If you have a kid in sports, you know the feeling of sitting on the sidelines — whether you're thrilled to be there that day or not. Of course you're thrilled to cheer on your kiddo during the game, but it can start to get old weekend after weekend. But what if you're sitting in your seat like usual and see some real poor behavior coming not from the kids but from your child's coach? That was the dilemma one mom had after she caught her son's little league coach cursing at him and yelling "intense" commentary from the sidelines. "Do I talk to the head coach?" she asked.
As the concerned mom explained, her son's baseball coach can get a little "too intense" for her liking.
Sure, it's great that her son's coach has passion, but as the mom explained in a letter to Slate's Care and Feeding advice column, the coach has taken to yelling inappropriate things at the 9- and 10-year-olds on his team.
Although she appreciates the energy the volunteers put into coaching the kids, her gut says a line has been crossed. "What I’m concerned about is the really intense coaching from the sidelines by the coaches," she wrote. "I’m also hearing things like 'Keep it simple, stupid' and 'Move your (expletive).'"
"My kids claim not to be bothered by what they hear, but it feels way too intense to me," she wrote. "Do I talk to the head coach? Do I just talk to my kids? An additional wrinkle: My husband is also an assistant coach but is much more mellow. Should I have him talk to the other coaches?"
Online, some people thought that a slight potty mouth was all part of the game.
"When I leave work, I walk by two different elementary schools that are letting out at the same time …. trust me, [Letter Writer], 9-10 year olds are *well* acquainted with mild curses words like (expletive)," one person assured her in the comments. "Unless the tone is harsh, I would bite my tongue about a coach using this language."
"I'm very much in the mode where I would lose my stuff if a coach directly called my kids stupid. But broadly shouting 'remember Keep It Simple Stupid' is not malicious, and almost certainly references back to a lesson earlier where he explained it so I don't even think my autistic son would get confused that the coach was actually calling him stupid, and he's very literal," another person wrote.
"This demanding and unrelenting approach has been around forever. it creates stressors that the kid learns to accept and eventually to filter out … it develops the ability to set aside the pressure to deal with the need to adjust approach," someone else commented. "In time you are less and less overwhelmed … If the goal is to play Little League and if your child has the capability to be effective in Little League, this is kinda how it needs to be done."
But other people agreed that the swearing was just too much.
"If I was the LW, unless I was seeing something my husband didn't in my kid or hearing complaints from other parents, I would mention it to my husband and then wash my hands of the whole thing and let him handle it," one person advised. "After all, he's the one with the real front row seat to how the coach is treating the kids. And if you don't trust your husband to look out for your kid, then you've got a bigger problem than a coach with a slight potty mouth."
Another parent groaned at the thought of their kid dealing with intense team sports. "God I hope my kid doesn’t want to do team sports," the person wrote. "I do not think I could deal with a situation where I had to figure out how not to be rude to adults who think it’s okay to call 10-year-olds stupid."
"My kid plays basketball and many of the teams they went up against had coaches yelling from the sidelines the entire game — do you think the kids can even hear you? You look ridiculous," someone else agreed. "It was fun to watch as my kid's team went undefeated with a female coach, never once yelling from the sidelines. It is just some ineffectual method likely learned from some blowhard high school coach."
And it seemed as if columnist Nicole Cliffe agreed; adults simply shouldn't talk to kids like that -- on or off the field.
As she explained in her response to the mom, there was no real good reason to call a kid stupid.
"Yeah, you call my kid stupid, we’re going to have words," she wrote. "And 'stupid' and '(expletives)' are just completely inappropriate things to be yelling at 9- to 10-year-olds."
"We are not remaking Hoosiers, we’re having a good time with our middle-schoolers," she added. "Nor is this a situation where the losing team is to be culled to preserve food resources on a dying dystopian planet."
Cliffe then advised the mom to have a frank conversation with her kids and tell them to ignore their coach. "Kids love being told they can ignore an adult. It’ll go fine," she joked.
She also told the mom to have her husband handle the "overzealous" coach. "I would have your husband email the other coaches," she wrote. "He can just say (accurately) that he has heard from parents that they really don’t want the phrases you have mentioned to be used anymore."
