The Boy headed over to his young soccer team with a nonchalant gait that suggested ambivalence.
“Run, E,” I said. “Show some enthusiasm.”
He broke into his power stride: he slams his feet down in short strides and rocks his whole upper body back and forth. It’s not a particularly efficient gait, and I’ve tried several times to help him improve it.
“Slamming your feet down quickly doesn’t help you run faster,” I once explained. “In fact, it really has the opposite effect.” We practied a better step together, but anytime he wants really to run, he reverts back to his jerky, stomping gait.
I suppose his thinking is logical in a way: to run full speed, you have to put all your energy into your run. What more obvious way is there of accomplishing this than expending massive amounts of energy in slamming your feet down?
So he was running across the field toward the circle of players while I retrieved my folding chair from the trunk. I closed it, looked up, and saw E sprawled on the ground, his arms out at his side, his feet still traveling upward as he rocked ever so slightly onto his upper body from the momentum of the running and falling.
I sighed.
The Boy has such a time with his self-confidence. He’s keenly aware that he’s slower than a lot of his peers; he’s quite cognizant of the fact that he’s far from the most aggressive player on the soccer field; he knows he doesn’t play any number of sports as well as his friends. The only thing he feels truly comfortable and confident doing is riding his bike with me.
I couldn’t tell what happened in the end. He just got up and continued over to the group, but I don’t know if anyone said anything, but I don’t think that’s even necessary: we’re perfectly capable of feeling we’ve made a fool of ourselves without anyone saying a word.
The question was, should I say something?
There was a part of me that wanted to talk to him, wanted to reassure him, wanted to make sure he was okay, that his ego hadn’t taken too big of a hit. Yet there was another part that felt I should just let it go. Bringing it up later might not do anything positive, I thought.
In the end, I just let it go. He never said anything about it, and it seemed like the coach was giving him a little extra dose of praise later — perhaps thinking the same thing I was and trying to give that confidence a little boost? I don’t know. I didn’t talk to him about it either.
It’s that fine line — when to step in and when to back off — that I suppose every parent tries to find in every situation.
When we got back home, the Girl was asleep: she’d just finished a volleyball game and had been fighting a sniffle for most of the day. “Just let her sleep a while,” K said, and so we did.
“How was the game?” I asked.
It turned out that L’s team didn’t just beat the other team; they completely demolished them. “I’m not sure the other team had a total of 25 points in both sets combined,” K said sympathetically.
The coach of the other team had come out and told the audience that they were a young and inexperienced team. “Please give them all the support you can,” she said.
I’m not sure how I feel about that. In a way, that’s like saying, “We know we’re about to get our asses handed to us, but cheer for them anyway.” It’s a tacit admission of what’s about to happen. And yet what’s wrong with that? Isn’t that really just knowing one’s own limitations?
In my own brief coaching career, I got reprimanded by a parent when, after a player on our team, watching the other team warm-up, declared, “We’re going to lose! There’s no doubt,” I replied with, “Yes, you certainly are.” Dramatic pause. “If that’s how you see it, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.” I continued by pointing out that they’d given up before they even started, and nothing good ever comes of that.
“Well, I think you could have been more encouraging,” the mother said.
Perhaps. By that time, the girls had lost not only every single match but every single set. We won one set the entire year and lost every single match. I’d been trying to encourage them, but I suppose it wasn’t enough — not for the girls, not for this particular mother, not for any of them.
It was my one and only season of volleyball coaching. Fortunately, I have a lot more seasons of parenting to get it right.