Pulling out the moving truck

After almost six full months at this here address, the blog is moving to new digs.

Instead of reading me here at Your Kid’s Not Going Pro, you can read Your Kid’s Not Going Pro here. I’m now part of the stable at True/Slant. The site has gotten a lot of hype, mostly for its self-described focus on being for the “entrepreneurial journalist.” For my purposes, it means I get paid — not enough to quit the day job, but better than what I get here, which is nothing. So we’ll see how it goes. I’m pretty excited about it.

The only thing I need to clarify is whether I can use the term “asshole” with the frequency you’ve come to know and love here. The only thing updating on this site while I’m at True/Slant will be my Twitter feed in the lower right hand corner. Come join me at True/Slant!

Ron Harper’s kid is going pro

No, not that Ron Harper.

You might have heard lately about a wunderkind named Bryce Harper, a Las Vegas high school baseball player who already has scouts writing reports so breathless and glowing, Fabio should be on the cover. Speaking of covers, you might have seen Bryce “Baseball’s LeBron” Harper on the cover of Sports Illustrated, unless you live in the Midwest (we got the Detroit Red Wings), or you are so Internet-centered you have no idea what a “cover” or a “Sports Illustrated” is.

Jeremy Tyler, a 6-foot-11 basketball wonder from San Diego, raised some hackles when he announced he would leave high school after his junior year to play pro ball in Europe, and get his GED along the way. The Harper family is raising even more hackles, enough hackles to get farm subsidies for them, by announcing 16-year-old Bryce is leaving high school after his sophomore year to play in a community college and get his GED so he can enter the major-league baseball draft earlier. (Thus turning community college into the real-life punchline for the old joke about it being high school with ashtrays. Except that with smoking laws as they are, the ashtrays are gone. So what is the new punchline?)

The part of the news conference that interested me the most was a line from Ron Harper that was pulled by Youth Sports Parents:

“People question your parenting and what you’re doing. Honestly, we don’t think it’s that big a deal. He’s not leaving school to go work in a fast food restaurant. Bryce is a good kid. He’s smart and he’s going to get his education.”

Ron Harper is in a difficult position here. Sure, he pretty much since day one trained Bryce to be a pro baseball player, though he seems much more well-adjusted than your average Marv Marinovich. And clearly Bryce is a sureshot future No. 1 pick. The Sports Illustrated cover article’s comment about competition his own age makes it clear that Bryce is way, way ahead, to the point that it’s probably hurting his own development as a player.

Managing a prodigy is no easy task. Move ahead too quickly, and you risk turning your child into a nut job like Michael Jackson. More ahead too slowly, and you might squelch and squander your child’s talent. I know this to a very, very small extent.

When I had just turned five, my parents moved me out of my kindergarten class into a first-grade class at another school because I had what, in the mid-1970s in a small Michigan town, was considered a major problem: I knew how to read. Well, it was a particular problem for the teacher, who was ticked when I would read the kids the angry notes she wrote about them. From what I told, I was crying most every day coming home from school, so my parents were faced with a tough decision: keep me in kindergarten, where I was miserable, or move me up to a grade where I would be more academically challenged.

Their decision to move me up was not met with understanding. My dad tells story of having to, literally, throw people off of his front porch because of the angry arguments about. And believe you me, when I was 14 while everyone else in my class was getting their drivers’ license, or 19 when my friends were allowed to drink legally, I wasn’t sure about the wisdom about the decision. Being two years’ younger than my classmates often was tough socially, and it definitely was a disadvantage in sports, as well.

However, I have come to understand over time that as a parent, you have to make the best decision with the information you have at the time. And I’ve led a mostly happy, successful life. No $20 million or so signing bonsues are awaiting me, but by any measurement I’ve had things go pretty well.

Maybe someday Bryce Harper will look back and think that leaving high school early was a mistake. I’m sure Ron Harper’s stomach is churning. Maybe Bryce Harper will get a big signing bonus and crap out because his maturity is lacking. Or maybe moving ahead early will help his game and his maturity level. We just don’t know. And that’s the fun and pain of parenting: you make a decision, and you never know how you child will turn out as a result of it.

Your Kid’s Doing Nothing

When after a winter 2006 of wrestling and basketball my wife and I decided to restrict our kids to one individual sport at a time, we figured we were merely returning a little sanity to our schedule and reducing the number of nights he would be up until 10:30 p.m. doing homework after practice. I didn’ t know we were on the vanguard of a movement called Slow Parenting. Then again, my wife and I aren’t the kind of self-absorbed twits who ascribe a special name to things we do in daily life.

