Few athletes have reached their potential without support from their families. This support can be expressed in many ways: love, money, guidance, motivation, time, and so on.
Wrote the wife of a triathlete about her contribution to her husband's efforts: "Over the years, I've acted as bike holder, lap counter, transition-area assistant, timer and, of course, captain of the pep squad. I've spent many pre-race nights searching supermarkets for fresh bananas and special vitamin packets (his lucky pre-race breakfast); watching Chris pack and unpack his transition bag 12 times; and lying awake while he tossed and turned. I also imagine I'm not the only tri-mate spouse who's had to share my hotel room during out-of-town races with The Race Bike. (Please don't ask me who received more attention.) And yes, through every 'carbo-load' spaghetti dinner, I've loved it all." (1)
A study of elite swimmers, tennis players, pianists, and sculptors found that parents played a very important role in their children's talent development. They were the ones responsible for introducing and exposing their children to these activities at an early age. Then when the children showed interest and talent, the parents found them teachers or coaches, provided time and resources, encouraged them to practice, and supported them. "The parents did whatever they could to remove obstacles, soothe failures, help the child over humps. They placated school officials or made special arrangements when the child had to miss classes for practice or travel. They threatened, cajoled, listened sympathetically, sought remedies to problems, cried and laughed with the child." (2)
Here are just a few examples of athletes receiving support from their parents:
Can Parents Become Too Involved?
Yes, but in most families this doesn't happen. According to Pat McNally (a former pro football player and now coaching expert and author of the book, Moms & Dads, Kids & Sports), "Overzealous, pushy parents attempting to live their lives through their children in youth sports are the minority. The real problem: uninformed, underinvolved parents -- disinterested, ignorant or worried about being too pushy -- who are letting kids down." (7)
Peter Vidmar (a gold-medal winning gymnast at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics) has expressed similar sentiments. "The more time and effort parents contribute to their children's activities, the more they'll reassure their children that they're genuinely interested in what they do. Besides, parents will enjoy it more themselves if they're actively involved in some aspect of their child's sport." (8)
Supportive parents do spent lots of time with their children's activities. For example, Ruth Ryan said this a few years ago when her husband Nolan was still playing major league baseball, "We plan our week around the kids' games and their schedules." (9)
The trick is keeping the outcome in perspective. Linda Leaver (most notable for having coached figure skater Brian Boitano to a 1988 Olympic gold medal) offered this advice. "[Parents] shouldn't be doing this for an end. They should be doing this for the process. There are so many things that can prevent a child from getting what you sacrificed for. But if you pursue the sport simply as a tool to becoming a better person -- to learning about goal-setting, discipline, increasing self-esteem -- then you can't go wrong." (10)
Jim Ryun (who once held world records for the mile, 1500 meters, and 880 yards and who is now a U.S. Congressman representing a district in Kansas) puts it this way: "If a child's worth is based on being successful in sports, boy, there's gonna be a tremendous disappointment, because at some point in life you have to lose." (11)
There are, of course, some real horror stories about domineering, overcontrolling parents. The problem seems most acute in sports such as tennis where an athlete can turn pro at an early age.
Jim Loehr, sports psychologist and former director of sports science at the Bollettieri Tennis Academy, had this to say about tennis fathers. "These fathers have dedicated their lives to making success happen for their daughters. They abandoned their careers and in some instances, orchestrate their daughters' lives to the minutest detail." (12)
Said Phil DiPicciotto (an agent whose clients have included tennis player Steffi Graf), "You've got a parent or parents who formerly worked and whose ego is now subsumed within the talent of the child who, at 16 or 17, now feels responsible for supporting her family." (13) Example:
Capriati (who turned pro at age 13 and at 14 became the youngest player to crack the top 10) later had widely publicized personal problems, spent time in a drug treatment program, and dropped out of professional tennis at seventeen. She returned to the sport several years later but has had limited success.
"I was always expected to be at the top, and if I didn't win, to me that meant I was a loser. ... I felt like no one liked me as a person. I felt like my parents and everybody else thought that tennis was the way to make it in life, they thought it was good, but I thought no one knew or wanted to know the person who was behind my tennis life." (15) (Here's a September 1997 article from Tennis magazine about Capriati.)
According to Stan Ziegler (a psychologist drawing upon his experience dealing with child actors), "... parents can say we love you no matter what, and just do your best -- all the right things. But if the family then organizes its life around the kid's fame and money, it doesn't matter. The kid knows that, 'Geez, my whole family and the way we live is depending on me.'" (16)
The wisdom of having a child be the primary source of a family's income has been an issue since the days of the child movie stars in the 1930s. There were so many abuses in Hollywood that a law (known as the Coogan Law) was adopted to shelter some of a child actor's income from parents. But some observers say loopholes have reduced its effectiveness. (If you want to read more about children in the entertainment industry, check out the Screen Actors Guild website.)
"When you come from a middle-class background, I think it's got to be very hard to turn that kind of money down and very easy to justify taking it for your child because of the financial security it represents," noted tennis great Chris Evert. (17)
She said there was less of a problem when she played tennis. "It was significant for me and other players of my generation, like John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors, that our families didn't travel with us week in and week out. Parents should not quit their jobs and pressure their kids by making them the family's sole breadwinner." (18)
Even when large amounts of money aren't involved, the temptation to push can be there. Observed Joan Ryan, a reporter at the San Francisco Examiner, who has written extensively on child athletes: "Consciously or not, parents want a return on their investment, whether it is in the form of trophies, medals or money." (19) Example:
In high school she was treated for severe depression, which she attributes to the pressures put on her. "It makes me so mad that my parents watched me do something they knew I didn't want to do, all for their own fulfillment. It's almost like my dad only cared about the things that people saw and how they reflected on him."
Looking back, her father said, "I regret every second of the gymnastics." (20)
Healthy families understand the difference between support and pressure. This usually involves communicating to the athlete that it truly is his or her own decision whether or not to continue in the sport. Example: