Sunday, April 25, 2010

Soccer Parenting….

As a parent, you have to figure out the balance between pushing your kid to succeed and rise to challenges, but not letting them get discouraged by failure.

This can be encapsulated in a simple game of soccer in the front yard that I played the other day with Paco.

I could beat him 10-0, but he would get discouraged.

I could let him win 10-0, but then he would think he his better than he is.

The questions

  • when to let him score?
  • when to score on him?
  • when to make it easy for him to score?
  • when to make him work for it?

And, in each game, to ask: should he be the overall winner or loser?

It’s a constantly evolving assessment of the boy’s development and his attitude at that particular moment.

Which is, I imagine, kind of like parenting in general.

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