The Regretful Parenting Club

One that nobody wants to be a member of.

I’m always excited to hear from parents, coaches or athletes who have read my book. And, I’ll admit, quite tickled when Tom, a father of four and a HS football coach, reached out through my website and opened our call with,

“Oh wow, it’s wonderful to hear! That’s exactly what I had hoped my book would do,” I responded.

I knew it wasn’t going to make the NYTimes best-seller list, but I adore that 18 months later, it’s got a long tail and is still making its way into the hands of those I so wanted it to help; parents, coaches and their athletes.

Tom went onto say that once his friend, who greatly respects and admires, said he needed to read it, he immediately downloaded it. “I’m not even all the way through the audible, but I just had to reach because so many stories you share resonate with how I behaved as a parent. Three of my four kids are out of the house, so most of my sports parenting days are behind me. However, I do still coach high school football so am dealing with parents all the time and have seen a dramatic shift from when I was growing up to first coaching my sons to now.”

Tom was very candid about coaching his own three boys high school football teams and how much he pushed them harder than the rest of the team.

“I have some regrets on how hard I was on them. I’d take back some of the things I said and the standards I held them to which weren’t the same for the others.” He earnestly shared that at some point several years ago, he and one son didn’t speak for several months, “And that’s just not who we are as a family. That’s on me.”

I was impressed by his honesty and candor, sharing memories that happened nearly a decade ago as if they had happened yesterday. That’s how these big parenting moments become seared in our brains. We get caught up in the moment, we don’t handle it with as much grace as we’d like, and we’re left with a little tear in the connection between us and our child. Too many of these micro-slices and it becomes death by a thousand paper cuts. We’ve severed the line of trust with our child.

Which is why I so often start my talks to parents with this image.

What is the story you want your kid to tell of their childhood?

Someday, in the not too distant future, you and your kids will be reflecting on their first eighteen years.

What will they share with you (and others) about it? What story would you like for them to be telling? Are you the (s)hero or the villain? Or the present parent who guided with love and limits?

One of the most powerful gifts we have as humans is the ability to “time travel”. A leading expert in the field of emotion regulation, Ethan Kross, PhD, spells this out in research that he’s done in his new book, Shift . He calls it “Psychological Ju Jitsu”. It’s the ability to ask yourself a few simple questions NOW, that may impact how you’ll feel about whatever you’re dealing with a week, a month, a year or even ten years from now.

Let’s look an example (which may or may not be real):

You are the parent of a 12 yr old. Your son has ALWAYS been the most talented kid on his club soccer team. He tries out for a new, more competitive club and he’s told he will be on the A team, but will only be a practice player and will mostly play on the B team. You are upset, dare I say, enraged, that he is not only not going to be a starter, but he is going to be relegated to playing with lesser talent, for the less desirable coach, with none of his friends. Booooo.

Sound familiar? There are people yelling at their screens right now- “Yes! That’s exactly what happened to me (and my kid)!”

So let’s try the experiment. Get in that fancy Time Machine and speed forward ten years. Your sweet, cuddly twelve year old is now nearly out of college. How important is what team he played for as a 12 yr old now?

From personal experience, I can tell you, I can picture the color of the uniforms from the teams my kids played on at 12 years old, but was that the AYSO team? or Club A or Club B team? Try as I might, I just don’t remember. Most likely, neither will he.

Another approach I often use to help course correct tough moments is mental imagery. Here’s a real time example: My middle son’s college team just lost in 2OT in a rivalry game. Man, that was stressful to watch, I can only imagine how it felt for the athletes and coaches to lose by 2 in a down-to-wire finish.

Not ten minutes after the game ending buzzer seared my soul, I gave the finish a quick reframe: How LUCKY is he that he is playing a sport he loves at a school he loves. Yes, he’ll be disappointed but what I know is this, it will build his resilience and work ethic even more. (And, we’ll get them next time.. in the playoffs, when it really counts!)

We don’t always get to choose what happens to us,

but 100% of the time, we get to choose how we respond to it. - KJ

Do you have a parenting story to share where it didn’t really go the way you’d hoped? How did you choose to repair it? Or if you haven’t yet- it’s never too late.

Thanks for reading. I so appreciate having you all here in this community. When we know better, we do better.

Let’s do this!

K

What KJ’s Reading…

If you’re in the service business, or sales, or marketing, or are a parent, teacher or coach or deal with other people at all, ever. You should read this book.

So often we get into a story in our heads about what we are “owed”. They should wait on me. I’ll be nice to them if they are nice to me first. I’ll allow you into traffic, if you first show me you’re kind. Unreasonable Hospitality flips this notion on its head. What if we all did the opposite… just imagine how the world would change.