Youth Sports, Scarcity and Faith

Youth Sports, Scarcity and Faith

I was listening to a podcast the other day regarding parenting. The format of the podcast involved two psychologists talking about their experiences with families in the clinical and school setting and the various reasons people seek out help with their children. The broadcast was interesting to me especially given that both professionals were fathers and they spoke quite a bit on the pressures parents place on their children not just academically but in sports.

All of our children play sports. Depending on the time of year they could be involved in recreational community baseball or soccer, be engaged in their club level soccer teams or be on the field at their schools. I am used to sitting at ball games and I very much enjoy watching my children as well as their teammates compete. I am also painfully aware of the existence of the parental pressures the psychologists were dialoguing about. I have always wondered about the stress I see from parents when their children are playing. I am not talking about healthy excitement and positive cheering, which I gleefully participate in. I am referring to the harsh criticism of children’s abilities/inabilities, early specialization, stress that seems to reflect off both moms and dads, and the obvious, untamed projections of the parents’ own needs landing dead center on their kids and at times ricocheting off to graze my children. Yes, I have been witness to this behavior and had always wondered what the underlying driver was for otherwise delightful adults to act this way.

I think the podcast helped answer my question. Fear is what drives this sideline mayhem. The psychologists state financial fear as being a significant contributor to parents placing their children under so much pressure with the hope for scholarships looming large. I guess that might seem obvious but I was somewhat dismayed. I really gave it some thought and I began to look around my house, I started to think of others’ homes, I started to think of my life and the lives of others I know and began to take inventory. What I found was my socioeconomic peers and I have a lot of stuff, we have lots of experiences and access to even more experiences, we have a lot of relationships, connections and opportunities most people in the world do not have. Then I began reflecting on my own fear. I wondered if I was responding in fear on the sidelines just as the misbehaved parents do but my response just looks different and my fear gets manifested elsewhere. I began to wonder what my fear is based out of and I realized it is rooted out of fear of not having enough. A vision of scarcity juxtaposed against a sickening abundance of everything populated in my minds eye.

I have been doing a lot of reading on Christian spirituality and I have given much thought on how my own faith lives itself out in my life and my interactions with others. This serious spiritual parsing out is no small task and I am trying to learn to be ok with slow incremental progress on my part. Yet, when I took a step back and thought of my own fear/scarcity based responses, I knew it was not in alignment with my faith. This is something I need to continue to work on.

I am currently becoming acutely aware of how much our culture functions from fear only to be perpetuated through advertisements, media, politics, religion and ultimately trickling down to our children’s ball fields.

I would love to have a discussion with any of you regarding fear and its impact in your life. Perhaps some thoughtful discussion could help ease all of us through this scary world.