Slow Parenting apparently is not done by sloths. It is the equal and opposite, and pretentious, reaction to another movement, helicopter parenting, which was an epithet, not a proscribed way of life. Basically, Slow Parenting is about limiting your child’s activities with the idea of giving the family time together and taking pressure off your child to be the next Albert Pujols, Albert Einstein or Albert Brooks (who also is Albert Einstein). So more playing outside, less organized sports. More lazing around on PJs on your birthday, less birthday parties with pony rides and cakes the size of the John Hancock Center. SFGate.com’s Mommy Files does a good job of rounding up all the various articles done in recent weeks on Slow Parenting.

I don’t have an argument with the idea behind Slow Parenting. I’ve got four kids, and my wife and I both work. Our kids are hardly short of activities (my 11-year-old son is in basketball camp, merging into a roller-coaster building class; my 9-year-old daughter is in her last week of softball and merging into hip-hop dance class; my 6-year-old son goes from T-ball to father-and-son bowling), but out of practical consideration for not being to be at more than one place at a time, we try not to overschedule them. It’s easy to do, because the mere fact of two parents who work, four children in the house, and my wife’s Irish side of her family all within a short distance means we’ve got plenty to do.

However, and I say this with my wife and I holders of college degrees, it never ceases to amaze me how overeducated parents have to assign a name to the way many of them probably spent their childhood.

Here’s more from the Mommy Files:

There’s even a Slow Family Living blog, started last year by two Austin moms, Carrie Contey and Bernadette Noll. Here, you can download your Slow Family Living Handbook [editor's note: for 10 bucks] with tips, tools, ideas and practical ways for how to slow down your family life. This summer the two moms are touring the country offering Slow Family workshops.

Carl Honoré is recognized as the father of the slow parenting movement. He’s the author of the best-selling book In Praise of Slowness: How A Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed, published in 2004, but it’s his more recent Under Pressure: Rescuing our Children from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting that has become the bible for slow parenting.

Honoré got the idea for Under Pressure at an evening event at his 7-year-old son’s school. A teacher told him his son was a gifted artist. That night he trawled Google, hunting down art courses and tutors to nurture his son’s gift. Visions of raising the next Picasso swam through Honoré’s head–until he approached his son the next morning.

“‘Daddy, I don’t want a tutor, I just want to draw,’ my son announced on the way to school,” says Honoré, who lives in London with his wife and two children. “‘Why do grown-ups always have to take over everything?’ his son asked. The question stung like a belt on the backside. You know, I thought, he’s right. I am trying to take over. I’m turning into one of those pushy parents you read about in the newspapers. So I started thinking about how easy it is to get carried away as a parent, and to end up hijacking your children’s lives.”

Now the dad is a spokesperson for the movement, traveling the world to speak on panels at universities and appear on TV shows. “Slow parenting is about bringing balance into the home,” he often tells people. “Children need to strive and struggle and stretch themselves but that does not mean childhood should be a race. Slow parents give their children plenty of time and space to explore the world on their own terms. They keep the family schedule under control so that everyone has enough downtime to rest, reflect and just hang out together. They accept that bending over backwards to give children the best of everything may not always be the best policy.”

So let me get this straight: the likes of Carl Honore and the Slow Family Living blog are traveling the globe telling parents how to slow down, spend more time with their families and let their kids grow up with parents who aren’t busy busy busy? Am I missing something here? After my wife and I decided no more two sports in one season, should I have called for a booking on Oprah?

Before he branched into Slow Parenting, Carl Honore traveled with his Wendy’s headset to spread the word about the Slow Movement. Meanwhile, my wife wishes I didn’t take so long in the bathroom.

The whole idea of Slow Parenting will fail for the same reason as helicopter parenting: each puts way too much emphasis on proscribed paths for Doing What’s Best for Your Kids.

Sometimes being busy in an organized activity they love is best, sometimes down time is best. Sometimes you need to push your kids to do certain things to teach them what they might love or hate, and sometimes you need to back off when it’s clear they’ve found out. When your kids are young, they are going to flit about to different activities because they don’t know what they want yet. When they get older, there will be less flitting. There’s no science or catch phrase for this. You try to read your kid as best you can.

I can understand why Carl Honore’s kid asked him to dial it back. But what if someone’s kid IS interested in art or baseball? What do you say? “Shut up, kid, I’m Slow Parenting here!”

