Strike three. Two words a baseball player hears time and time again.
Even Barry Bonds, the home run king, struck out 1539 times in his 22-year career. Even the most successful athletes fail. But for one parent, strike three was intolerable.
“When his son walked back to the dugout, his dad just started breaking him down,” recalls a Palo Alto High School junior.
Not only did this player burst in to tears, but his performance on the field worsened. This dad’s reaction to failure ultimately played a role in the fact that this athlete went on to quit baseball altogether.
In Palo Alto, the dangers and risks of academic pressures are discussed widely across campuses. Many are now familiar with the label “Tiger Mom,” a term introduced by author Amy Chua, (see sidebar) to describe a parent who puts intense demands on their child to succeed academically.
But beyond the classroom, Tiger Parents can be found in the bleachers, on the sidelines, pool decks and rinks across Palo Alto. The behavior of “Tiger Sports Parents,” who place enormous pressures on their children to excel in sports, can affect the community, including umpires, coaches, other parents, teammates and most of all, the kids themselves.
In light of recent parental influence on the administration’s decision to dismiss the entire water polo staff last month [see online story], The Viking decided to investigate the concept of Tiger Sports Parenting in our community.
Through the years, Paly has built a reputation for having outstanding athletes with three state championships in the past two years and 43 members of the 2011 graduating class continuing on to compete at the collegiate level. Parents can play an important part in their students’ success. When asked what the sports parent role should be, many Paly athletes indicated that the most important job was to support their kid in a positive way.
What is considered support to a parent, however, can be seen as pressure from a child.
“I think it is for me impossible not to even inadvertently place pressure on kids…” Bob Wenzlau, a parent of three Paly athletes, two who have competed at Princeton University and Kenyon College, said. “There’s no way to avoid it.”
To be sure, not all pressure is negative, according to Paly soccer and lacrosse player Kris Hoglund (‘12).
“Some players, if their parents are pushing them really hard, they can respond well to the pressure, and they can really succeed and do well,” Hoglund said.
Many students pointed out that their parents push them to reach their full potential, and they find this encouragement helpful.
Paly assistant football coach, Steve Foug, agrees that parents can play a beneficial role.
“We have a great community of parents here,” Foug said. “It’s a competitive environment in this city, that sometimes lends itself to some pressures, but by and large we have real positive interactions with parents.”
One expert in the field of youth sports, Jim Thompson, offers a model for successful, positive sports parenting. Thompson is a Stanford professor, author, founder and executive director of the non-profit Positive Coaching Alliance (see sidebar).
According to Thompson, “the ideal is that kids feel unconditional support and caring from their parents, this huge support for whatever you want to do in your life.” He added, “The opposite of that is when parents, either explicitly or subtly, indicate to their kid that how well they do in an activity, such as sports, colors how they feel about them.”
While there are countless Palo Alto parents who play a positive and vital role in their kids’ sports experience, there are exceptions. Examples of how Tiger Sports Parenting cross a line from supportive to over-involved and even abusive, can take many forms. Tiger Parent behavior can range from yelling at their kid, referees or other teammates, pressuring the coach, bribing their athlete or punishing them, to other more serious forms of emotional and even physical abuse.
Aggressive parent involvement is not confined to just one sport. Wenzlau has encountered this behavior in his time around the pool.
“A parent as a spectator of a sport will start hollering from the deck at the student in the pool, either coaching them or making gestures indicative of failure,” Wenzlau said.
These verbal outbursts can cause the athlete’s performance to deteriorate.
“I had a good friend whose dad was the coach of the team and he was a very good player… Most of the time he was doing pretty well so he would be happy and his dad would be happy,” Hoglund said. If things did not go well, however, “rather than just making one mistake, his dad yelling at him would lead to two and three mistakes.”
Some parents recognize the temptation to be hard on their athletes.
“I think I need to watch myself when I start being critical,” Susan, a Paly mother whose name has been changed upon request, said. “But I’m known to do it. I’ve chewed my kids up.”
A sports parent’s behavior goes beyond just putting pressure on their own kids. It may include harassing a coach. This presents a difficult balancing act for a coach.
“Sports have discretion where a coach chooses which athlete to play or positions…” Wenzlau said. “I think it can make a complicated environment for the coach to not only be managing players but essentially to be managing the parents.”
Several parents do not hesitate to communicate their displeasure over the treatment of their kid to a coach, official, or even the school administration. The recent dismissal of the boys’ water polo coaching staff due to parent complaints has led some players to feel the parents meddling was unwarranted.
“I feel overall that parents played too large a role in dealing with their kids in this instance, because part of dealing with coaches and dealing with people in your life needs to be done by yourself,” captain Aaron Zelinger (‘12) said.
Referees get their share of insults from parents, which have not gone unnoticed by Paly students.
