My Firm Rule Regarding Sports and My Kids

It’s been a game changer

Photo by Highlight ID on Unsplash.

No kid likes their parents’ rules. It can feel like another form of bullying.

It’s as I tell my brother when we bemoan the challenges of parenting,

“You know where the worst place to be is…” as I let the silence linger.

“Where?” he will ask, though now he knows the answer and is just playing along.

“Dead right.”

Dead right is when you are right, but it doesn’t matter because you’re not being heard, or you are being heard and then disregarded.

Fortunately, this was not the case on the topic of sports and our three kids.

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“Pick a sport you get to grow old with,” I told my kids.

This meant that sports like soccer, football, and gymnastics were out.

“Why do we need a sport we can grow old with?” They’d ask.

“Because when you’re old, you’ll have something to do that still physically engages you. You’ll thank me.” (I knew I might not be around to hear the thanks.)

I became more explicit.

“Swimming, tennis, and golf are good choices,” I said. I didn’t think golf made much sense because of access, money, and time, but I didn’t rule it out.

They did.

Swimming and tennis it was.

As we live in the Northeast, which has real winters, tennis became our summer sport, and swimming became a year-round activity.

Swimming started slowly, first with lessons. Eventually, our kids became part of a community swim team, which featured a sizable league of excellent swimmers. They graduated to high school teams, which were even more competitive.

I didn’t quite understand the parents’ reality when I promoted the sport. I had been a meh competitive swimmer in the summers when I was young and didn’t take the sport too seriously.

The new reality was this: Parents in a hot and smelly indoor pool area, watching their kids swim three or four events that would last mere minutes. Parents were rooting for quicker races so that their swimmers could shave time off their PRs.

You would be screaming at the top of your lungs, “You got this,” which the swimmers couldn’t hear a word of. You’d become increasingly hoarse and, at some point, look down at your watch and realize you lost a whole afternoon. And you’d be hot — maybe a tad irritable.

I was never one to analyze the time spent in terms of how many minutes of watching my kid compared to the meet at large. If I did, though, the numbers would be something like six to eight minutes, compared to a meet lasting 180 to 240 minutes. This doesn’t include travel time to get to the meet.

Even still, you’d be happy because the seed you’d planted long ago was taking root.

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Tennis was easier for me to watch and enjoy as a parent. My kids weren’t as committed to the sport, but each developed a game and had fun with it. To this day, it’s the sport we all play together.

Last summer, on a family vacation, we brought our racquets and tennis balls. One afternoon, my daughter came back from playing with her siblings, and she was very grumpy.

I figured she lost, and she never took losing well.

“I lost my serve. It disappeared,” she grumbled as she plopped herself on the sofa.

I suggested we go out and find it. We did, and it took no time at all.

I reminded her, “When you serve, you want to look at the ball up in the air for as long as possible. Don’t drop your head.”

The difference was huge and immediate. The next day, she won, and mostly, she was relieved she had her serve back.

The biggest win of all is that, as a family, we have fun with this common sport, stay active, and build memories.

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When our kids were young, I laid down the rule that they had to pick at least one “grow-old sport.” They didn’t like my rule, but this was one instance where they listened.

I wasn’t dead right. I was just right.

Now, if you asked them, they would say they see the sense of it, or what I might call the “beauty beyond my rule.”

Here’s how they’ve internalized the beauty. If they’re stressed, they might go for a swim. If they have an hour to kill, they might head to a court.

Boredom will never be a factor in their lives.

Beauty beyond rules…as the image says.

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Last week, when I was at a bat mitzvah, I saw a 12-year-old boy on my granddaughter’s tricycle because, as he explained, “They took my phone away, and I am bored.”

He was with two friends, and I suggested he go throw a football. There was one lying on the grass, so the getting was easy. He declined but agreed to get off the tricycle.

This small moment loomed large for me.

I could understand the synagogue being boring, but why weren’t he and his friends throwing a football? Doing something active?

Playing catch should be fun — even if you’re not good at it.

I am, by far, the worst thrower in my family, and it hasn’t stopped my family from tossing a football with me.

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There’s the iconic moment in The Graduate where Dustin Hoffman (Ben) is at his graduation party, and Mr. McGuire (Walter Brooke), a family friend, says to him:

“I just want to say one word: Plastics. There’s a great future in it.”

So parents, one word: Sports. There’s a great future in it.

With this one word, our kids can learn how to stay active, build skills, and learn some important lessons about how to lose, how to win, how to build character, how to bet on yourself, and how to be a good sport with all the grace and dignity required.

One word: Sports.

Mr. McGuire's last words to Ben: “Will you think about it?”

I’m glad I did.

If you haven’t, will you?