Michael Lewis whines about getting his moneyballs snipped

And to the division of Your Kid’s Not Going Pro dedicated to them not doing so because Your Kid’s Never Existing.

USA Today health columnist Kim Painter notes various doctors talking about the tough image of the vasectomy. Tough, in that many men shiver at the thought of issuing a plant closing notice to their vas deferens. Although, according to Painter’s column, the tough economy is causing more men to decide to shut down sperm production like they were GM.

Part of the image problem, Painter notes, is a recent essay by Michael Lewis, in a book called Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood, another book Joe Morgan won’t read. (With that title, the book should have been written by Desmond Hatchett.) The essay is about Lewis’ vasectomy, which appeared in the Guardian newspaper in the UK. The essay, not the vasectomy.

Even taking into account Lewis’ tongue-in-cheek account of the perils of parenthood (something Louis CK does far more uncomfortably and hilariously), he (and a few of his friends) comes off as a bit of prick, no pun intended:

The time had come for Daddy to take one for the team.

… Now, with the doctor’s scalpel just minutes away, it was drowned out by a new sound, of a grown man screaming: “They’re going to cut a hole in my johnson!”

I mean, why am I really here, stretched out and hairless and exposed and not knowing what to say to the mute lady scraping away south of the border? What’s the meaning of this outrage? This operation wasn’t about birth control. It was about life control.

I should have fought for my reproductive rights, like other men. A friend of mine, when his wife suggested he might go and get himself gelded, had just laughed and said, “What if I want a trophy wife one day?” Another had declined his wife’s invitation to a beheading by saying, “What if you and the kids go down in a plane crash?” Other men I knew refused the operation on the grounds of rumours they had heard about the side effects.

“I have a friend who had it done and he couldn’t feel his dick for 10 months,” a guy at a dinner party told me knowledgeably. “After that I said no way.” …

I rose from the table, and wobbled. Glued by sweat to my backside, from neck to thigh, was a paper bedsheet that came away only in strips and patches as I picked at it. I stepped into my trousers, hobbled to my car, and drove myself home. A hero to my wife. A traitor to my sex.

A traitor to your sex? As a male, I don’t care of others are getting cut, not getting cut, or going the full eunuch.

I’m speaking as a man who has gone under the ol’ slice-and-dice. My wife and I talked about me doing it after our third child, and in fact I had an appointment scheduled. But some conflicts arose, and somehow I never got around to re-scheduling. After we had our fourth child, I got around to it.

I understand a lot of men are squeamish about getting a vasectomy, although after watching my wife give birth four times I was pretty sure any pain I felt was going to be extremely, extremely minor in comparison. Plus,  I was looking forward to the surgery because that would allow me to watch sports and play video games all weekend so I could “recover.” You know you’re a busy, veteran parent when you look forward to illness or injury because you know it’s the only way you’ll ever get a break.

It probably helped that unlike Lewis’ friends, mine were enthusiastic in extolling the virtues of the vasectomy. One friend explained it to me, appropriately enough, as we were in another junk-related situation, standing in line for the men’s room at halftime, inappropriately enough, at a Notre Dame football game under the watchful eye of anti-birth control Touchdown Jesus. As my friend put it, the greatest thing about the vasectomy is the freedom of knowing when you’re having sex, you’re just having sex — no sweating whether you’ve got another kid on the way. (This is the same instinct that has single douchebags getting snipped so the only thing they’ll come away with after an encounter is VD.)

Before I got the surgery, I had the requisite counseling session with the urologist. He noted that I would be given a low-grade Valium the morning of the surgery. I asked, why do you do that? “To help you relax. A lot of men get nervous. Some throw up.” I bet those are the moments that doctor regrets choosing urology.

My surgery went without a hitch, and with just a few stiches. The pain wasn’t even all that bad. And I got my weekend retreat.

So to men like Lewis and his buddies, I say, when it comes to getting a vasectomy: Sack up.

You and me, punk rock girl

I saw members of the Dead Milkmen at a Dow Jones and the Industrials reunion show in 2003. Is that old fart punk enough for you?

I have a fellow blogger out there spreading the message that Your Kid’s Not Going Pro. She’s Laurie Ruettiman, and she runs a site called “Punk Rock HR.” Punk rock and human resources? Punks not dead, I know! Punks not dead, I know! Punks not dead… ah, fuck it, it must be if you can get away with calling yourself a punk rock human resources person. I look forward to a site called “Straight Up OG Actuary.”