“Even in high school sports, the parents get too involved and will go off on an ump or a ref and get in their face,” Paly lacrosse midfielder Walker Mees (‘13) said.
Some athletes see the tendency for parents to attempt to coach their kids as one of the worst examples of over-involvement. Students claim that it is rarely the case that the parent is more experienced than the coaching staff or the athletes playing.
“You can definitely see parents over-coaching their kids especially if they’re not really related to the program,” Mees said. “…we definitely have parents… yelling stuff from the sidelines and talking to other players. It gets kind of frustrating too because they don’t know what they’re talking about even though they think they do.”
Paly ice skater Sara Billman (‘13), a representative of the U.S. Figure Skating Association in international competitions for the past four years, agrees that parents often do not have much knowledge of the sport, but continue to obsess over an athlete’s performance.
“There are certain groups of parents that are always standing at the glass windows video-taping their children and yelling at them for everything they are doing wrong…” Billman said.
The pressure that parents place on athletes can extend to micro-managing their physical condition as well. Wenzlau feels that parents should consider the impact.
“I think parents need to recognize that a rested and relaxed athlete is actually a better athlete than an over-stressed athlete,” Wenzlau said.
Eating disorders, over-training, and playing through injuries and illness are often symptoms of a hard-driving parent.
“There’s always the pressure in skating to become lighter or become skinnier,” Billman said. “There was this case where this girl developed anorexia over time because her mom was like ‘oh you’re too big,’ and things like that.”
There are also times when parents publicly cross a line into verbally abusive behavior. Susan recalls a horrific incident at a girls’ lacrosse game at Menlo Atherton high school. It occured a few years ago, in the context of the tragic series of student suicides on the local train tracks.
“A parent from the other team who was very vocal shouted something to the effect of ‘go back to where the train tracks are!’” Susan said. “He was shouting it towards the Paly girls who were out there playing lacrosse. It was shocking, absolutely shocking.”
Beneath both radical and subtle behavior lies the motivation behind a Tiger Sports Parent. College is often a driving force behind parent’s over-ambition.
“We talk to our kids about the college recruiting process and recognize that athletics is a great tool for getting admittance,” Wenzlau said.
From a student’s perspective, however, the parent’s goal to have their kid play in college places additional pressure on the athlete’s high school experience. For some parents, sports are perceived as a ticket to a good school.
“[Paly parents are] sending their kids out on travel teams, putting their kids on club teams, pretty much going year round, spending all kinds of money, thinking that it’s automatic that they’re going to be D-1 athletes somewhere and get a free education,” Athletic Director and football coach Earl Hansen said.
The data shows, however, that the chances of a high school athlete going on to play college sports, let alone professionally, are very low.
“We were a state team last year and we had one full scholarship off of that team,” Hansen said.
One explanation for obsessive parenting at Paly is due to the high number of over-achiever parents in this community.
“Don’t assume because you happen to be a hard-charging attorney, or a doctor, or a research scientist, or a business entrepreneur that that same thing is going to be what sparks your kid,” Thompson said.
He adds that misplaced parental pride often plays a role as well.
“The pressure that a parent can put on a kid to perform well for them, ‘do it for me,’ means ‘make me look good as a parent by playing well.’”
From the perspective of parents, however, having certain expectations or making demands of their kid seem only fair, given the sacrifice parents make in terms of time and money in support of their athlete.
“One of my kids had an absolutely terrible game and I was so mad,” Susan said.
She felt it was fair to expect them to push themselves hard.
“If they were going to go out there and try their best, I was in,” Susan said. “But if they were not going to go out there and try their best, I’m done.”
Parental pressures are not only fueled by high expectations. Students report a sense that often parents attempt to live through their children in areas where parents either excelled or might have fallen short.
“If that parent was really involved in high school or even played professional sports, they’ll pressure their kid way too much…even if it’s not what the kid really wants,” Hoglund said.
Palo Alto does have its share of overly-ambitious parents, but this does not completely explain Tiger Sport parenting, according to Thompson.
“There are other places where there are highly educated, high achievement-oriented parents, but the reality is that our whole society is win-at-all-costs,” Thompson said.
Student athletics may carry much more significance for the parent than for the child, which can drive parents to push their kids to excel in sports.
The “symbolic power in youth sports,” Thompson said, means “ that we contribute more to it than really what is there. How well your team does is really pretty inconsequential to what kind of successful, fulfilled life you’re going to have… The economic insecurity means the parent thinks, ‘oh my god my kid’s got to do well in this or he’s going to be a loser the rest of his life,’’ Thompson said.
The costs of these pressures on athletes are enormous and the consequences can be severe. Paly students repeatedly told of examples where friends quit a sport in response to parent pressure.
“[Parents] should always remember that you play sports to have fun, you don’t play sports to win every game,” lacrosse midfielder Jonathan Glazier (‘13) said.
