How Do I Support my Unathletic Son in our Sports-Obsessed Town?

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Reena Ninan:

Episode 180 9. How do I support my unathletic son in our sports obsessed town? So a friend told me about a six, six-year old son’s well visit appointment and the doctor turns and asks, so do you have any questions for me? To the 6-year-old? And the 6-year-old says, yeah, actually I do. What’s it like to be a 6-year-old? And was kind asking the doctor, what should I be doing? What should I be knowing as a six-year old? What is it like to be one? And the doctor says, well, you shouldn’t really be crying as much because now you can voice your feelings and your thoughts to your parents. But I thought, oh my God, what a clever six-year-old kid. When was the last time you were at your yearly annual physical and ask someone, what’s it like to be a 45-year-old? What’s going on my body?

Lisa Damour:

Yeah. Or almost 54-year-old I

Reena Ninan:

You go

Lisa Damour:

Actually Reena though, that just reminds me of just a funny story from graduate school, about six year olds. Not that different actually. So when I was a graduate student, we were learning how to do assessments and learning how to test kids on all sorts of academic and cognitive skills. And what’s really nice about when you get a graduate student to do an assessment is that they overdo it because they’re in training. Everything is done to the nth degree. So one of my classmates was doing a psychoeducational test battery on a kid in our clinic. And as sort of an ancillary to it, I went and observed the student at school because they didn’t want the same person who was testing the kid to observe him because he would know he was being observed. So I made an arrangement with the first grade teacher, six year olds, and showed up in class and just sort of sat quietly in the back.

So the six year olds start coming up to me and they’re like, why are you here? And I was like, oh, I’m just here to observe. And they’re like, whose mom are you? I’m like, oh, I’m not somebody’s mom. But they keep asking and one kid goes, no, really? Why are you here? And I said, well, I’m just curious about what it’s like to be in the first grade. And this kid dead eyes me, he’s like, lady, you’ve already been in the first grade. That was so funny. I was like, you can’t pull the wool over their eyes. Yeah, you got me there. I hadn’t thought about that story in 30 years. Reina. That’s a great one. Okay, so yeah, six year olds don’t mess with ’em.

Reena Ninan:

That’s a great one. I love

Lisa Damour:

It. They got questions.

Reena Ninan:

I love that and I love that all the age groups too. You can drop you in anywhere and you know how to advise. One of the things that I’ve heard from so many parents we’ve heard Lisa, is about what do you do when your child isn’t athletic? And we can have such gendered sort of outlooks on our kids. Sometimes boys have to be athletic. So I want to read you this letter that we found so moving that we wanted to take up today. Dear Dr. Lisa Andrena, I’d love some guidance on parenting boys in an uber sports focused town. I have a 10-year-old son who does not enjoy team sports. We’ve always given him opportunities to try everything and he’s tried a number of things, baseball, basketball, soccer, but he’s never been particularly good at them, but he’s never been particularly good at them, which as a parent doesn’t matter to us, but it’s created a major feeling of low self-worth for him regarding anything sports related.

Things like field day at school or a day camp kickball tournament, which should be fun, creates major anxiety for him. My question is twofold. First, how do I best support my child who doesn’t really enjoy team sports? In a town where sports are quite literally everything, we obviously enroll him in all things academic that he enjoys. We don’t care if he’s an athlete, but he seems to care. How do we foster his confidence? And secondly, how do you counter that self-imposed feeling of being less than as a boy when sports just isn’t your thing? Thank you. I love this letter so much here. Where would you start, Lisa?

Lisa Damour:

First of all, I think this is, you’re right, there’s so much here and also not rare. I mean I think that this parent is voicing the experience of a lot of families. And again, very gendered, right? I mean boys are in many ways operating on a very narrow lane of what it means to be a boy. Girls get a lot more latitude. And so I can really imagine how painful this is for this family and also lots of other families. So one place to start is you know what we have going for us in this letter, there’s lots going for us, is that the parent is like, we don’t care. We don’t care. And I think that’s a great place for us to start. But I also think there’s a lot of families where maybe it was the parents’ aspiration that their kid would be athletic or maybe that was sort of their vision of what it meant to have a son was that he would be athletic or maybe the parents themselves were big athletes and had that idea or the parents themselves wished they had had more success athletically and are now have it riding on their kid.

