S1E8: Patrick Ianni and Seth Taylor

When creatures… humans, specifically… become parents, we tend to envision the future of our child to be full of fun, adventures, wonderful memories full of cuteness and lots and lots of winning. Our kids are going to be winners.

And there’s nothing wrong with that! Right?

Except then we fast forward 6 years and Little Timmy is running up the field at his soccer game and he is running as fast as he can because there’s literally 17 kids chasing him, including his own teammates and where is all that yelling coming from? My god, it’s the parents! They’re yelling, “Kick it, Timmy! KICK IT!” and then you realize that YOU are yelling for LT to “KICK IT!” and you don’t even know what that means because he is kicking it. You know enough about soccer to know he should kick it at the goal or possibly pass it to another player and you have seen Coach Jake working on passing and shooting in practice and Coach Jake is a varsity player at his high school so you shift your strategic advice to “SHOOT IT, LT!!!” and he attempts to obey.

But as he goes to shoot it, his 6-year old right foot clumps the ground in front of the ball and instead, he falls over the ball and the G-17 (Gang of 17) catch up with him and promptly organize a scrum in the other direction. Meanwhile, Little Timmy is in a heap on the ground. He managed to take one or two members of the G-17 with him and there is a little girl crying because there’s a scrape on her knee (BLOOD!).

Little Timmy slowly looks up at you on the sideline and what does he see?

Think about it: what does he see?

Naturally, he sees your face, caught in the moment, your heart on your sleeve. Your eyebrows are tweaked, your face is slightly sad. Of course it is, because your kid is on the ground and he’s feeling his failure!

But that’s not how he takes it. He sees your face and he takes that image in and he does the simple math without even thinking about it:

Me + Failure = Dad is unhappy.

And LT (Little Timmy) experiences a LT (little trauma). Because he wants his dad’s love. He’s 6. He doesn’t understand nuance, not one bit. And that means that this game is doing damage.

******

My guests this week are two soccer experts who happen to also be child development pros. They spend their days working on a very specific problem: how to stop the above scenario from happening in order to instill genuine love for sport in the minds and bodies of our young athletes.

This interview challenged me, big time. These two know what they’re talking about. And I hope it will challenge you, too.

Full disclosure: Seth Taylor is my twin brother.

- DGT