What were you told you were incapable of as a kid? Math? Singing? Running? Basketball? How many times did you have to hear it before you believed it, before you owned it entirely?
Today I received, once again, a link to an inspiring amateur video of the final moments of a high school basketball game. You’ve seen it, I’ll bet, at least once. The coach of the home team puts the beloved team trainer, Jason McElwain, in the game, an apparent generous gesture of gratitude for his years of service to the team. Jason happens to be autistic.
So, point guard passes ball to Jason at the baseline, Jason shoots, Jason scores. A three pointer. Crowd goes wild! Feel-good story right there, worthy of a good number of hits on YouTube.
But the shot was no fluke. You’ll remember that Jason drops five or six more in the next four minutes of play. He’s white hot. He’s in the zone. Marv Alpert would have deemed him, “Unconscious!”
Cool video, no doubt.
After watching a couple times, I started thinking about the coach. Like the entirety of the crowd in the packed, sweaty gym that night, I’m certain he was caught up in the thrill of the moment, the very goodwill of it all. But I wonder if later, in the dark reaches of his mind, he considered the fact that he had a ringer of a forward right next to him on the bench, the whole time, gladly handing out Dixie cups of Gatorade during time-outs. If you’re that guy, at the end of the season, do you really want to know?
If he’s at all like other coaches I have known, I’ll bet he still has occasional night sweats about it.
The reason this story launched into the cultural zeitgeist, I assume, involves the shock of what Jason could do on the court. Nobody knew.
We do this with our own kids too, don’t we? We make stealth little assumptions about what they are good at and, more to the point, what they are not. Like with Jason, it sometimes doesn’t even occur to us that our child is talented in some area or another. And a diagnosis of autism isn’t required for us to place a virtual cap on a child’s potential. I fear we don’t pay enough attention to all our kids can do.
So why would we do this? Perhaps we’re trying to protect our kids from failure. Maybe we’re protecting ourselves somehow. Either way, I can tell you this is dangerous stuff. I know that, if we drop our expectations of our kids, they’ll meet them, and no more. I firmly believe that every child carries greatness, and part of our job as parents is to help them identify and maximize their greatness, wherever it lies.
The critical truth is, when our children are young, they are often limited not by the power of their imaginations, but by the power of ours.
So much truth to this…it reminds me of Marianne Williamson’s quote: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.”
Thanks for that quote, Lyn. It is so true, yet so hard for us to recognize as well. The fear of success is so counter-intuitive.
John, as you know, this topic rings a very loud bell in my heart. My mother believed I wasn’t good enough, and that voice stayed with me for decades.
But what if your child were potentially super-good at something? Do you drop everything and cater only to her needs, like some parents of skaters, gymnasts, musicians, tennis players, etc, have been notoriously doing? Where do you draw the line, and what if she was good to some extent but not THAT good as to become world-class? When that becomes obvious, both lives of the parent and the child would be left in a limbo, wouldn’t they, if not destroyed already by the weight of expectations?
Pressure is very high to start early, put them in the right clubs, travel all over the country on tournaments… then the kids, most often than not, burn out before reaching their peak.
It’s really hard to determine how much potential children’s talents possess realistically.
I get the feeling that there are a lot of really talented people who didn’t become world-famous, not because their parents didn’t recognize their talents, but because the parents opted for balanced lives for their children. Is that a bad thing?
How to do that without squashing the kids’ self-esteem is beyond me… And there is always the nagging voice saying, “What if she is really THAT good?”
The bell in my heart is ringing for a different reason now…
Tough question, Tomo. Of course, I absolutely feel we need to support the strengths of our children. Seems you do that quite well. I have worked with parents who have received messages – from teachers, coaches, trainers, that their child is exceptional in some way. I do not think these are messages to ignore. I DO feel, however, that some families follow these messages until they fall completely out-of-balance. This feels unhealthy as well. I think we need to be as supportive as we can be, but within the context of how we, as parents, decide to drive the culture and values of our families. Thanks again for offering your thoughts!