Internally, we all know what this word means, but I want you, Crazy Sports Parent, to take a close look. I find that if one looks up a word, s/he has a better understanding of the OTHER words that combine to create the word in question...check it out.
amateur
- 3 dictionary resultsam·a·teur
[am-uh-choo
r, -cher, -ter, am-uh-tur] 
Show IPA –nounmpare professional.
–adjective 1.Person {that would be your own children} who engages in a study, sport, or other activity for pleasure rather than for financial benefit or professional reasons. Student athletes just wan to feel the love of learning; the love of the game.
2.an athlete who has never competed to monetary gain.
3.a person inexperienced or unskilled in a particular activity: Hunting lions is not for amateurs.
5.characteristic of or engaged in by an amateur; nonprofessional: an amateur painter; amateur tennis.
amateur packet radio
My favorite synonyms? "Hopeful" and "learner". THAT's what kids' sports are all about.
If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn.
If children live with hostility, they learn to fight.
If children live with fear, they learn to be apprehensive.
If children live with pity, they learn to feel sorry for themselves.
If children live with ridicule, they learn to feel shy.
If children live with jealousy, they learn to feel envy.
If children live with shame, they learn to feel guilty.
If children live with encouragement, they learn confidence.
If children live with tolerance, they learn patience.
If children live with praise, they learn appreciation.
If children live with acceptance, they learn to love.
If children live with approval, they learn to like themselves.
If children live with recognition, they learn it is good to have a goal.
If children live with sharing, they learn generosity.
If children live with honesty, they learn truthfulness.
If children live with fairness, they learn justice.
If children live with kindness and consideration, they learn respect.
If children live with security, they learn to have faith in themselves and in those about them.
If children live with friendliness, they learn the world is a nice place in which to live.
Children Learn What They Live
By Dorothy Law Nolte, Ph.D.
By Dorothy Law Nolte, Ph.D.
If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn.
If children live with hostility, they learn to fight.
If children live with fear, they learn to be apprehensive.
If children live with pity, they learn to feel sorry for themselves.
If children live with ridicule, they learn to feel shy.
If children live with jealousy, they learn to feel envy.
If children live with shame, they learn to feel guilty.
If children live with encouragement, they learn confidence.
If children live with tolerance, they learn patience.
If children live with praise, they learn appreciation.
If children live with acceptance, they learn to love.
If children live with approval, they learn to like themselves.
If children live with recognition, they learn it is good to have a goal.
If children live with sharing, they learn generosity.
If children live with honesty, they learn truthfulness.
If children live with fairness, they learn justice.
If children live with kindness and consideration, they learn respect.
If children live with security, they learn to have faith in themselves and in those about them.
If children live with friendliness, they learn the world is a nice place in which to live.
Copyright © 1972 by Dorothy Law Nolte
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Our award winning mobile apps are providing over 15 million people with the words they seek. Find out more, hereAll of our kids are amateurs. It's true. I mean take a look at those synonyms. Priceless. The games they play in are supposed to involve pleasure and learning skills and how to be a good sport. Like it or not, there's not a thing you can do that will turn eight-year-old Little League players into a professional baseball team. Accept that premise in light of what I have to say. There are some letters you can't possibly write unless you put them in context. Key word here, Crazies, is amateur. They are just trying to HAVE FUN!
I have two sons, now ages 10 and 13. They're both smart and sweet and infuriating and loud and scruffy. In other words, normal boys, but not boys who are very physically aggressive or athletically, shall we say, "minded." My thirteen-year-old's Eighth Grade Basketball Coach is a man I really like and feel is a good example for my son and his friends, boys I love, too. My tall, rail thin son is not and never has been an athletic genius, but it turns out he is an amazing three point shooter. It's hard to see that, though, since every time someone passes the ball to him, he throws it right back like they're playing hot potato. Inexplicably, when on defense, he'll be guarding his guy and staying right with him but when that kid gets the ball, my son steps back and put up his hands.
So this coach finally says to my son, "it's ok to take your shot. The worst thing that will happen is you'll miss and not one kid on this team gets through a game without missing a shot, if they're taking shots. See, when you don't take them, you're not only saving yourself from missing, your lowering your chances of making a shot by 100%. And on defense? I know you don't want to hurt anyone but that's really unlikely. Probably the worst thing that would happen is you'd foul a kid, and, hey, you get five of them so take some!" He did start taking a shot here and there and he made some! I screamed like all get out while he put his head down in shyness, with a smile of pride only I could see.
