When a Sports Parent’s Goals All Involve Their Child’s Success
If you are a sports parent, and every goal you have involves your child, then you either have a problem or will soon have a problem. It’s likely the goals you have for your child are extremely difficult to achieve. Moreover, you can’t expect your child to pursue an extremely difficult goal such as earning a college scholarship when you aren’t working to pursue any difficult goals for yourself.
That makes you a hypocrite. This is also a recipe for the type of hypocrisy that leads to vicarious living. How can you expect your child to train every day, sacrifice their weekends, or miss out on time with family and friends, among other things if you aren’t willing to make similar sacrifices for your own goals?
At some point, this will cause your child to resent you and even lose respect for you. This is the point when your child will also stop listening to you and you will no longer have any influence over your child’s decisions.
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 yourself to higher standards far more often than you push your 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.