What a Mouthful

If your son plays sports, it will prove to be an important training ground for his life.  But as a high school basketball coach, I continue to see mothers who still breast feed (symbolically speaking) their 14-18 year old boys.

The monster that continues to rear its ugly head each season and will ultimately undermine future manhood are mothers who call meetings with the Athletic Director because their son didn’t make the team, or they cry to the administration for their son’s playing time, or whine that their son is being bullied and pushed too hard because he has to run.  They pack their bags, run their uniforms up to school when they have forgotten them, sneak a drink to them while they are on the bench during a game and roll their eyes at the coach (me) after a game when their kid doesn’t play.

I have never in my entire life seen so many entitled, soft, spoiled, wimpy, and undisciplined out of shape boys who want to be athletes.  And they are all convinced that they are going to play basketball at the next level (Michigan, Duke, UConn, Kansas, etc.)  How can that be?

A relationship with God, selfless teamwork, pushing through the pain and never giving up are the hallmarks I try to instill in our players.  But the parents who are not willing to teach those principles are not undermining me; they are undermining their sons’ ability to make the transition after high school.

As I write this piece, I think of the term “helicopter mom,” but I have to ask, is the concept of helicopter parenting born out of some unresolved guilt, hurt, a deception of the devil to make a woman believe she needs to control her son’s every move; or is it over compensation for absentee men?

Let me address the later – absentee men.  Is having no relationship with God, chasing money, cars, sports, the next black tie affair, addictions, your side piece or the fact that you are no longer with your son’s mother, worth the legacy that God has designed you to fulfill?  Proverbs 22:6 (ESV) “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.

The notion that the division of the family is by demonic design and that men can not continue to let the devil have his way will go against the grain of some of you intellectuals who are reading this and still embrace self.  However, I believe that when men take their rightful place with God and in the family, coaches who have a passion to see young boys become men will no longer have to question why mothers are breast feeding their teenage sons.

PS… The edit of A Cry Among Men – The Novel  is going well.