I cheered like crazy for that kid and that team and it was fun watching them improve, which wouldn't have happened without the kind of a coach we had. While other coaches were screaming and literally taunting their players, ours was quietly encouraging our kids, patting this one or that one on the back and often talking separately to a kid when he'd come off the court. It was a great example for our boys and made them proud to be representing their school. Watching them watch some other jerk across the court wave his arms, and scream like a crazy lunatic, was amazing. They heard this guy singling out boys on his own team to pick on, often for the whole game, while threatening the team as to the hell he'd be giving them at the next practice. He did say hell. Seriously. Our boys looked scared and offended. Since they had a good coach, they instinctively knew that what they were watching was wrong. Unfortunately, parents from schools with those kinds of coaches learned to jump right in and taunt, too, and so did the players on the bench. The kids on those teams knew they weren't going to be encouraged by anyone, so they went for recognition by doing anything they could to put the ball in the basket, even if it meant breaking the rules...cheating, that is. I'd like to say our boys did fabulously, but they had an incredibly horrid losing season...and they all survived, self-esteem intact.
We're talking about eighth graders here. How many of these kids do you think are going to play on the varsity team in high school? Even if one or two are high school stars, how many will end up playing for a Top Ten team, let alone a community college team? Players with athletic ability so rare as to make them NBA stars? Come on, parents! These are your CHILDREN. So you didn't make it to the NBA, Dad. Living vicariously through your son and thinking your screaming and threatening your own child will accomplish YOUR dream is shameful. Do you know if your son's dream is the same as your own? Have you even bothered to ask him? Even if it is, I'll bet you a plate of good pasta and some crusty bread (hey-I'm hungry here) that he's never once asked for your "help" in accomplishing anything by embarrassing and demeaning him in front of his friends, his coach and all the spectators. "C'mon, Son. What're you doing out there? Quit being a pansy and get in the game for Christ's sake. Geeze, I don't why I keep coming to these games. It's torture just watching you make the same mistakes you do in every film of every game we've watched over and over (I'll bet those have been some prime sessions of father/son bonding...yikes!)...and you still don't get it. Wasted time."
I'm trying so hard to be gender neutral here but not on this one, I just can't. It's the dads.
I try hard not to criticize other parents-you never know what goes on behind closed doors-but I'm making an exception here. Your complete lack of sensitivity to this child who used to wear footie jammies and sleep in a crib is inexcusable. For as long as you've been engaging in what I believe with all my heart is truly mentally sick behavior, you've been missing huge chunks of his childhood, all because you've told this boy, directly or indirectly that your love for him is dependent on his performance in this one area-an amateur sport. I have cried at games listening to this kind of browbeating. You can see some fifteen-year-old kid heartbroken and looking weary...so far from fun. Crazy Parent, you don't even intend that "fun" be a part of the competition, so you embarrass your child and scare ours.
My husband and I coached 4th and 5th graders playing flag football this summer. The year before, I was upset at every game. Out of eight kids on each team, there were always three that got to play a combined total of approximately 56 seconds out of each forty minute game. When one of those kids did get to play, there were parents-dads AND moms-who would audibly groan and moan. These were 3rd and 4th graders, mind you, kids so little that they're still practicing multiplication flash cards and looking forward to story corner. When one of those kids would make a mistake, these same parents would, God honestly, boo, setting an example for their children to be the poorest of sports, one that puts down even their own teammates.
The referees were high school kids that the coaches would grab off the track around the field as they were leaving practice. You give them a whistle, pay them ten bucks and you're good to go. Imagine the cutest little eight and nine-year-old boys you've ever seen, staring up at their coaches with stars in their eyes. What was going through their minds when they watched these grown men, their coaches and the coaches of opposite teams, standing on either side of a high school kid with a whistle screaming and pointing and standing on their tip toes so they could point down at each other (why do men do that when they fight about sports? Seriously). The "fight" was always about the infamous "bad call." Those kids were learning not to accept gracefully what a referee calls, or to talk rationally with that referee about a call. They were learning that when you don't like something, you scream and throw a tantrum worthy of a hungry two-year-old who's past nap time and can't find his blankie.
In flag football, mind you, there are few rules other than no touching, just pull flags, stay inside these lines, no off sides and a couple other rules that eight and nine-year-old boys can (almost and usually) understand. These guys were arguing that a high school kid made a bad off sides call or that he failed to see a kid run out of bounds quickly enough, giving the other team a few extra yards. It made me put my head in my hands for so many reasons.
Then there was the time one of the coaches came to the game drunk. Rather than act like a grown up, the coach of our team allowed himself to be engaged in drunken banter. Enter, 3rd and 4th graders, joining right in and yelling back and forth at each other from across the field, using the same pathetic language used in any drunken back and forth. I took my son out of that game and had him sit with me and watch and talk with me about what he was seeing. I was upset. I went to our coach and said I was concerned the boys might be either learning some lessons that weren't supposed to be part of a kiddie sport, or getting scared. There were both and I was much less disturbed by the kids who looked frightened. Honestly, though, my son's a terrible, terrible football player. Watching him on a football field-just him-is like watching the entire "Bad News Boys" movie over and over. He doesn't care one iota. Like my brother who used to stand in the outfield in Little League games, mitt on the ground, staring at the sky while balls whizzed past his head, my son was far more interested in taking his mouthpiece in and out than playing football. He's found his niche in swimming and he loves it.