What leads to the decision to quit is often the fact that athletics stop being enjoyable for the student.
“…If you lose the passion, the joy of something, then it’s hard to stick with it through the hard times, and there are always hard times, no matter how talented you are…” Thompson said.
A more serious and tragic consequence of Tiger Sports Parent pressure is the negative impact on the parents’ relationship with their children.
“I think the biggest casualty of parents losing sight of the real purpose of sports is that the relationship gets off kilter and sometimes it never gets back on again,” Thompson said.
Glazier also agrees that an overwhelming amount of parental involvement causes athletes to “get turned off from the sport and from you [a parent] also.”
Given these various motives driving Tiger Sports Parent pressures, and the serious consequences for families, communities and the athletes themselves, organizations like Positive Coaching Alliance (PCA) are trying to provide solutions. The PCA offers steps kids, parents and communities can take. It is essential for the athlete to have an honest discussion with his or her parents about these issues.
“It is hard and can involve a lot of frustration for the parent and annoyance for the kid,” Thompson said, but it is significant and helpful, “If a child can say, ‘Here is how you can help me be the best athlete I can be.’”
For parents, the first and most important step is to be willing to honestly recognize whether they fall in to a category of Tiger Sports Parent. How does a parent know when they have crossed a line from supportive to counter-productive pressuring of their athlete?
“It’s a fine line, isn’t it?” Susan said.
For others interviewed, the difference between constructive parenting and Tiger Parenting is easily recognizable.
“Being supportive is when you give your kid help when they ask for it,” Hoglund said.
While it may be tough for parents not to delve too deep in to trials and tribulations of their children’s athletic career, Thompson agrees that a parent is embracing Tiger Sport Parent behavior, “If it hurts the parent more when a child loses, than it hurts the child…”
Asking the question “whose activity is this, who owns this activity?” helps a parent determine his or her role, according to Thompson.
Susan observed that drive and passion needs to come from the athlete.
“It can’t come from an intense parent, a typical tiger mom or tiger dad because ultimately it’s not mom or dad running up and down the field, doing a ton of sit-ups, and weight training,” Susan said.
The parent’s job, regardless of their own athletic ambitions for their kid, is to help him or her explore and discover something that excites them.
As lacrosse attacker Kimmie Flather (‘12) put it, “Be there for a kid when they make a certain decision but let them choose their own path because they are going to find more about themselves.”
She added, “If the parent is always there to tell them what to do and push them in certain directions they are not going to really figure out who they are.”
Finally, it is vitally important for the parent to understand how much there is to be gained by focusing on the bigger picture for their athlete, according to Thompson. For example, the opportunity to develop resilience will play a crucial role in determining a child’s later success in life.
“There is no one in the world who hasn’t failed a lot,” Thompson said. “ Resilience may be the number one attribute for successful people. A lot of brilliant people don’t accomplish much because they can’t pick themselves up after they fail.”
In order for young athletes to grow, parents need to let their children experience disappointment and even failure in sports.
“Being an athlete is part of a process of growing up and learning to deal with the real world,” Zelinger said.
Thompson wants parents to remember that “setbacks are just as much teachable moments as victories are.”
This means parents should not lose sight of the big picture and get agitated over the outcome of a game, about playing time, or about why some other kid was picked for most valuable player.
This kind of reaction on the part of the parent resembles Tiger Parent behavior. Chua expresses in her book the concept that a Tiger Mom will not tolerate anything but greatness. Driving your child to be “great” transforms into pushing them to be perfect, instead of pushing them to be their best.
“Perfectionism is a stifling, negative, toxic environment for any person to be in, because if you have to be perfect, if you have to be great every time and there are negative consequences for not being great, then what typically happens is you begin avoiding situations where you can fail,” Thompson said.
So rather than asking how a son or daughter can be better at sports, Thompson urges parents to ask, “How can sports help my child become a better person?”
Sports have the potential to help people figure out who they are, who they want to be, and how they want to fit in to the world.
“All of us at every age are trying to find our important place in the world…we all want to do something to contribute, be an important part of the world, not just passing through,” Thompson said.
While growing up can be challenging, kids often seek their parents’ guidance, but more importantly, encouragement. Win or lose, many look to the sidelines hoping their parents are cheering them on.
“A lot of parents do love their kids unconditionally but they need to be really explicit about that,” Thomspon said. “Before a game say something like, ‘I’m proud of you, win or lose, no matter how you play today I love you…’”
This would be the opposite approach compared to Tiger Parenting, where only the best is good enough.
Ultimately, loving parents want their children to be happy, and to feel their lives have meaning and purpose. Sports can help contribute to this sense of value, but Thompson emphasizes that, “They really need to be learning how to become great people, as well as great athletes.”