And you’ve seen those families, I’ve seen those families where you’re watching the activity on the sideline and you’re a very strong sense that this is not about the kids’ athletic experience. It’s about some ghosts from the past, totally about the parents on athletic experience. So that’s not in this letter, but I do want to name all of that because I think it’s worth surfacing because sometimes that ups the tension of a situation like this is that the parents themselves have a lot of skin in the game around the kid’s

Reena Ninan:

Athleticism. So be mindful if you’re that parent who’s trying to live vicariously through your kid, you could be adding a lot of pressure that’s making it worse.

Lisa Damour:

But that’s not the case. It’s hard to

Reena Ninan:

See. Yeah, no, you’re right to flag it. I love that this parent is like, that’s really not us. We’re not putting the pressure, we’re totally fine with having a smart academic kid. Where would you start with this family?

Lisa Damour:

So one thing that doesn’t come up in the letter that is important I think to voice is for kids who don’t like organized sports, they still need physical activity. And I think it’s really important to sort of uncouple those. And so he still, for his own health and wellbeing is going to need to be a physically active kid. And so if they haven’t already, I would strongly encourage the family to support him in riding a bike or skateboarding or pogo sticking or family hikes. And there’s also kids who don’t love team sports but do well with things like swimming and track.

Reena Ninan:

But I feel like that doesn’t enter the picture until high school for some schools right track for sure. And when you’ve got an elementary or middle school aged kid where all the boys, it’s all about how good you are playing kickball and are you on the soccer or football team? How do you deal with that pressure when so much of a boy’s image and self-confidence is often based around sports, even if that’s not his thing.

Lisa Damour:

It’s true. And you’ve got a son

Reena Ninan:

Who’s

Lisa Damour:

Right there in this right where sports and that sports are everything moment is so powerful and it’s definitely, I mean this kid’s 10, I think that bluntly is going to be true probably through middle school in most communities where for a lot of boys, sports is sort of the center of the universe. So what we’re doing is we’re trying to get this kid to later in development feeling good about himself because the good news, and this is going to be a lot more comforting to the parent than the kid. This doesn’t last forever. By the time kids get to high school, there are enough ways for kids to be really good at things that are not sports, to find people who are really good at those things, have those be more sanctioned within the school universe. So saying to this 10-year-old look, it’ll be fine by high school, might as well be saying this will be fine in a hundred years.

Right? Totally. You’re actually right for the parent. What I want them to know is you are dealing with a fifth through eighth grade problem and you want to try to put in all sorts of things. So they mentioned supporting him on all things academic that he likes, but I would also say get him into other stuff. Is there a Lego League? Is there something going on at your library? Does your place of worship have activities of kids who do service or do meaningful things? Are there other hobbies he loves and is into a lot of kids? This is a kid. I mean maybe he’s music could be his thing. I mean, there’s a lot of kids where it’s not cool in the same way necessarily to be big into music as a talented or growing musician. But then I’m in a community where high school band is pretty cool stuff and they’re connected to the sports universe, but they are valued in their own.

Reena Ninan:

So find something, even if it’s not athletic, that they can get excited about that they’re into and then find other ways for them to move so they are active even if they’re not playing a sport

Lisa Damour:

And can enjoy their bodies. And I will just want to go back to swimming and track. So you’re right, track that. I mean actually in my community there are some ways for kids to do track younger, but it really doesn’t pick up in a meaningful way. But running

Can be something that kids do. Swimming. Swimming can actually serve a fill a little space here. So Rena, I like sports, but I have no sense of my s spatial skills are not that good. I know exactly. Really not that good it feels like. And so even though I played team sports, I couldn’t envision the field and how plays could unfold in the ways that other athletes on my team could. It didn’t make sense to me, but for me swimming was great, like back and forth and back and forth and you’re on your own. I mean it’s a team sport, but it’s really an individual sport. And I think that is another option that fills a space between no organized sports and complex athletic and high levels of athleticism required sports where your team is depending on you knowing where you are in space and where the ball is in space. So I just want to put that out there for families where they’re struggling to find something, a team sport that works well for their

Reena Ninan:

