In an old Sally Forth comic strip, Hilary's parents talked about the pressures of attending her activities. At first, the mother, wearing a "soccer mom" sweatshirt, felt that she shouldn't attend all of Hilary's activities, "I don't think it's necessarily a good trend for parents to be expected to attend everything their kid is involved in," she said in one panel. "Is it right to make children constantly perform in front of an adult audience? Think of the pressure on the kids," she tells her husband.

His response is to ask if maybe they shouldn't attend her activities. Sally's answer is, "What, and look like rotten parents?"

Egads. So everyone feels pressure to perform. The children feel pressure to please their parents, to win the game, and to be the best. The parents to show they support their child the most by attending every game, cheering loudly, and willingly be chauffeurs.

It's hard to know how to do the right thing. If you go are you contributing to a focus on performance and winning rather than personal achievements and teamwork? If you don't go are you making your child feel unloved and unsupported?

My friend Sarah Clymer has an eight-year-old son who loves to play softball. In the summer, he's on a team. Some games she attends, some she doesn't. She doesn't go to practices. She talked to him about it, "You play ball because you love the game. What's important is that you do your personal best. That you play to play, not to win." Her first question after a game is not "Did you win?" but "Did you have fun? Did you do your best?"

The first game he played after they talked, he came home beaming to tell her about the great hit he had (that did not lead to a run). It felt good to him to have the pressure off to perform and be able to just play a game he loves. It helps that he has a great coach who understands the game is not about winning. Not that winning doesn't also feel good, but it's not the focus. The kids and parents don't feel sad when they lose, if they know they gave it their personal best.

And like Sally Forth realized, parents' attention to scoring and winning and their own pressure to attend their kids games, does focus on the results rather than the process. I realize professional sports put the emphasis on winning but that's what they are paid to do. Seven-year-old kids don't need to feel that kind of pressure.

So how do we take the pressure off of parents to attend every activity without looking like rotten parents? We need to make sure our kids feel supported even when we don't attend games. One way is to talk them about the event and their participation. Let them tell us instead of us telling them. "I caught a fly ball. I felt really good." rather than "It's too bad you guys didn't win today, even though you did catch that fly ball."

Parents also need to conduct themselves with politeness and in the spirit of fun teamwork. Yelling at the coach or other parents because of disagreements is not the model we want to teach our kids. Yell at the TV games but not at your children's events.

We all know winning isn't everything. But then neither is attending every activity or feeling that if we don't win, we've failed our fans. Let the Broncos take the heat, they're adults. Our kids just want to have fun.

Copyright © 2003 Anna Stewart. All rights reserved worldwide.