COMMENT: Be a sports partner with kids, not a pushy parent

THE greatest goal ever witnessed on a football pitch has been replayed countless times. There wasn’t a football pitch involved, or even a football for that matter, but Lionel Messi hasn’t come close to replicating such aesthetic perfection.

The major players were me, my daughter and my late father-in-law. The venue was a playground. The object was a beach ball and the rest was history.

My instep curled an impossibly precise cross towards my father-in-law. He rose like a meerkat to produce a looping header of such geometric beauty that time stood still long enough for our mouths to drop. And my daughter, who was kicking her legs back and forth on a moving swing at the time, somehow soared through the air and met the beach ball with her laces to execute a volley through the swing posts.

The move was captured on an iPhone. A photo of my father-in-law’s header is now a fridge magnet. We are reminded of his genius whenever we eat. My father-in-law is gone, but his header will outlast anything Messi has done. Sport for life is important, but sport with loved ones is priceless.

Last month, Sport Singapore produced the excellent National Sports Participation Survey 2022, a detailed study on our nation’s physical activities. Pleasingly, the survey revealed that nearly 90 per cent of children participate in sports. However, only 56 per cent of parents join in with their children.

What are the other 46 per cent doing? Never mind the memories, just think of all the fridge magnets. If life really is a haphazard series of random moments, then communal sports tend to monopolise the numbers.

A child’s first team-mate is always a parent. Messi’s first pass, Venus Williams’ first serve, Tiger Woods’ first drive were all performed to – or with – parents. My daughter’s first effective swimming lesson came about when I threw her into a pool and hoped that kinetic energy would take care of the rest. It did. Sort of. She swam her first strokes and then sank.

But as our children get older, there’s a tendency for parents to retreat to the other side of the white line and delegate coaching and playing to others, which can be problematic, especially when a touchline parent morphs into Pushy Parent, the one who’s about as welcome as a prostate exam.

Pushy Parent criticises from the touchline. Pushy Parent abuses officials from the touchline. Pushy Parent can feel the need to live vicariously through the child to perhaps offset any internal feelings of sporting inadequacy and thwarted ambition.

Participate, but know when to keep a distance

When I played junior football, a parent took it upon himself to videotape our matches to give unwanted feedback to every player. We were 11 years old and it was the 1980s. His video camera was the size of a bus.

He was the early human incarnation of VAR technology: dependent on machines, short on emotional intelligence and no one liked him.

Such parental participation obviously does more harm than good. In 2015, the Marylebone Cricket Club in the UK published a survey that found more than 40 per cent of children had seen an adult abusing an official at a sports event. In the same survey, nearly half of the children said their parents’ behaviour made them want to give up.

As a general rule, I try to keep a discreet distance at my daughter’s sports events. When I watched her football matches, I either got reprimanded by fellow parents for something I’d written about Manchester United or was asked for betting tips from those wondering if a half ball could be eaten at Old Trafford.

And the one time I watched my daughter’s netball training, she had a stinker, which was my fault, apparently, for performing a Jedi mind trick and making her flap around like a guppy in a puddle. My subsequent ban remains in force.

Besides, I’d rather play than watch. I’m one of the proud 56 per cent of parents who participate in physical activities with children. Honestly, having a child is like having an unlimited pass to the eternal funhouse. My daughter has been a longstanding excuse to play basketball, badminton, tennis, football, netball and even trampolining. Most of those sports require good company. (And I discovered it’s not a good idea to jump around kids’ trampolines, grinning maniacally, if you don’t have one of your own.)

Better relationship through sports

Not surprisingly, the Sport Singapore survey showed that 80 per cent of parents involved in their kids’ sporting activities feel they have a better relationship with their children, which is worth emphasising, particularly for those currently shepherding teenagers through the hellscape of puberty.

In our home, sport provides a rare safe space.

We can’t talk about the opposite sex or school crushes. We can’t talk about the inestimable brilliance of Harry Styles’ music because we … just… don’t… understand. But we can talk – and play – sport. We can watch the FIFA Women’s World Cup and then recreate key goals at Punggol Park (badly). We can work on defensive blocking with a netball after a day of intense studying. We can smash a shuttlecock and forget a poor test result.

More subtly, we can improve the lifelong skills of cooperation, sacrifice and leadership. We can learn how to win with empathy, lose with grace and understand the value of healthy competition. We can take responsibility for our actions, without seeking to blame others. And we can do all of this whilst knocking a ball around. What’s not to like?

And then, occasionally, we go beyond. We create a memory. A pass. A layup. A goal. A ridiculously flawless piece of play with a beach ball and a children’s swing. It doesn’t matter. It’s the connection; a shared, improvised experience that becomes the memory, the family thing that's talked about years later, the once-in-a-lifetime incident from an everyday game.

And the best part is, the rules are the same for parents and elite athletes. We just need to play, with our kids, on our own field of dreams.

Neil Humphreys is an award-winning football writer and a best-selling author, who has covered the English Premier League since 2000 and has written 28 books.

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