Kids. Lisa, I want to pause and take a quick break on the other side of this. I want to ask you about what if this is really affecting a, what can they do and also does this change over time? What can we expect through the elementary and junior high school years? We’ll be right back. You’re listening to Ask Lisa, the Psychology of parenting. Welcome back to Ask Lisa, the psychology of parenting. Lisa, you’re helping us with boys who might not be super athletic in sports, but they might live in a town where it’s all about the sports. And one thing you were saying was find ways for them to move. So they’re still active and they’re still getting some sort of exercise, but really hone in on something, whether it’s music or something at the church or a type of group that they can really get excited about going even if it’s not a sport. I want to ask you about the social piece here because you were touching on that a little bit. What I love about teen sports and why I’ve pushed my kids into it is it teaches them to work as a team, which is I feel a skillset that can take ’em well into college and their career. What do you worry about the social piece if you know you’re not good in sports and you don’t want to be around these other kids? What are you worried about as a psychologist for boys in that category?

Lisa Damour:

Yeah, now there’s a couple things and there’s ways to mitigate both of the things I’m thinking about. So you’re totally right. Okay. What are the values of team sports? There’s lots of values. There’s the athletic outlet, there’s the moving the body, but there’s also the adapting to working with a whole bunch of kids and making social connections and staying plugged into a social environment and the learning and growing that happens when you’re interacting with kids under sports conditions. So as this parent is looking for alternatives, I do think that’s where things like Lego League or service projects, there’s a value in the alternative, at least two levels. One is it gives this kid something else to cultivate a skillset and to feel good about, and we’re worried about this kid feeling good about himself and the other. It does give that kind of extra layer of social activity and social practice that kids need often in middle school to develop their social skills, their ability to connect to and work with others and have a good social network. So if it’s not going to be organized sports, finding an activity where that really is an option, other kids are involved, there is social time. I think there’s value. Then there’s something else here that I don’t want to take off the table. So we’re uncoupling physical activity from organized sports. Those are two different things. The other thing I want to uncouple, and I don’t know where this kid sits on this, is being good at sports versus knowing a lot about sports and being good at that.

So I don’t know if in your son’s universe right now you’ve got kids who in addition to being athletes or separate from being athletes, have an encyclopedic knowledge of the sports universe and what happened in the last 20 minutes in the sports universe. Do you know kids like that?

Reena Ninan:

Yeah, they’re really into the stats and they can tell you about a player and yeah, they’re really good at that.

Lisa Damour:

I remember actually getting to college and somehow this had not come up in my high school. I was not aware of it if it was going on and meeting guys who were really, really, really, really into sports and knew backwards and forwards, knew the stats were totally into it and would talk about it with one another endlessly, but who were not themselves particularly athletic. They may have played some sports in high school, but some of these guys I’m sure were not actually really showing it on the sports field, but they loved it. And I know that that is a way that kids can stay connected to the conversation, have some social cachet if they know a lot about these things. And so if this boy is inclined at all to want to follow the stats and take an interest, that is a great way for him to follow an interest of his own but also have a way that he could stay more connected to what’s going on at

Reena Ninan:

Lunch. This reminds me of a mom who recently told me that her son is so into geography and quiz bowl and just loves it and was so excited. Okay, he’s finally found his niche. And it just reminds me like you say about you just need one friend, you just need one thing that your child might feel really good about doing. That can be enough. It doesn’t have to be sports as long as they’re moving or walking or getting some activity.

Lisa Damour:

Absolutely. And also that one friend thing. So

What you will see if you survey the landscape of middle school and do you remember your middle school lunchroom? There may be a center of gravity around the kids are into sports and the boys are into sports and the girls are into whatever. There’s also, there’s satellite situation going on of a couple kids doing this, a couple kids doing that. I remember the kids playing Dungeons and Dragons at lunch when I was in middle school and it was like three or four, it was all guys and they did it every day at lunch. And when I think back on that, I am sure that they may have felt like they weren’t part of what was happening at a more central level around sports, but they also weren’t alone. And so I think as we imagine this as parents of teenagers and parents of young tweens, middle schoolers, 10 year olds, we want to remind ourselves that as long as they’ve got someone to hang out with kids who share their interests, even if it looks like kind of small and marginal, that’s usually okay for kids. And we only worry when a kid is isolated and has no meaningful connections. That’s grounds for worry. One good friend who is as into right now, Zelda is a video who’s as into Zelda as you are and you’re talking about that at

Reena Ninan:

Lunch,

Lisa Damour:

That kid’s going to be okay most of the time.

