encourage you a little bit. But that's where my daughter's at with sports. So I wanted to say that right.
Speaker 1:A lot of what I'm going to talk about today comes from my experience coaching other guys that have kids in youth sports. I mean, it goes back to my experience as a kid and I also coached some baseball teams when I was in college. I coached some younger teams. So a little bit of that experience. But wherever you are in your journey of your kid playing sports, just kind of bring that to mind. Right now. We know all the good reasons why we put our kids in sports. Not going to go and list them all here, but what I want to look at is our experience as a parent. So our kids are going to have their experience. What's our experience as a parent? So our kids are going to have their experience? What's our experience as a parent?
Speaker 1:When we're watching our kids play sports, it can bring up a lot of shit for us. We can get triggered and anxious watching them, and whenever we're triggered or anxious I had a podcast on this Anger is a Messenger. It's a signal for us to learn something about ourselves, and the reason we want to learn something about ourselves is so we can connect with our kids more in these environments. So just notice or ask yourself when do you get worked up while you're watching your kid play sports? Is it before the games? Is it leading up to them? Is it during, is it after? When do you get pissed off? Do you get pissed off at other parents, at coaches? When does your heart rate go up? What do you think about watching your kid fail? What do you think about watching your kid feel?
Speaker 1:Disappointment gets in the way of us connecting to our kids is. I don't want my kid to feel disappointed. That thought shows up so much in our brain and as soon as we think that thought, we try to fix their emotions. We try to fix them. And the thing is these low stake youth sports is a perfect time to learn how to feel disappointment. Know that it's okay to feel that way and know that disappointment is part of learning, part of growing. It's part of having a growth mindset. I'm going to put myself out there so I can fail and learn and get better. So is it true for you that you don't want your kid to feel disappointed? You don't want your kid to feel like crap? You don't want your kid to feel disappointed. You don't want your kid to feel like crap. You don't want your kid to strike out. When you think that way, that train of thought, it's going to create anxiety inside of you. It's going to create some type of stress, a faster heart rate.
Speaker 1:And when we're in that state we do one of two things with our kids. One, we start to be a little more critical. We try to control their experience. We try to control their outcome and tell them what shot they should have taken or what club they should have used or what they should have done in this scenario when they were pitching or playing shortstop. Another thing we do is we minimize their experience.
Speaker 1:So one dad his son was really worried about his batting average and he was looking at his batting average all the time and calculating how many hits he needed the rest of the season to get his batting average up. And his dad, he didn't want his son to feel disappointed. He didn't want his son to feel bummed out about his average and where he was at, and so he'd tell him it's not just about your batting average, it's also about how you play on the team, it's about your defense. And subconsciously you're telling him hey, I know you're worried about this, but you shouldn't be worried about this. Go focus on something else, don't focus on your disappointment. And what that translates to is your kid shutting down, thinking that you don't even get it. Dad, you don't understand where I'm at, and so it disconnects us.
Speaker 1:But why? Why don't we want our kids to feel disappointed? And what it comes down to is we don't like feeling disappointed. The emotion is uncomfortable for us. So if you've noticed that you have this thought, I don't want my kid to feel like crap. I don't want my kid to feel uncomfortable or disappointed. Ask yourself what do you think about feeling that way? And typically the answer is I don't like feeling that way. No one likes to feel disappointed. So that's the work, right there. If you don't want to feel disappointed, if you're not willing to, then you're not going to allow your kid to, and you might be like well, I don't want to feel disappointed, it's not willing to, then you're not going to allow your kid to, and you might be like well, I don't want to feel disappointed. It's not helpful to feel disappointed. It's one of those emotions that are uncomfortable and they're also a part of life. If you're going to go and live life and try new things, sometimes you're going to feel disappointed and if you just push that away and stifle it, it winds up hurting you in other areas of your life and in this case it winds up getting you anxious when your kid's playing and your kid is going to feel disappointed and it's going to affect your parenting and how you parent as a dad. That's why we want to feel all different kinds of emotions and be okay with all different kinds of emotions, because our kids are going to experience them and we can't control that, our kids are going to feel failure, going to feel disappointed, going to feel sad. We can't control it and If we don't handle our own anxiety around these emotions, then we're going to try to control their environment and then it just causes conflict between the two of us and we don't connect with them, we don't empathize with them. So you can zoom out a little bit, care a little less, watch your kid have their experience.
Speaker 1:This dad that his son was worried about his batting average. A couple weeks later his son was coming up to bat in the bottom of the last inning, his team was down by one and the dad was looking at the lineup and who was coming up and saw that his kid might be coming up with the opportunity to win the game and he already felt his anxiety building up. And he already felt his anxiety building up so he paused there. He's like, okay, I'm feeling anxious, I'm making this game about how I'm feeling and now I'm worried that my kid might come up and go for the game winning hit and not get it and feel really sad. He noticed it all, he recognized and was able to let go of that a little bit.
Speaker 1:His son came up, bases loaded, two outs, grounded out, was totally bummed, cried with his teammates and cried in the car on the ride home and his dad didn't shut down. He didn't tell him don't worry about it. He didn't tell him they'll be tomorrow, he just let him be disappointed. And he said, hey, we're going home. They just talked in the car. Their whole family was in the car. When they got home, everyone piled inside except for his son.
Speaker 1:That grounded out and him and he said, hey, this really sucks right now, doesn't it? And his son said yeah, and he said it's a pretty bad feeling, huh, yeah. And I asked him like okay, that's amazing, that's connecting with your kid, that's acknowledging their emotions, not trying to tell them they should be feeling differently. And what happened with your son? And he said I just saw relief come over him. His shoulders kind of dropped a little bit in a relaxed way and he just seemed to feel relieved. He didn't go and start feeling happy right away. His dad didn't try to make him feel happy, but he let him know that the disappointment was totally okay to feel like, yeah, the stakes were high, you really care about winning for your team and it didn't happen. Totally okay to feel disappointed.
Speaker 1:And the rest of the story goes that the following day the son had another game and this dad brought a glove to the game and warmed up with his son and he's like it's not something I usually do, but I just kind of had this feeling that I wanted to do it. And he had a good game of catch with his son before the game and his son went up to bat and got drilled in the back right away and jogged the first and it was gone right the night before. Everything that happened, it was gone. And that's our role as a dad to be there for our kids through the hard times, not trying to change them, not trying to minimize, not criticizing, but connecting with them and just being with them through that experience. So getting wrapped up in our kids' sports is totally normal, but we want to start exploring why we are and how it's impacting us.
Speaker 1:And when you're in the car ride to a sports game, when you're in a car ride home, bike rides to and from practices, these are awesome times to connect with your kid and if you notice yourself wanting them not to feel disappointed or being a little too critical, just check yourself. Know that this is just kids sports and that this is an awesome opportunity for them to fail. That's what I got for you this week. Hope you have a good one and I'll catch you next time.
