Carolyn: My two sons, 13 and 9, love to play sports. Despite being much younger and smaller, the 9-year-old routinely whips his big brother in driveway basketball, sprints past him in footraces and easily belts baseballs over the fence while his big brother strikes out. The 13-year-old gets upset and is starting to develop “take my ball and go home” tendencies, which I don’t want to encourage. Any thoughts on how I can work on this?
SPORTS WITH SONS
The reality you can’t escape (well, one of them) is that your older son has to work on this himself. Nothing you say to buck him up will actually buck him up. He knows what he sees.
A loving parent’s job is around the edges. You can:
(1) Show confidence in your son that he’ll manage this cosmic gut-punch, and sympathy that he has to. After he complains about a whupping, say: “Yeah, that can’t feel great. I know you’ll find your way past it, though.” If he comes back with, “How?!” then you get to ask, “Great question. What do you think?” Or if it’s just a sarcastic, “Gee thanks,” then you get to shrug and say, “It doesn’t sound pretty, but, doesn’t it beat the alternatives?”
He has to answer these questions anyway, and by not attempting to answer for him, you imply that he can handle that responsibility. You also avoid the “You’re good at other things” trope, which is just eye-roll bait. And, you open the door to the idea of getting past it, versus stopping at getting upset.
(2) Serve as a source of perspective. Everyone gets beaten by the proverbial 9-year-old. When it’s brother on brother, it feels like an insult versus an abstraction, but the story of your 9 versus 13 is no different from, say, Dara Torres versus me in the pool. I will lose every time (and she’s my age!), and I have to live with the knowledge that she has gifts I don’t.
I live with it just fine, too, because I have my own purpose, and it has simply had to suffice — just as all the chess prodigies have to find fulfillment knowing there was a Bobby Fischer, and we might as well issue to all artists T-shirts that say, “Yeah, not da Vinci.”
Odds are you aren’t raising the da Vinci of tweens, but, as strange and strained as it sounds — the process your older son faces is exactly the same as anyone else’s in all of humanity: There’s always someone better.
But, he has his purpose, and it will just have to do.
No doubt he still needs to find what his strengths are, and ways to find satisfaction in them, which brings us to …
(3) Invest in the “You’re good at other things” trope anyway — just not in those words, or any words. Instead, take an interest in his interests, and drive him to the practices/rehearsals/meetings they involve, and show the same joy in your body language when he accomplishes X as you show when your 9-year-old thumps one over the fence.
The face of a proud parent looks the same no matter what, and praise for a child’s hard work and progress uses the same words no matter what. The effort to get involved — supportively, not ambitiously — confers the same confidence that you value who he is, no matter what.
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