I couldn’t help but be a little relieved when the thunder rolled in. Baseball was canceled, one of five games scheduled in a nine-day span. The weekday games are precisely at dinnertime, and I have two other children and a husband with a commute.
I’m torn. I do want to see my son play (sometimes) but I don’t want my family’s life to revolve around a recreational sport for one child in our family. I’m fully aware, though, that the expectation is that both parents are present in their camp chairs and sunglasses at all those games, from start to finish.
Most of us have seen or at least heard about the nightmare sports parent, the one who yells from the sidelines, criticizes coaches and players (including his own child), or even the quieter parent who questions plays and gives performance tips on the car ride home. And, by now, most of us have heard the six no-pressure words we should say after a game instead: “I love to watch you play.”
There is an assumption in these words, and in talking about the right kind of “sports parent.” Once we sign Janie up for swimming or gymnastics or basketball, we are all sports parents. Sometimes it’s even part of our identity (who hasn’t heard of a “soccer mom”)? Parents commiserate about travel teams and hourlong drives for hockey and all-day swim meets, but usually not about the decision whether to go with the child’s team in the first place. Watching the game is an unspoken part of the modern parental contract.
Sure, parents have long attended their children’s sporting events. My parents have 5 children, and we all played sports. They tried to come to at least some of our childhood games, and my dad coached for several years. I remember many a summer night watching my brothers play Little League while I ate a picnic dinner on the bleachers before wandering over to the snack bar to buy three-cent pieces of Bazooka gum. These are happy memories.
But they weren’t always there, not even close. In addition to five children, my parents also had jobs, a house to care for, and volunteer and personal interests. My siblings often rode their bikes to games and practices, or we were dropped off by car and picked up later. By the time I joined a travel team in junior high, and then played (poorly) four different sports during my high school years, my parents almost never attended a game or meet. It was too much, and too far, and I don’t remember feeling slighted in the least.
Sports were something we kids chose to do, and they were largely our domains. After all, they are games – diversions, play. Or they should be, despite our collective parental wish to see our children excel at everything, often with college admissions and gold stars in our distant vision.
Our children delight us parents, of course, and I have sometimes wished I could be a fly on the wall of my children’s classrooms or on the playground at recess. Yet I don’t watch every game of Monopoly, every block tower built, nor every session of dress-up or imaginary play. And I don’t think I should. Childhood is not a performance.
If I’m going to carve out time carefully from work and housework and errands in favor of family, (and I am) I’ll spend some of that time attending my children’s sporting events. I want to see them do what they enjoy and work hard at, and I want them to know that I support that effort, and that it is fun to watch them play. But I’m also going to weigh that precious family time with time actually spent together, like a board game or a bike ride or family dinner with my children, instead of always watching them from afar.
Their sports, piano and other activities are theirs. It’s their hard work and their rewards, and a constant parental audience isn’t necessary to show my love and support. Ultimately, it’s all theirs: This life they’re learning to navigate. Oh, I’ll still be watching them plenty — their friends, their movies and music, their texting and Internet use, their good and bad habits, their general level of responsibility and character.
But I won’t be watching all their games.