Sport Parents' Inconvenient Love
The true measure of your sports parenting character might not be about how much you love your child when it is convenient but how much you show love when it is inconvenient.
While it is OK to think about the upsides sports has on children's development, it is also important to remember the sacrifices you have to make for them to receive those upsides. From the time children enter sports, great patience and strength is required of sports parents. From sitting in bone-chillingly cold weather to cringing as your child practices the wrong way before learning the right, I think it is important to think about these sacrifices to make sure you can have the right attitude in the most inconvenient of moments.
I think you would agree, your sacrifice is demonstrated through love and the ways we support and encourage our children in the convenient and not so convenient times. I am sure you can make sense of the convenience of loving, so let's explore a little about inconvenient love. It is the hugs, positive reinforcement or little conversations had at practice or games when your cell phone's ringing, your child's made a bad decision, or another parent's trying to hold a conversation. Sports in one way or another is teaching us new life lessons too and one of those life lessons is learning how to love our child at inconvenient times.
In the end, sports provides you new opportunities to help teach your child how to be strong, courageous, supportive, encouraging and loving in the convenient and not so convenient times. While sports is many things to people, I believe it has a positive polarizing effect that is often overlooked but important to the fabric of our society. Sports brings families together, and should be more thought about as a medium for building stronger familial bonds.
Copyright © 2007-2010 by Bradley J. Kayden. All Rights Reserved.
While it is OK to think about the upsides sports has on children's development, it is also important to remember the sacrifices you have to make for them to receive those upsides. From the time children enter sports, great patience and strength is required of sports parents. From sitting in bone-chillingly cold weather to cringing as your child practices the wrong way before learning the right, I think it is important to think about these sacrifices to make sure you can have the right attitude in the most inconvenient of moments.
I think you would agree, your sacrifice is demonstrated through love and the ways we support and encourage our children in the convenient and not so convenient times. I am sure you can make sense of the convenience of loving, so let's explore a little about inconvenient love. It is the hugs, positive reinforcement or little conversations had at practice or games when your cell phone's ringing, your child's made a bad decision, or another parent's trying to hold a conversation. Sports in one way or another is teaching us new life lessons too and one of those life lessons is learning how to love our child at inconvenient times.
In the end, sports provides you new opportunities to help teach your child how to be strong, courageous, supportive, encouraging and loving in the convenient and not so convenient times. While sports is many things to people, I believe it has a positive polarizing effect that is often overlooked but important to the fabric of our society. Sports brings families together, and should be more thought about as a medium for building stronger familial bonds.
Copyright © 2007-2010 by Bradley J. Kayden. All Rights Reserved.
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