On Sunday, Jr. and I drove up to Tampa to watch the Tampa Bay Buccaneers take on the New York Giants in the opening round of the NFL playoffs. Jr. was decked out in his #40 Mike Alstott Bucs jersey, and I in my throwback #63 Lee Roy Selmon (the only Buccaneer in the Hall of Fame) jersey. We were ready to roll, and Jr. was very, very excited.
If you saw the game, though, or read about it afterward, you know that, other than a Bucs TD on the opening drive, it was pretty sad for the hometown fans. Final score: Giants 24, Bucs 14. We left with about ten minutes left in the fourth quarter, after the Giants scored their last TD to make it 24-7. As a season ticket holder since 1998, I don't believe I've ever left a game early -- surely not that early -- but it just stopped being fun.
I was bummed, of course, but you know, it's just a game and all that. Jr. seemed disappointed, too, but not unusually so.
Until we got in the car.
As we left Tampa to head for his mother's house, Jr. hid himself under his blanket. Shortly, I heard little whimpering noises coming from beneath the blanket and, thinking that he was pretending to cry as he occasionally does, I teased him, "hey, quit faking it!" Suddenly, he whipped the blanket off and indignantly retorted, with tears in his eyes, "I'm NOT faking it!"
Gently, I asked, "Why are you crying?"
"We LOST!"
The issue crystallized for me in that moment, and it became one of those little incidents in parenting that teach me what it means to be a loving, caring dad. Sure, to me it was just a game. But to Jr., it meant so much more than that. Maybe it was partly my fault for pumping it up ... on the 3-hour drive to Tampa, I kept talking about how important the game was, being the playoffs, and how the season would be over for whichever team lost. But, ultimately, I realized that the things that seem relatively insignificant to jaded adults may take on enormous meaning for our kids. I imagine that's only going to increase as my kids get older, as they get a bad grade or get turned down for a date or don't get The Part in the school play.
In short, good parenting requires great sensitivity. And while a parent certainly ought to be mature, it's a good thing if we don't forget what it was like to be a kid, when we saw the world through a magnifying glass.
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2 comments:
Gah, I wish I could remember who it was, but there was a fantastic poem in The New Yorker last year by a father who beautifully explained the same issues you're discussing here. His son sat on a cake at a birthday party and everyone laughed, including the dad, until he realized that it wasn't even remotely funny for the kid. If I can find it in the stacks I'll pass it along.
Thers is the "sports" parent in our household, but I can definitely see the dynamic you've outlined at work. Our son got to go onto the field at a baseball game for our genuinely bad AA team, and he was so excited, but then the game itself actively stunk. He was really disappointed.
You know, platitudes about winning and losing and playing the game might actually work.
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