Patience!

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There's a lot of schadenfreude out there.

Excellent. Had to look that up.

Also helps explain why many dislike their teammate families as much or more than the rivals.

[Unregistered]

Perspective here. I've been away for a few weeks but I guess I'm not surprised to see the same old, same old. Resentment-driven obsessions never die and indeed most often deepen and expand with age.

That said, I am intrigued by the post above. I have no idea who wrote it and don't care, and I'm not even sure what prompted the content based on the post that was quoted. At any rate, in my view the above is one of the truest offerings I've seen on TS in a long time. The content describes all of us and explains 95% of what we see here on TS. And what is described obviously does not apply just to soccer.

I'm sure parents always have been competitive, and always to some degree have measured their own worth based on how their children fare. The poster said it perfectly. If your kid isn't competing with or in my kid's way then your kid can be embraced and cheered for, even genuinely. There are scenarios where the success of other kids actually enhances one's own kid. But once that line is crossed, or one even smells the possibility of the line crossed in terms of being a competitive threat, then our backs raise up like a cat in self-defense mode. Here often this is blamed on club, even specific clubs, specific players/families, and specific opposing clubs/players/families. All of that is just but one mere example. It can be over high school captain, over team MVP, over college admissions, over who gets the book awards on a school awards night. None of us are immune.

I think this phenomenon is personally and culturally worse now because families are far more isolated and cordoned off from one another. We may engage in friendly banter and put on a good social show but often it is through gritted teeth. No one wants to credit anyone else, especially as the correlation between others getting something and our kids not getting something increases. Our own families are naturally what are most important to us, but increasingly they seem to be the only thing that is important.

And so even at very young ages we have parents masterminding, looking for edges, feeling burned when your 4 or 5 year old misses out on something, etc. And this explains much of TS. We see it every day. D1 is the best. D3 is really the best. Only these kids are special, while others say if you look through a different prism it's actually the other kids. And some think they are outside of all this, and that they are only calling out and correctly labeling those who don't really measure up. And that's the grandest of delusions, because they too, and all of us, experience the same types of visceral reactions that in our gut we know we have even when we so badly want to say that we don't.

Good post. I think that parents have a real tough time assessing their kids these days. In my generation, the "smart" kids were a fairly small group. We all knew who they were, and those kids were in the "smart" classes. I never remember parents advocating to have their kids placed in a higher level class.

The arms race in soccer, has been largely based on the need for everyone to be on the "A" team. Some kids are better than others. Some kids are smarter. Better looking. Funnier. The parental need for Johnny/Mary to be "the best" despite their natural abilities is a major driver in all of this. If they are not "the best", it has to be someone elses fault. Coach, club, teacher, boss. I fear this lack of accountability may have devastating consequences for this generation.

[Unregistered]

Status is everything. It's not necessarily new, but it's getting worse by the year.

The real challenge is for that new soccer mom or dad to break away from that mentality of the pack, whatever the source of enlightenment might be, accept who your kid is and why they play and enjoy your place as parent as much as theirs as the child. There is no losing in that.

Those parents who don't, as my experience has shown me time and time again, will find immense disappointment along the way, because there just aren't that many kids enough to satisfy their parents hopes expectations since their more inflated than anyone else involved, including coaches, teammates, and their own kid.

[Unregistered]

Status is everything. It's not necessarily new, but it's getting worse by the year.

The real challenge is for that new soccer mom or dad to break away from that mentality of the pack, whatever the source of enlightenment might be, accept who your kid is and why they play and enjoy your place as parent as much as theirs as the child. There is no losing in that.

Those parents who don't, as my experience has shown me time and time again, will find immense disappointment along the way, because there just aren't that many kids enough to satisfy their parents hopes expectations since their more inflated than anyone else involved, including coaches, teammates, and their own kid.

Except then you have the clubs selling sunshine and it becomes hard to get an objectivity anywhere. This is one of the reasons guys like Perspective are so damaging because they defend that model as though they created it.

[Unregistered]

I see and am disheartened by delusioned parents through all levels of youth soccer and sports. I have told my kids since the age of five that there was always going to be soccer players that are faster, stronger, smarter and generally better skilled than them. There's is only one best in the world, so you're going to always have to work harder and look up towards the better players to inspire yourself. When they were the best on their team, I took them to watch a better team of the same age to immediately see what was strive for. Every player has itheir own ceiling, so for me it's just about getting them to find the right combination of teams, clubs, training and coaches to best reach their ceiling ... whatever that might be.

[Unregistered]

Except then you have the clubs selling sunshine and it becomes hard to get an objectivity anywhere. This is one of the reasons guys like Perspective are so damaging because they defend that model as though they created it.

If you were in charge of who makes the cut of being legit in life only your own kid would survive, and only that as long as she decided to stay at her D1 school. Your self-aggranizement is entirely dependent on your 100% disparagement of everyone else. You are the damage, the ultimate "who is on top" freak.