Here is the next video in the series of interviews with Ethan J. Skolnick Lead Sports Writer covering the Miami Heat and the NBA and Dr. Andrea Corn a licensed psychologist.
In this video, Learn How Professional Athletes Support Their Kids In Sports.
What I tried to do was interview some athletes that were children of athletes themselves. I was curious to see how they were raised and a lot of them ended up, for instance, Brett Hull ended up playing the same sport as his father, Bobby, which was hockey. He wasn’t pushed to hockey. Grant Hill’s father, Calvin, was an NFL football star, but Grant ended up playing basketball.
What I got from them was that they weren’t really pushed either into the sport just because their parents had done it. In fact, they found and now with their own kids, they were backing off even more because they had seen the pitfalls of going the other direction. They knew what had worked for them.
One of my favorite lines in the book is why we closed with it, but Cliff Floyd, who as we mentioned had a situation where his mother, while very well meaning, sort of pushed him to be great when he wasn’t ready to be there or felt like he didn’t want that kind of attention.
I asked Cliff what he was going to do with his own son. He has a young son now, at the time only a couple of years old, but you always want your son to be better than his father was, but I only want him to be the best that he can be. I think that was really the point.
I think what got driven home and why we decided to close the book with the athletes talking about their own children is because we can sit here and speak about what you should and shouldn’t do and athletes can speak about what worked for them.
But what they are actually taking and implementing with their own kids is what I think will show you the right way to go in most circumstances, which is to listen to the kid as much as possible, not to force the child into a sport just because you played it.
Jay Feely, the NFL kicker, said that one of his girls just wasn’t good at anything. He exposed her to everything. Finally she found swimming and he said she kind of likes it. She is not bad at it and she seems to like going in the pool. He said we are going to go with that for now. That is the attitude, this sort of open minded attitude, that the athletes all wanted us to get across.
Leroy Orr played football for ten years very physically and he has had physical problems after playing as a result of it. He didn’t focus on the physical aspect as much as he said that not every kid is cut out to play football simply because it is a different style of coaching in that sport than other sports. It is much more aggressive.
Your kid, as has talked about, if you understand your kid, and you listen to your kid, and you know what your kid likes and doesn’t like, and can handle and can’t handle.
One last take away is many of the athletes talked about the advantages of playing multiple sports and the different things they would take from one sport into another. For instance, Roy Hibbert who was very tall but didn’t play anything but basketball said, “Look Lee Brown played football, Steve Nash played soccer.
A lot of athletes went into playing sports that were not even their favorite sports or their best sports, when they were younger.
Many parents make a decision, when the kid is 12 that you are going to play this and this is all you are going to play. Maybe you miss out on a sport that not only they enjoy most, but maybe a sport once their body develops maybe a sport that ultimately they are going to be better at.
Ethan J. Skolnick is a Lead Writer covering the Miami Heat and the NBA. Prior to joining Bleacher Report and Turner Sports full-time, he had been a South Florida sportswriter for 17 years, covering all the major pro and college teams and just about every major sporting event for The Palm Beach Post, The South Florida Sun-Sentinel and The Miami Herald. In addition to his duties for Bleacher Report and Turner Sports, he still appears regularly as a co-host and Miami Heat analyst on The Ticket radio station based out of Miami, on 790AM and 104.3 FM.
Dr. Andrea Corn is a licensed psychologist whospecializes in the diagnosis and treatment of emotional and behavioral problems affecting children, adolescents, and adults. Areas of specialization include reducing anxiety, treating depression, unresolved anger, or learning how to better handle your relationships.
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