I have a 16-year-old son. I’m in my early 30s (had him very young) and a professional footballer. My son also dreams of becoming a successful footballer (he’s been playing since he was 6), but he’s just… not great. He’s good, but not great - and in this extremely competitive industry you need to be at least great in order to even stand a chance. So I told him, as someone who’s been doing this for a very, very long time & is active in this sphere, that he should find another, more attainable dream. He took it as me not believing in him, but I’m just objective and realistic.
If you’re a pro, then you know coaches.
Coaches who you could engage on friendly terms to say “Hey, can you coach my kid? And if needs be, let him down gently?” - see what they think of his potential, and if they need to be the one to tell him he is unlikely to make it, then it’s going to be easier coming from then than from his own Dad. You get to look like you’re backing him by sending him to “one of the best coaches in the business” and then console him when they deliver the rough news…
I don’t have kids and I don’t know anything about sports. If you continue reading after those disclosures, I’ll offer a perspective anyway, since you put this out to the internet for comment.
There isn’t really a way you could have put this to your son that would be taken well, it’s evidently sensitive for him and despite your intentions it’ll feel like a tragic monent. It’s just hard news. Whether it’s right to break that to him, well I’m not sure but I think maybe you’re putting too much emphasis on this one interaction like it was your one shot and there was a definitive right it wrong way to do it. What will matter most is more likely to be what you do generally moving forward. You may have your doubts about his ability in his chosen path and perhaps they’re well founded but you can still encourage him and be rooting for him whilst gently suggesting having backup options in times when he appears uncertain. If you consistently do all you can to help in whatever way you can with whatever choices he makes, then if they don’t work out and he has to abandon that dream, he’ll at least know you supported him all throughout despite your concern and that should count for a lot. If somehow he ends up unexpectedly rocketing to success in football he’ll also remember you’d been there all along encouraging and assisting. It’s ok to counsel against putting his eggs all in one basket, but just don’t push it, you must respect his choice whatever it ends up being and he there to help pick up the pieces if those choices don’t make him happy.
Much like with football fans, you support your team by just showing up to every match and cheering on. Perhaps he didn’t like the uncomfortable dose of reality today but so long as you are consistently a positive and helpful force he’ll hopefully come to appreciate what you’ve been trying to do for him.
Regardless of talent kids should always have a backup plan. What if he broke his leg and couldn’t get back into shape? Shit happens.
You should have known that there was nothing to gain by telling him what you did. Kids that age are smart enough to realize that if they aren’t being selected to the local all-star team, it’s because they’re not an all-star. If they go to football camp and they aren’t one of the best people at the camp, they’ll realize that they’re not very likely to go pro. But you decided to make it your business at a time when you didn’t need to, and that makes you a jerk.
You said that you’re just being objective and realistic, right, but you decided to tell your son your opinion, and not someone else. If you were actually trying to be objective, you would have told everyone on the team what you thought about their potential. Of course that would be really rude, which is the point.
What you could have done is what many other people have mentioned in the comments. Something about how there’s no guarantee that anyone can make it pro, or how long they’ll last if they do, because random injuries can end your career, and the median length of a professional footballer isn’t very long anyway, so there’s still the rest of life to live.
Did he ask for your opinion?
You’re doing him a favor. Even if he was just as good as you, he wouldn’t be guaranteed to have as much luck as you did. Might never be seen by the right people at the right time. He needs a realistic career plan regardless of whether he tries to make it professionally.
Tell him he can go pro if he wins against some pros
When you punish a person for dreaming his dream, don’t expect him to thank our forgive you.
He’s right, you don’t believe in him, and if he’s not great at football even though he’s living with a pro, that shows me how little you value him. He could be great but what are you doing to help him get there besides crushing his dreams?
If you want to salvage this relationship at all you need to apologize and do everything you can to support him. Training, encouragement, the works.
It’s better that he tries to achieve his dream and have to do something else than to have it crushed out of him by his own father.
if he’s not great at football even though he’s living with a pro, that shows me how little you value him.
Some people simple don’t have the ability to be good at some things, no matter how hard they work at it, no matter who mentors them. Very, very few people have the ability to be a Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart regardless of what kind of mentorship they have.
Let me give you a concrete example.