Anyway, this anarchist of the applicant review set has a feature called F@%k It Friday  (how in the fuck do you pronounce that?) in which she muses about topics that have nothing to do with stage-diving in the conference room. The latest: kids and sports.

Some people think it’s important for kids to learn how to play sports and compete. I think sports are overrated. Too many parents get caught up in sports and act like a-holes. When I see kids on the field, they all look miserable.

Do your kids play sports? Do you go to the games? Do you dread the games? Do your kids have fun? Do they learn any lessons about life?

Here’s a lesson your kids should learn: you’ll never be a professional [insert here] player. Suck it up and learn some real skills like math and science. Encourage your kids to be civil engineers and nurses, and the world will be a better place.

Or learn science, AND be an actual punk rocker. Take us out, Greg Graffin, PhD.

You EA Sports NCAA Football 06 players might know this one.

On your radio (again)

If you’re up early in Nashville Saturday — say, 6 a.m. — you can hear me being interviewed by Mickey Hiter on the Athletes Parents Show on 104.5 the Zone, your home of Tennessee Titans football, and where Frank Wycheck annually re-enacts the Music City Miracle for the new crop of interns with a package of Ding Dongs in the break room.

Not to crap on one of the greatest plays in sports history, but on No. 5, how could zero Miami DBs be in the end zone when it was the last, desperation play? Sheesh.

We talked about a lot of issues, so it’ll be a good listen for anyone who wants to hear some deep thoughts on the state of youth sports. Mickey does a lot of elite-level baseball training and coaching, and unlike your kid, his kid did go pro (four years in the independent minor leagues). Plus, Mickey was president of the Nashville Old Timers Baseball Association. How cool is that?

Also, you can listen to hear me call the host “George.” Man, Mickey, I’m so sorry I did that. You caught me after I was emailing back and forth with one of the editors on a youth sports-related piece I’m doing for MSNBC.com, an editor who happens to be named George. I’m like the Looney Tunes abominable snowman: “I will name him George, and I will hug him and pet him and squeeze him…”

By the way, you don’t have to get up early to listen to my golden throat. The show will be archived here.

Sex offenders on the sidelines

These days as parents we’re all trained well enough to find sufficiently creepy the 40-year-old guy who stops by the park to play football with a bunch of 1o-year-olds he doesn’t know. Forget if there’s an unattached child running around at a youth league game. It’s the unattached adult we worry about.

This sensitivity, perhaps hypersensitivity, to strange adults (even those who don’t appear, well, strange) might not always be well-placed. But we know from enough viewings of Dateline, how-not-to-molest-children training and sex offender registries that child predators are everywhere, waiting for an opening to buy your child an ice cream and lead him or her to places you don’t even want to think about.

That was the thought when Jeffersonville, Ind., across the Ohio River from Jason Stinson’s Louisville, passed an ordinance in 2007 prohibiting sex offenders from entering city parks. However, the law did allow for offenders to apply for exemptions — say, if they had a kid, their own kid, playing in a game.

Eric Dowdell, convicted in 1996 of sexual battery of a 13-year-old girl, filed for one of those exemptions. But he did something more: he sued the city (with the help of the Indiana Civil Liberties Union). And on Tuesday, the Indiana Court of Appeals, overturning lower court decisions, ruled in Dowdell’s favor by a 2-1 margin.

The basis for that ruling was that Dowdell, as per his sentence, was taken off the Indiana sex offender registry in 2006. According to the Jeffersonville/New Albany News and Tribune, the appeals court majority wrote that Jeffersonville’s ordinance “is unconstitutional as it applies to Dowdell because he served his sentence and completed his requirement to register on the sex offender list before the ordinance was passed.”

Had Dowdell’s case come up a few months ago, he might have lost again. But on April 30, the Indiana Supreme Court, in Wallace v. State of Indiana, overturned the conviction of an Indianapolis man on charges of failing to register as a sex offender because he had been convicted and served his punishment before Indiana’s sex offender registry was in place. The court said applying current law to something that wasn’t an offense at the time violated the Indiana consitution, and the U.S. Constitution spells out explicitly that states can’t pass ex post facto laws, nor can the federal government.

The Indiana appeals court had more criticism that just barring offenders no longer on a registry. From the News Tribune:

While the Court of Appeals’ decision would only apply to people who were no longer required to register as a sex offender when the ordinance was passed, the opinion was critical of the “excessive” steps that must be taken for a convicted offender to receive an exemption.

Chief Judge John Baker described the exemption process as “extraordinarily burdensome and virtually illusory.” He notes that the offender must provide a “legitimate reason” for the exemption and would have to go through the application process each time a new activity arises.

