Don’t Be A Sports Parent Who Is Hypocritical with Standards and Goals
On one hand, sports parents have no problem holding their children who are athletes to high standards. On the other hand, many of these same sports parents are often hypocritical with their own standards. Don’t be this type of sports parent.
Don’t expect your young athlete to train everyday, sacrifice their weekends, and eat a strict diet, among other things if you aren’t willing to make similar sacrifices for your goals. Or even worse, be that sports parent who doesn’t even have a goal worth sacrificing for.
You can’t expect your young athlete to pursue an extremely difficult goal such as earning a college scholarship when you aren’t working to pursue any difficult goals for yourself.
Furthermore, it’s even more counterproductive when a parent’s only goal is to help their kids reach a goal. This is a recipe for the type of hypocrisy that leads to vicarious living.
With this in mind, the absolute best thing a sports parent can do to avoid both being hypocritical and vicarious living is to live a purposeful life that extends beyond their children’s goals. This means redesigning life to push oneself to higher standards far more often than one pushes their child to higher standards. If you aren’t doing this already, then why not? The last thing you want to do is wait until your children graduate and move on without you.