I am the father of a 7 year old, a 5 year old and a 3 year old.
At my stage in life, this is no time to be getting any peace.
In any given hour of free time, just when I’m settling back to read a book, maybe with a beer freshly opened, a voice will pipe up: “Dad, can we go out the back and play football?”
Either that or, five minutes into a snooze on the sofa, my legs and arms are being tugged by pesky kids demanding that we go roaming the fields or climbing trees.
Children have no sense of a morally-fatigued, middle-aged man wanting some repose. That’s just a concrete fact.
It is all still a relatively new experience for me. For years – decades in fact – I was without children. In fact, I didn’t even have a wife. Back then I did what I wanted in the world - and with whomever I wanted - on an absolute whim. It was wonderful.
What I also did over these 25-odd years in print was regularly get off about pushy parents, especially in sport, whose entire lives it seemed to me revolved around their kids being good and winning in sport.
My goodness, I took a haughty, pompous view of this. If only these dire parents could see, I averred, their flawed approach and ridiculous stance.
I wrote one particular piece about the parents of Carly Booth, now a fine golfer, but back then in 2005 a child protégé upon whom the world was waiting.
“Oh, just let Carly play” was my line. Don’t push her so hard. I guess my subtext was: don’t seek your own glory through the efforts of your child.
A week later I received a hand-written letter from Carly herself, then just 14, telling me how hurtful my piece was, both to her and her parents. I was mortified at receiving this. The letter shook in my hands as I read it.
Well, well, how things change. These days I go to watch my boy playing for his Sunday morning football team, and I am regularly fit to explode while taking in the action.
If Robbie scores, it takes me all my might not to run down the touchline punching the air. I feel so chuffed.
If he is clean through on goal, one on one with the keeper, I’m shouting: “Hit it! Hit the fecking thing!”
If he misses, I get into an emotional lather, incredulous that he could pass up such a chance.
Last week I was a stand-in coach, when one of the other guys couldn’t make it. In the middle of the game I found myself giving Robbie more gip, being unable to comprehend that a 7 year old could not follow simple tactical instructions.
He stopped dead in his tracks and bawled back: “Dad…SHUT UP.”
In these games my entire existence seems to be fulfilled, depending on whether my son plays well or not. If he has played well, there is no feeling like the car-drive home afterwards, when I feel absolutely on top of the world.
Once home, I cannot wait to tell his mum how he got on. Robbie himself will try to relay events, but I’ll butt in, keen to be the bearer of the news. “One at a time, one at a time,” his mum will say as we squawk over eachother.
But I find I cannot handle his faults. If he misses a shot, or pulls out of a tackle – as I did for 20 years as a young footballer – I’m filled with contempt and disdain. On these occasions the car journey home can be pretty bleak.
I am that pushy parent now – the kind I have trashed for years in columns. A part of my self-esteem is rooted in the scoring exploits of my 7 year old son on a Sunday morning. The rest of my Sabbath can be a basking in glory experience, or a trough of despair, depending on how he fared.
Is this normal? Is this the way it should be? Even if the answer to both these questions is “yes” there remains the conviction that such parental passions hold a young kid back, and don’t actually help them develop.
My son said to me last weekend: “Stop shouting at me on the pitch.”
Sometimes after these Sunday morning games we will sprint to church to make the morning service, the rain still dripping from my son’s forehead. It is there, after all my bawling and shouting, that I will bow my head and say: “Lord, forgive me my sins once more.”
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