Reena Ninan:

Okay. Are there other ways that kids who might not have athleticism feel like it’s second nature? Are there other ways that they could maybe join into sports? You mentioned there’s sort of statistics and that kind of thing, but are there other avenues where they could feel like they’re part of it without maybe showing off that they aren’t?

Lisa Damour:

Yeah, yeah. No, I think these open as kids get older. So again, like a hundred years for the 10-year-old, but for the parent to keep track of it. So my husband is a high school teacher and is a sports coach. He’s one of the assistant coaches on the soccer team at his school. And through him I have learned about all of the kind of, I’ll use the term again, ancillary stuff that kids do connected to sports without playing sports. So they have kids who make the hype videos that get put out kids who are photographers.

Reena Ninan:

I didn’t even think of that. So there’s little social media component that maybe they can

Lisa Damour:

Part of. There’s a whole social media component which is increasingly very sophisticated and pretty. You’re like, okay, these kids have a future in tv. I mean they’re going down that road. They’re the kids who do photography, they’re the kids who do sports journalism. Oh my gosh, you’re so right. There are kids who help. They’ll call ’em help with training, so they’ll help with equipment and stuff. So they travel with the team, they’re connected to the team, they’re interested in the team, they’re liked by the

Reena Ninan:

Team.

Lisa Damour:

They’re not on the field.

Reena Ninan:

Oh, this is so good. This reminds me options. This reminds me, we’ve got a kid in our town who is just sensational at taking photographs. And so my son was on the football team and they’d get these great shots, these fantastic shots, and you give a middle school or high schooler a great shot that makes ’em look good that they can pass around to everybody else like, boy are you golden.

Lisa Damour:

You’re handing off gold. Exactly. Exactly. And so if that is in the universe of stuff that might interest this kid, get him into photography and let him enjoy photography in its own right now, and then that may be something that blossoms into a really cool way to stay connected. And you are right. I can totally picture you hand a 13-year-old boy, some image of him looking like a star.

Reena Ninan:

You’re his new best friend. Oh my god, they love this kid. He is like icon status. You just made me realize that that is equally as part as playing on the field to them that is essential. It’s huge. What a great

Lisa Damour:

Point. Okay, but let’s imagine, Rena, let’s do worst case scenario. Well, not worst case scenario. Hardest case scenario. Okay, so let’s say all of our great ideas are not good ideas for this family. The kids, I don’t even like being around

The kids who are playing sports and I don’t want to follow them around with my camera and I don’t want to try to keep up with them at lunch with all the stats and none of this is appealing to me. How do we help this kid still feel really good and still feel really connected and still feel really worthy and valuable? I mean, I think that this is the question in a context, and there are sports obsessed towns. I mean Rena, I’m in, I mean high school sports around here, they’re the subject of documentaries constantly. Ohio high school sports are sort of a thing unto themselves. So I think that this comes down to conversations at home and reassurances at home that it won’t always feel this way. And there’s so much that he can contribute and does and can cultivate skill in. And we all need to get to a place where we don’t measure the value of what we’re doing by how well regarded it is by everybody else. Where we measure the value of what we’re doing by how much it contributes or how much we care about it or how serious we are about getting good at it. I mean, they’re in for some pretty heavy conversations.

Reena Ninan:

Can I tell you, as an adult, I think many people struggle with not finding validation collectively and finding the thing that you like. It is a hard lesson to learn.

Lisa Damour:

It’s a hard lesson to learn. And I think you can make the most of that, right? I mean, I think to the degree that an adult can say, I get it. I get it. It’s really hard when the thing you’re into

Other people don’t see or appreciate. It’s funny now I am having all these blasts from the past as we’re having this conversation, I always knew I wanted to be a psychologist and I knew that the path to getting into grad school meant working in a research lab for a year after, at least after graduation. I remember sitting in my graduation, my college graduation, and people were going off to these fancy law schools and these fancy med schools and all these things that were obviously a sign of them having achieved and succeeded. And Rena, I was literally walking my plants from my dorm to a tiny little studio apartment, which was all I could afford to work in the exact same lab I’ve been working in for the last two years. And I felt so small. I felt so small, and I couldn’t really explain why I was doing what I was doing. It didn’t make sense to anybody why I would do it and it felt bad. So if this were my kid, I think I’d be like, I remember how small I felt when everybody else was like when their stuff was up on the scoreboard and my stuff was carrying half dead plants to a crappy little studio apartment.