He writes that the offender is required to provide a “plethora of documents” to the judge, and even then, the judge still must find that “good cause” exists for the exemption. Baker wrote that the ordinance never specifies what would constitute “good cause.”

The court also found that by requiring the offender to notify a sponsoring league organization before requesting an exemption, the offender also is exposed to humiliation.

Interestingly, the same appeals court ruled in favor of a Plainfield, Ind., law that barred anyone currently on a sex offender registry (though not those who had formerly been on one) from entering a cit park. The Indiana Civil Liberties Union has appealed the case to the state Supreme Court, and with the Wallace ruling, there’s some sense it could win.

I have to admit, cases like this challenge my usually let-freedom-ring, liberal ideals. Perhaps that’s because I’m dealing with this issue on a more personal level. Three years ago, the father of one of my daughter’s best friends, who lives only a few houses away, was arrested on charges of distributing child pornography. Believe you me, that was not a pleasant conversation with my kids, the one where my wife and I tried to ask a 6-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy if they ever saw anything, um, unusual in the house, or if the neighbor ever did anything, um, strange to them. Fortunately, nothing happened. (Turns out he was a distributor only, not a creator.)

It was an uncomfortable, interminable time as his case would through the court system. Beyond how to negotiate allowing my daughter to play with her friend while staying away from a creep (she had to come right home if he showed up), I also coached his daughter on softball for two seasons. He mostly kept a low profile, knowing that everyone knew what he was accused of doing (it was in the local paper and on the TV news). But usually he would show up in the middle innings, standing away from the crowd, but close enough I could hear his grating voice cheering on his daughter.

I asked a fellow coach, an attorney, what we could do. Clearly, this guy made everyone uncomfortable. Being an attorney, this coach said, well, the guy gets his day in court, and there’s nothing we can do. I glumly accepted he was right, but I also warned him that we shouldn’t be surprised if parents object when he showed up. (Surprisingly, to me, no one registered any sort of formal complaint.)

Now my former neighbor is in jail, serving a two-year sentence. It’s a breath of fresh air, really — at least I know where he is and most importantly, where he isn’t. Both my daughter and her friend still play softball — different teams now, but still the same league. So what happens when he’s released?

I know he’ll be on an offender list. But while I know he’s served his time and probably won’t do anything with parents about, I personally can’t stand the thought of seeing him at games. In particular, I can’t stand to think about what perverted thoughts are going to be on his mind as he watches kids play. Maybe he’ll be rehabbed, but the recidivism rate is high in this sort of crime. I’d be more than happy if there were invisible fencing around every field, and that this guy wore a collar and got his neck zapped if he ever stepped too close.

I guess that’s why we have laws and courts and such — to balance our baser instincts with fairness and sanity. I can understand completely why Jeffersonville isn’t happy to see Eric Dowdell show up for a ballgame. I also can understand why the courts say he can. The whole thing  turns my stomach in knots.

When team-building exercises go wrong

You know what happens when you enlist kids from the baseball team you coach to help you with a burglary? Punny newspaper ledes, that’s what. From the Everett (Wash.) Herald:

ARLINGTON — An Arlington Little League coach is accused of showing some of his players how to steal more than second base.

Investigators allege that George Spady Jr. was with his son, a nephew and another player from his baseball team when he broke into a vacant shop and took overhead lights and bolts. The boys were encouraged to assist with the break-in, Snohomish County deputy prosecutor Edirin Okoloko wrote in court documents.

Spady, 31, was charged Monday with second-degree burglary, a felony.

Snohomish County sheriff’s deputies were called to one of the players’ homes after the boy told his stepfather that his coach had taken him along to break into a shop in Arlington, Okoloko wrote.

The stepfather was angry that an adult would use the boys to commit a crime, and, even worse, “that the adult was his son’s baseball coach,” Okoloko wrote.

I can see the lede now if a coach ever takes his team to a hooker: “A local baseball coach showed his kids ways to get to third base besides hitting a triple.”

The Sammy Sosa League

A few days ago, Little League International issued the following statement:

While Little League International has not received any reports of Little League volunteers or players making alterations to bats designed to increase their performance, it has been an issue in some upper levels of play.

In an effort to ensure this does not become a problem in Little League, this policy statement has been prepared and may be distributed to volunteers, parents and players.

