Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

Kids don't get to pick their parents

by Julie Carter

Name your event - football, basketball, baseball, track, rodeo, livestock shows and the occasional beauty pageant or bake-off - and if it involves kids, you will find their parents embarrassing them.

I'm not talking without knowledge. I am a parent and I had parents. We have all been embarrassed about or by each other at one time or another.

Fortunately, it wasn't ever because of our behavior at a competition event.

My folks were not shouters, screamers or blame assigners. To this day, I'm grateful for their dignified rooting for the home team at ball games and other public possibilities for a display parental pride.

There were then, and still are now, plenty of others willing to take up the slack in the "make a fool of yourself" department.

As school administrations buckle down for another year of pushing academic excellence along with their individual attempts at molding our children into productive citizens, I fortify myself for the "bleacher coaches" that haunt every sporting event.

Even from the sidelines where I move up and down the periphery of the event to photograph it, I cringe at the level of crude audacity some parents find necessary to use to promote a team.

There doesn't seem to be a magic formula to make adults act like adults, let alone expect them to rein themselves in enough to not mortify their child while he or she is competing. You know who you are.

Call me an advocate for your children because they are stuck with you, I am not. For those that insist on assigning themselves the task of re-educating coaches and referees, I will suggest that a healthy dose of chill pills be your prescription of choice along with frequent deep breaths of restraint.

The sigh of relief you hear will be from your child (and the guy sitting next to you).

The sparkling smile you are flashed from the floor or field will be signatory of the gratitude from a very relieved child.

As a side note, if the guy next to smiles like that, he probably hopes you aren't going to eat that hot dog you set down so you could jump and holler. He'd actually, really like to eat it.

We are the examples for tomorrow's leaders. Think about that when you shuffle to the top of the bleachers this weekend to take in some sun, canned nachos and a hometown, home team ball game, high school rodeo or volley ball game.

It matters not if your athlete wears a cowboy hat and swings a rope, or is suited up in layers of red, blue, black or orange synthetics snugged over plastic armor with a football under his arm; they will do the best that they can possibly do at any given moment.

Ask no more of them, because your incessant rants at the referees, judges, and coaches etc., will not make the difference.

No one will be harder on your athlete than they will be on themselves, so please, don't pour your toxic terseness on the scene and expect it to manifest victory just because you called it so.

Your relationship with your child is a team sport. Save yourself from yourself and let your teenager find the joy of the competition without the fear of watching his parent being escorted from the game by security personnel eating out the pit of his stomach.

If this admonition made you angry, then it was for you.

Julie can be reached for comment at jcarter@tularosa.net, or at the next high school football game, or as a last resort, at www.julie-carter.com.