But it was what I wanted and it was what was worth it to me. And over time, the value of it became more apparent to me and then also to other people. But I think anytime we can connect and offer that perspective of like, oh, I’ve been there and and it took a while, but you get there, I think we should do that.

Reena Ninan:

Great point. It’s painful, Lisa though. When you see your child going through it and know you live in a town where it’s all about the sports, you’ve given us some great options, I think some really good options, especially in the era of social media as well. But how long does this last, this sort of angst and this questioning of maybe your self-confidence, can you kind of walk us through maybe elementary, middle school, high school? Because it feels so painful.

Lisa Damour:

It is painful. It is very painful. So the self-confidence question, it’s actually interesting because we’ve done research along those lines. And it’s worth saying here, just if we’re going to talk about confidence and trajectories over time for girls in middle school, we see a real drop off. So elementary school girls feel pretty good about themselves, but a very consistent finding is around age 12. There’s a pretty precipitous slide. We’ve got a million reasons why we think this is true. Suddenly anxious about their bodies and new ways, suddenly anxious about achievement in new ways. Comparison comes in. I mean, there’s a lot going on for boys. Interestingly, confidence is more steady and it can be especially high. And you may be seeing this right now with where your son is in kids, boys who hit puberty early on the early side of the trajectory who are bigger and stronger,

Which also confers athletic capacity often and in sports obsessed towns, that athletic stuff can go a long way towards supporting self-esteem in boys it. For some boys, they ride that very comfortably all through high school. Other kids catch up physically and that can help them. But for boys, the physical piece really is big when we look at broad self-confidence things. Okay, so now this kid is basically not playing in that space and you’ve probably seen him, I’ve watched guys who are dying to hit puberty so that they can keep up athletically with their 10th grade classmates or they’re just behind or not behind. They’re just on the sort of other end of the bell curve of puberty for this boy. I think it is going to be around getting closer to 14 where you can have more perspective on things and getting good at something.

Reena Ninan:

Anything.

Lisa Damour:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean that’s really, let him get good at something, help him get good at something that he cares about.

Reena Ninan:

Wow. It’s really hard when it’s so sports focused and you see your kid’s self-confidence kind of go down the drain. And even I have to say, even for boys who play sports, I find middle school years are so hard because some boys just fully develop and they’re there and other boys aren’t even registering on the puberty meter. That’s true. So even if you are playing a sport, if you’re a little guy or you haven’t fully started hitting that, it’s really hard to see them go through that.

Lisa Damour:

Yeah, it’s painful. It doesn’t last forever, but it’s hard.

Reena Ninan:

So what do you have Presley said for parenting to go

Lisa Damour:

So more blasts from the past? When I think about things that were said to me when I was in training that have really, really stayed with me, probably one of the most powerful comments that ever came to me was from a supervisor I just adored. We were talking about a case I had where the person was, it was an adult who was struggling in a lot of ways and also not doing things she was supposed to be doing. And he said people feel good about themselves for the things they do well. And when we get to any question of self-esteem, that always is the first thing that comes back to my mind.

Reena Ninan:

Find

Lisa Damour:

Something you’re good at. I’m saying find something for this kid to feel good at and get good at. And that’s hard to get good at. The takes effort, right? Chess club, I mean something people feel good about themselves for the things they do. Well help this boy find something that he does. Well,

Reena Ninan:

Great advice. Well, thank you for walking us through this. It can be so hard. And also if you’re boys super athletic, I think it’s also great reminder of what it’s like for the other boys sometimes and to be mindful of Good point, good point. To be mindful of that. And next week, Lisa, speaking of getting in your head, we’re going to talk about teens who are dealing with intrusive thoughts. How do you help them deal with it, and when it leads to a struggle with depression, we’re going to talk about that next week. I’ll see you next week. I’ll see you next week. Thanks for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to the Ask Lisa podcast so you get the episodes just as soon as they drop and send us your questions to ask [email protected] and now a word from our lawyers. The advice provided on this podcast does not constitute or serve as a substitute for professional psychological treatment, therapy, or other types of professional advice or intervention. If you have concerns about your child’s wellbeing, consult a physician or mental health professional. If you’re looking for additional resources, check out Lisa’s website at Dr. Lisa.