I woke up this morning thinking about this post and wondered what about it rubbed me the wrong way. I think it’s this:
Many parents here have had kids that are/were “wire to wire” athletes, showed an aptitude in t-ball and are/were top third of any team they’ve play/played on until they aren’t/weren’t. That wasn’t my son’s trajectory, he did show an aptitude t-ball, but he was bottom third on an exceptional travel team (12U-14U, 2 MLB debuts, 2 AAA, 5+ still working lower levels) where he was this threads topic among a few parents. These types of parents seem either too insensitive or obtuse to realize that those comment will make there way back to both the player and parent. I still know one of these dads and he has no clue he lost my respect long ago. Aside from adding fuel to my son’s desire to prove them wrong, I don’t see any good that comes from negativity or exclusivity toward other’s kids or the need to put them in an opinion based box.
Being a good sports parent citizen is hard, there’s lots of time to interact, analyze and make mistakes. Just the dichotomy of being supportive to other parents while wanting your kid to beat someone else’s kid out for a spot is hard to rationalize. I suppose it’s human nature, but I’m not a fan of limiting dreams because unfortunately life takes care of that without any help from us.