I’ve had a major shoulder surgery after tearing the shit out of my supraspinatus and the labrum. The supraspinatus passes through the acromium process on the scapula. The acromium process has roughly three different shapes, which are largely determined by genetics. A type I acromium process is smooth, and allows the spuraspinatus to pass through easily. Type II and type III acromium processes have pronounced ‘hook’ shapes–type III significantly more so–that make injury to the supraspinatus much more probable. I have a type II acromium process. Had Mary Lou Retton been my mother and coach, and I’d tried to be a gymnast, I would have destroyed both of my shoulders long before I was ever going to be going to nation-level events; the limits of the shape of my scapula would have made success impossible, given that a strong and stable shoulder is required in gymnastics, regardless of sex/gender. I would likewise be unable to be a competitive powerlifter, for much the same reason; working up to a nationally competitive snatch would have also destroyed my shoulders. (And, in point of fact, it was working on push-presses that killed it.)
People are not a tabula rasa, only needing the proper encouragement to become paragons in a given field.
You are suffering from several fallacies.
- “Unless you can be the best, it’s not worth trying”
Fortunately, the world doesn’t operate this way. There are people who are mediocre, and sometimes poor, at playing football professionally or other professions. Your line of thinking would lead to only one person playing football at a time, the person who is the best at it, and everyone else should give up.
- “Meritocracy is real and the only determining factor of success”
While meritocracy is a nice thought, that the best inevitably rise to the top, it’s not necessarily true. Just as there’s circumstances that keep talent from succeeding, like financial background, biases against people, and luck, those things also can lift up the less talented. There’s many celebrities that aren’t as talented at acting as someone stuck in a small town.
- “I trust OP’s assessment”
As far as you know, op could be wrong. Maybe the kid plays great and OP is too critical, you don’t know. This could be a critical mistake on OP’s end, and making the kid give up doesn’t help regardless.
- “hard work doesn’t mean success, innate ability is the only thing that matters”
If this were true, no one would need to practice anything. You said Mozart succeeded because of his mentoring, but then argue for people having lack of natural talent leading to failure.
- “my back story is relevant”
It was also tempting to throw in the argument of verbosity. But your shoulder injury, or that some people are incapable of physically doing things, isn’t relevant. The kid is physically capable of playing football. It’s a false equivalence.
- “the kid will have the same level of ability at 16 forever”
You presume that this kid will only have the ability he is at, and that even with training, won’t get better. This ties into your belief in natural talent a bit, but it’s still pretty foolish to assume professional football players play at the level they did at 16, so it’s also foolish to assume that 16 is where this kid will peak.
- “the kid achieving the dream is the most important thing here”
This is where you missed the the bigger picture. There’s more on the line than just success at football, there’s a whole relationship at stake, and a kid’s mental and emotional health.
So that all said, look at it this way. There’s four scenarios that could’ve taken place, with four factors. Kid gets encouraged, let’s shorthand that to E. Kid gets discouraged, D. Kid succeeds at professional football, S. Kid fails at professional football, F.
ES is obviously the best. Kid gets support, becomes professional football player, everyone’s happy.
EF is disappointing, but salvageable. The kid gets the attitude of not giving up and at least Dad has his back. Maybe he tries something else after not making the cut, and has a great career at something he’s able to do, but at least he tried. He’s not going to be able to try forever, but he can at least try something new with a solid foundation.
DS is a tragic hero. Kid gets there but doesn’t have a great relationship with Dad. Success is tainted by bitterness, and every win is to prove Dad wrong. Doesn’t have a great relationship with Dad, and probably has a lasting issue because of it.
DF is the worst possible outcome, and at this point it’s the most likely. Kid has an even worse issue with Dad, dreams are crushed, and he grows up bitter and resentful. He’s taught to not try for anything he’s interested in, and lives a life of miserable mediocrity.
It’s my opinion that it’s better for parents to encourage their children in their dreams, because the success rate is probably higher and at the very least they get the support they need to try something different. It’s almost never a great idea to discourage a child because that leads to resentment and lethargy.
You aren’t saving anyone by telling them to give up. That’s a decision they should make on their own. This is even more true for a child who is still developing who they are and how they see the world.
You’re making a ton of straw-man arguments.
-
You don’t have to be the best. You do have to be good enough to get scouted by a professional team if your goal is to play professionally. I never at any point said that it wasn’t worth playing if you couldn’t be the best or do it professionally. I spend a lot of time shooting competitively; it’s likely that I will never make Master or Grandmaster in anything, and as a result I’m never going to be sponsored or be able to earn a living at it. (…Not that the money is very good anyways.) So what? I still have fun.
-
In sports, playing professionally is a meritocracy. Socioeconomic class matters insofar as having more wealth and privilege means that you’ll have access to better training prior to becoming a professional. But the child in question already has access to training, through a parent that plays professionally. But that’s all the farther that socioeconomic class gets you in sports. People from poorer backgrounds often get to go far in sports, if they have the skill.
