If you are like me and have active teenagers that are involved in high school sports then you have probably spent a lot of nights in gyms or at fields supporting your child. For the most part, the activities that my children are involved with are what I would call “objective sports” where achievements are measured against some constant like time or distance. Cross country, track & field and swimming are nice sports in that they do take some of the human subjectivity out of the equation since a stopwatch or a tape measure can put an end to the debate on “who’s the best?” real quick. Now mater how great of a runner your parents might think you are, a 19:45 5K is always going to be better than a 20:05 5K. This is a nice role to be in as a parent when watching your children compete. As much as I like for them to “beat” their opponents, every parent watching these events are just like me in that we are all rooting for our children against the same nemesis known as time. We are all united against a common enemy. Time doesn’t care who your parents are, or how good your parents were in high school or how much money they spent on you to be a part of an elite travel team. Time is emotionless and objective and is one of the reasons why you don’t have scenes at these “objective sporting” events like what took place in Lakewood, Co this summer at a baseball game with 7-year-old players.
For a refresher, you can view the stupidity right here.
So what you have here are parents brawling at a baseball game. I mentioned this was a game played by 7-year-olds, yes? Based on what I can gather from this group of America’s finest was parents were upset with the way that the umpire was handling the game. The umpire, by the way was 13 years old and obviously the most mature one of the bunch. To the city of Lakewood’s credit, the police investigated this incident and handed out over a dozen citations to these idiots.
So what gives?
Lack of objectivity is one factor here. All sports certainly have a rule book, but baseball (like many other sports), cannot be governed solely by what is written in black and white. A human must call balls and strikes. The human usually tasked with this chore is called an umpire and even though it is the umpire’s job to call balls and strikes, everyone else attending the game assumes it is their authority to call balls and strikes too and I doubt many of them have bothered to read the rule book. Even if a robot was standing behind that plate instead of a 13-year-old kid, you still might not be able to prevent adults from acting like these fools did at that youth baseball game. When parents begin to assert their authority as being above the interest of what the game is supposed to represent, you wind up with scenes like what took place in Lakewood, CO.
Aside from lack of objectivity, the main culprit for this complete lack of civility demonstrated at youth sporting events like this one is attributed to a condition known as DPD. Delusional Parent Disorder (DPD) (which to my knowledge was first coined by former Utah basketball great Keith Van Horn in an article from the Positive Coaching Alliance) is a condition where parents have false or unrealistic beliefs or opinions about their children despite facts to the contrary. As parents hold these false and unrealistic beliefs to be true, their actions sometimes cause temporary breaks from reality. While not a medically defined disorder, nearly every parent suffers from it in some varying degree. Some suffer from it so profoundly that no matter the outcome of any situation, it is never the fault of their child. Instead, the fault rests with the teacher, an official, the coach, or some other external factor completely unrelated to their child’s abilities or effort. Some DPD sufferers express their delusions verbally (and often constantly) throughout a contest, whereas others take a more physical approach. Sadly, DPD is not just limited to little league baseball games. You can identify DPD sufferers at any game, regardless of the age of their child participants.
I was recently at a summer league basketball game (not all of my children have the luxury of just competing in sports against time) which is designed for kids to work together as a team and sharpen their skills for later on in the year when the actual basketball season begins. There were officials at this game, applying the rules as best they could which meant that there would inevitably be some fouls called. At this game, I somehow found myself sitting next parents of an opposing player who were clearly exhibiting symptoms on the high end of the spectrum for DPD. Every time their child was touched by an opponent it was a foul and they always let the official know about it. Every time their child was called for a foul it was the most egregious call they had ever seen and they let the official know about it. They also did the totally solid parent thing of letting their child know that even though a foul was called that “it wasn’t your fault” and that it was ” just great defense and the ref doesn’t know what great defense looks like.” The next game was even better. New sets of parents, also suffering from high-end DPD that culminated with one of the adults finally yelling, “You suck!” at the official.
I never want to make light of mental health so I use a term like delusion delicately, but the general lack of positive parenting occurring at our sporting events has me deeply concerned. Attending a sporting event should be a nice break from the usual day-to-day grind instead of using that time as an opportunity to take a break from reality. We still need to function as adults – and more importantly as parents – even when we see things happen to our children that are out of our control. We really shouldn’t be having conversations about how far removed from reality a person must be to start a brawl at a 7-year-olds baseball game or to physically assault an official or to perform any other type of deplorable act at a child’s sporting event.
Yet, here we are.
Before you call me soft and start telling me something like “kids need to learn how to compete,” first recognize that competition has been going on for thousands of years, long before your 7-year-old found his way onto a baseball field. We do need to learn how to compete, but we must learn to do so with control, empathy and above everything else, with dignity. Our instinct as parents is to protect our children the best that we can, so when we allow them to play sports and learn life-long skills such as commitment and team work we are also taking the risk of allowing them to develop the ability to respond appropriately when things don’t always go their way. This can be a helpless feeling which causes us to want to jump in and rescue them. However, parents not recognizing limitations and trying to solve their child’s problems by yelling things like “you suck” and protesting every … single … call is not protecting our children. Instead of assigning blame and constantly playing the victim when things don’t go our way, we can be at our best when we learn how to win and work through setbacks the right and proactive way.
Fortunately for your child, he is not competing for food, clothing or survival. Instead, he has the leisure time (and you too) to engage in a contest that he hopefully (and not just you) enjoys. We keep score because the score measures progress. We use officials because we want there to be fairness. We go to the games because we have the luxury to do so. It is natural to have emotion as you support your child and I know hanging that 7-year-olds team championship banner on your wall is important, but so is your sanity … and mine too, and everyone else’s as well.
For the sake and safety of us all, if you do not have the mental or emotional control to watch your child’s game without tipping the meter too far on the DPD scale, then please stay at home. If the moment is too big for you to enjoy without having to constantly insert yourself into the game, let me know – I’d be happy to let you read my text updates – from the safety of your own home.
#ucandewitt 