No bat, in any level of Little League Baseball or Softball play, is permitted to be altered. This is of particular concern especially when it is clearly done to enhance performance and violate bat standards. Making such alterations to bats is clearly an inappropriate attempt to gain an unfair advantage, and cheating has no place in our program. Umpires, managers and coaches are instructed to inspect bats before games and practices – as they always should – to determine if bats might have been altered.

This includes using the appropriate Little League Bat Ring. If a bat does not clearly pass through the correct size ring, or if it has a flat spot on it, the bat must not be used. (This may simply indicate the bat has become misshapen with use, and does not necessarily indicate it was purposely altered. Still, the bat must be removed.)

Other signs to look for include contorted or mangled end-caps or knobs on non-wood bats. This could indicate that machinery was used to “shave” the inside of the bat to make it lighter. Bats with evidence of this type of tampering also must not be used.

Little League International wishes to make it clear that tampering with bats (or any other piece of equipment) is dangerous, and the equipment must not be used in any Little League game or practice.

I’ve tried in vain to find some huge story out there that might have precipitated Little League putting out a statement. The closest thing I could find is something that happened last year — so this could be a warning not to pull the stuff that the Kendall, Fla., Little League team allegedly pulled.

The team was booted out of last year’s Little League World Series after being accused of “using illegal bats, improper diamond dimensions and putting together the all-star team too early.”

OK, that might explain the release of a statement on illegal bats. But there must have been some other reports coming in that the wider world hasn’t heard about. Otherwise, Little League International would have put out concurrent statements about diamond size and all-star team configuration.

UPDATE: Mark Hyman at Youth Sports Parents surmises the LL release was a result of accusations of bat-tampering in the NCAA. Hyman found a story in the Birmingham News that discusses the suspicions that the bats (through not the players) are juiced.

Identifying and dealing with the asshole parent

Kurt Vonnegut, “Breakfast of Champions.”

At least in my experience as a youth sports coach, I’ve found that even the worst asshole parents are coming from a good place — trying to do the best for their kids. So I respect that. Not that I don’t think they’re “helping” in the same way my 3-year-old daughter “helps” putting her clothes away. But I break the “assholes” down into these categories:

1. Parents who are new to youth sports. They’ll yell instructions from time to time, but they’re basically harmless. I don’t confront anybody about this kind of stuff, because eventually they’ll back off when their kids get older. Plus, this is usually at an age I’m so busy paying traffic cop that I don’t have time to notice.

2. Parents who have a hard time letting go of controlling their kid. Often this overlaps with No. 1. Again, if they aren’t being disruptive, I’m not going to say anything, even if they talk through the dugout to their kid. Hey, I’m just coaching youth sports here, not running the Lakers. As long as they aren’t yelling at me or other kids, this is an issue I leave to the parents and kids to work out.

3. Parents who really feel like their kid has a chance to be a star. Many times you do find these parents coaching, usually to the detriment of your kid, whom they’re ignoring to promote Freddie Futuremajorleaguer. But if they’re not coaching, they’re paying people plenty of money to do so, and they’re yelling at you for failing their child. I look at this like George being run off the floor by Coach Dale in Hoosiers: “Look, mister, there’s… two kinds of dumb, uh… guy that gets naked and runs out in the snow and barks at the moon, and, uh, guy who does the same thing in my living room. First one don’t matter, the second one you’re kinda forced to deal with.” Except in this case I get to run off the parent. If a parent really thinks I’m a problem and wants to pull their kids off the team, I say, have at it. It’s just better for everyone involved. This is also why (except for rec league basketball) I don’t coach past about age 10. At least in basketball I know a little bit what I’m doing. I just don’t know enough in other sports, and don’t have the time commitment to make, to help anyone, future star or not.

4. Parents who feel like you’re picking on their kid. In the rare times I’ve dealt with this, I’ve felt the looming background of twisted family dynamics that I don’t want to get into. That’s kinda why with the other categories I don’t get any more confrontive than I have to — I don’t know, and I don’t want to know, what’s going on behind closed doors. They can see a therapist to work that out.

5. Parents who gossip about you, or organize against you behind your back. I’m going to guess this happens more with travel teams. Anyway, whatever the reason, if this has happened to me (and I’ve tried to remain as blissfully unaware as possible), I’ve just stayed out of it. I’m done at season’s end, and we’ll all go our separate ways. Life’s too short. Unless the someone it gets taken out on my kid. But I’ve never seen anything like that.

6. Finally, parents who are just plain assholes. They’re loud, they’re drunk, they’re stupid. Fortunately, the other parents help you with these folks, because they’re just as sick of them as you are.