A star in the family: what do we look for in the sport of children?
It is amazing how many parents really think that the sporting skills of their offspring hide a Cristiano Ronaldo, a Pau Gasol or a Rafa Nadal. Everyone wants a star in the family. That nobody thinks badly: it is not a torticera use of minors for their own benefit, we do not want to end up like Maradona. It's 'for your good'.
Actually, most likely, this desire will hide something atavistic, freaky ... a dream not satisfied in childhood, an illusion projected in their children. In addition, we already know how we are ... each one of us carries within himself a coach, a national coach. And when we 'enjoy' the sport, we can not help thinking because we always, always, always, would have done better.
To top it off, they are parents who maintain a schizophrenic discourse: they tell the children the use of 'manual' and they do not get tired of repeating that "the important thing is to participate", but when they become frenzied in each competition, party, exhibition or tournament, it seems that now it only matters to win, and that they had to try harder, and that anything goes, even disqualify the opponent.
The ethic jumps through the air and imposes the cult of triumph that usually leads to nothing good.
If that catches on children, bad stuff. I have seen some angry to the extreme because the goal did not enter the football goal, crying bitterly because the bar discipline did not come out or riding a horror film to the rest of the team after losing a ball. Sow wind and gather storms.
They are those parents who shout from the band of the football and basketball fields, from the limits of the tension field and from the edge of the tatami cushion. They are parents who have become experts in the sport practiced by their children, parents who have gone from never seeing rhythmic gymnastics to following closely the last crucial duel between Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
They are expert parents in equipment, willing to leave the money they do not have in better shoes for their offspring. As if football depended on that. As if Pele had not been discovered barefoot.
They scream without stopping. But they do not shout slogans to encourage the team, they scream in an excessive way what their children have to do, they also shout at the children of others, the coach and the children of the rival team. They scream so much that they scream more than the coach himself. They scream and shout trying to overcome the tone of voice, screaming and screaming also, of the other parents.
And the worst, of course, is the shame of others that children spend, that they are not stupid and realize everything. That they have to listen to their friends how they criticize that father of the band that plays at being the coach that is not.
The underlying problem is not only the Dantesque spectacle. The bad thing is that children with 'parent coaches' miss the best of their sporting activity. And the best thing is to enjoy what they do while, almost without realizing it, they are learning to strive, to continue beyond their limits, to share with others, to create a team, to obey the coach, to respect the referee , in short, to play, that was what it was about.