After four or five games of this nonsense, I told our coach what an incredibly poor example he was setting for these boys. I swear to God, a grown man responded, "I'm not a babysitter or Captain Kangaroo, I'm here to teach these boys to win games."
I was sure smoke was coming out of my ears like an angry cartoon character. My fabulously talented eighteen-year-old step-son, a kid I got as a perk when I married my husband, is an amazing example for my boys in so many ways. Plus, I love him. As such, my husband is a veteran flag football and other kiddie sport coach-years and years invested into coaching kids. After I'd complained to my husband for what must have been the 114th time, he said "if you're going to complain like this and you're really this upset, you need to have the guts to volunteer to be a coach so you can do it your way."
Really? Seriously? Absolutely! He's brilliant! Bad idea to say things that spur me to action when I'm angry, angry, angry. I marched right over and signed up to be a coach the next year. My family laughed at me-what did I know about football, athletic disaster that I myself was? While I was a cheerleader (something it embarrasses me to say) my sister was setting records in basketball and was honored as the only high school student in the State to play three varsity sports all four years of high school. She got all those genes. When God was passing them out, I must have been in the bathroom.
Indignant, I told them all, I could most certainly learn the rules to flag football and show these boys how a good sport acts. For the next year, my husband told me how this was my team and his coaching days were done and so on...
When my team arrived for our first practice the next summer, I told them all and their parents that this would be treated like what it was: a kid's game where the boys learned skills and had fun; if anyone wanted some crazy competition devoted coach, walk away and find one...dime a dozen. I could see some of the dads wondering if we were ever going to win a game, but they all stayed and we had a blast. The reluctant (in word only) husband did come to every practice and game with me. Good thing because while I learned the rules backwards and forwards, I neglected to consider the whole part about teaching "plays" to a bunch of nine and ten-year-olds=short attention span theater. So the husband mostly took care of the plays department and I took over the job of hugging the boys all the time and saying things like "hustle over here" and "put down that mud ball."
We had a couple outstanding athletes, and they were phenomenal to watch. We never scared them or harassed them or treated other teams or their coaches poorly and every one of our parents followed suit. We had a heartbreaking loss and it really was because of a "bad call," our only loss of the summer. The kids hung their heads and my husband and I were crushed for them, but we walked over to shake hands and they were right behind us like a row of ducklings. We huddled with the kids and the parents after the game and told them we knew it was a hard thing but that it was over, we were all proud of them and we'd just keep on going, see you at practice. It was one of the highlights for me, where you see the good coming through each little boy and his parents, too. Of course my husband and I went home and almost wept periodically throughout the weekend, shaking our heads at each other.
If I had expected that coaching his team would get my son to be a more enthusiastic athlete, I was sorely mistaken. All he ever learned to do was hike the ball...but damn he was a good center. He didn't catch or throw one pass. He never pulled a flag. He did cheer for his team, though, and was genuinely happy when one of his teammates made a particularly good catch or throw or when we got a touchdown.
At our pizza party at the end, we all talked with our parents about how much fun we'd all had and how great it was to see our kids have fun and get better and better every day. These parents thanked us profusely and gave us cards and little presents that the boys came up to deliver. We hugged them and they hugged back. They knew we thought they were cool. Even with our refusal to make this all about competition and short one player for the whole season, we came in second out of all the teams. There are few things I've done with kids that I've loved so much. My son probably won't even play next year and my husband says he's "coached [his] last game," looking like those players of professional sports who say they're going out with dignity before they're forced to leave when age renders them useless. Honestly? I've told my husband he can either coach with me again next year or adopt a baby with me. So far assistant coach is looking pretty good to him...
I'm not trying to blow a bunch of sunshine up everyone's skirt, telling you all how perfect we were as coaches. More than once, I had to substitute players when my husband forgot that he hadn't done so in far too long. A couple of times, I could see he was really hot about something that had gone on and I had to do that whisper/scream thing in his ear about getting himself under control or I'd smack him in front of everyone. We scowled at "bad calls" and had to confess to the kids that this wasn't the right thing to do and we were sorry...then we'd scowl behind their backs. I'm just telling the story to make the point that kids can be great athletes even if you don't humiliate them and treat them like something other than the little kids they are. Even-shocking surprise-if they don't see you act like an idiot fighting with the other coach or, worse yet, fighting with their parents.
So, Crazy Sports Parent, can you see what you take from your children when you set a bad, bad example? When you treat their teams like a strictly scheduled detention center? You take their childhood and all of a sudden it's over and you thought you were going to have time later, and out the door they go never to live with you again. So, Crazy Parent, decide. Are you going to be a reasonable human being who is respectful, a good sport and a real parent who wants to help your children grow? Or will you actually be their worst critic?
Who, Crazy Parent...who do you want to be?
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