-
Yes, OP could be wrong. On the other hand, OP is claiming to be a professional in the field, and is therefore more likely to have an informed opinion.
-
Success is a combination of directed effort, an inherent capability; it’s not one or the other. If you lack certain inherent capabilities, then all the directed effort in the world won’t get you where you want to be. You can have all the gifts to achieve greatness in a given field, and yet fail completely if you don’t carefully direct your ability in that area.
-
See above. The kid already has access to top-tier training, and is not making the grade necessary to perform at a professional level. Ergo, the part that is lacking is capability. …Which is why my anecdote is relevant; it’s not my unwillingness to work my ass off that has limited my power lifting aspirations, it’s my physical capabilities. (And yes, I really did work at power lifting. And will again once my shoulder finished healing, even though I’m never going to be competitive at any level.)
-
Of course the kid isn’t going to be at the same level forever. But he’s not on track to be at a level where he’s capable of playing professionally. A 16yo that’s capable of going pro–esp. when they have access to high-level training–would be expected to be performing at a certain level. According to OP, he isn’t. The probability is that, while he will continue to improve (up until age catches up with him), he is not going to be at a professional level in time to make a career of it.
-
You’re drawing a false dichotomy between being honest/realistic with your children, and having a relationship with them. I’m gathering, from what you’re saying, that you don’t believe that the parent should give their child a realistic assessment of their performance, and should simply be encouraging; it that correct? It seem like you believe that putting all of your effort into a goal, and failing to achieve that goal would not cause deep bitterness on its own; am I reading that correctly?
-
“It’s my opinion that it’s better for parents to encourage their children in their dreams […]” I partially disagree. I think that parents need to encourage children to set realistic goals in life, and goals that can be stretch goals. Maybe that looks like going to school to become a biologist, and going on to medical school if biology ends up being fairly easy for them. Maybe that looks like going into a trade if they’re good at working with their hands. Playing professional sports–or being a touring musician that makes enough to live on, etc.–is like winning a jackpot in the lottery. Sure, you gotta play in order to win, but for every person that wins there’s millions of people that don’t. I would hope that you would say that anyone planning for retirement by buying lottery tickets was a fool, even if that person was your child. But even so, you can play sport for fun.
-
This is incredibly bad advice
How? You’re saying it’s better to tell your kid their dreams suck and they shouldn’t try? What a great parenting strategy.
If he doesn’t have what it takes, and he keeps encouraging him to go for that anyway, then he’d be encouraging his son to live in a fantasy world until he gets mowed down by the real one. That would not be a favor to his son. It would be a failure in his duty to prepare him for adult life.
I don’t think you’re a jerk, but I think you’ve handled this badly and you’re using ‘objective and realistic’ to justify it, but that’s just code for not believing in him. Were you great at 16? Or were you merely good enough to get signed and thus benefit from decades of training and coaching that improved you? Do you not believe he will also improve? That’s literally what not believing in him means.
It’s one thing to inject some realism, to manage expectations, to encourage him to have a fallback, etc, and quite another to effectively say ‘You’re shit at this so you should just go get a job’ or whatever.
I’d tell him that it’s good to pursue his dreams, but that it’s also good to have a plan B. If he wants to do the sportsball in college, he should also come up with another thing or even two to get into. That’s my opinion, anyway.
You have make the call about your opinion of his talent. We can’t know.
If you are looking to ascribe a pejorative term to your behavior the consider this.
If you are wrong you may a dumbass, but since you are doing your best to help the kid, you are certainly not a jerk.
Better than lying and feeding him a line of BS that he can be president or an astronaut or something when the likelihood is so low. Tell him he would make a great accountant. Is he good at math. LOL.
Being objective and realistic = Not believing in him Why can’t you be objective and realistic about your childs feelings, obviously, even if you are right and he’s no good (which I doubt if you are saying it), you could have just made the statistical argument, “Son, while football is your dream, the chances of being sustained by it are small and you need a reliable way to survive in the world.” Anything other than telling him YOU dont think HE can do it, and if you can’t accept that, then you need to put aside your ego and seek professional expertise.
Yes, you’re gatekeeping his dream
Is he good enough to be a coach? Or a trainer? Or work in sports tech? Media?
Maybe he can find a way to be invoked without being locked in on being a player on the field at the top level. If what he loves is the game, he can be a part of making the game better or safer or reach more people.
