Overzealous sports parents

[LinvilleGorge]

On 6/3/2022 at 3:10 PM, LinvilleGorge said:

Holy poo...

My sister in law has an 8 year old son. Her husband is trying to live vicariously through this kid. He was never the cool jock and he desperately wants this kid to be that. Everything revolves around this kid's baseball. He's homeschooled because school schedule was getting in the way of his baseball schedule. He does ninja training to improve his balance and core strength for baseball. He's on every travel team he can be on. He has ninja, baseball practice, baseball clinics, or baseball games everyday. He's on a specific baseball diet. Dad gets excited because the kid gets "invited" to all these clinics and travel teams with no realization that it's simply to get money out of them. Baseball, baseball, baseball. Everything else is an afterthought.

Meanwhile, the kid is ADHD as fug and an absolute brat because he gets everything he wants. I've watched dad repeatedly tell him this week "If you want to be a professional baseball player you have to..." while laughing off any and all of mom's efforts to correct behaviours.

The sad part is that the kid is a very average athlete. He's not one of the better players on any of his teams. They're really fuging this kid up. They're setting him up for abysmal disappointment. Well, it's dad but mom won't stand up to any of it even though she understands all of this. Once he gets to middle school and kids that didn't have this huge push from their parents actually start picking up sports in school and blow by him in a matter of months because they have real talent I'm afraid it's just going to be an absolute shock to him and dad is going to put it all on him for not working hard enough.

It's crazy to watch. Dad is controlling as fug and likely has undiagnosed Asperger's. Mom just folds and goes along with everything because she's too busy being the primary bread winner and isn't willing to deal with dad's bullshit. It's wild to watch and just sad.

Anyway... basically just venting.

Well, poo. Unfortunately it's all happening. The kid is 12 now and in middle school and they're still ALL IN on this baseball stuff. They're really encouraged because some of his teammates are being invited to national level teams, etc. Yeah, some of his teammates. Not him. They finally put the kid in a quasi-school that's a hybrid type thing where he goes to school a couple of days a week and the rest is virtual/home school. He's struggling terribly so they're talking about pulling him out. The family has talked to them over and over about how this prioritization of baseball has to stop and they have to start actually prepping this kid to succeed in life. Being a professional athlete is a long shot even for an elite athlete and your kid just doesn't have the genetics and you're fuging him up in life with these backassward priorities.