Son wanting to be professional footballer

[eco1636]

DS is 9 and wants to be a pro footballer when he grows up.
He's in the Bs and not that quick, and DH decided yesterday on a long car journey to tell him that he and his best friend "don't have a hope" of ever being good enough.
I turned to look at DS who had been pratting on, and he was crying quietly and body language crushed. So I climbed into the back with him and gave him a big hug and said he's got to have a dream.
DH said he doesn't want to raise a snowflake and refused to soften the blow.
I'm pissed off at how DS did this and also about how OTT he went about Father Christmas whom DH shoves down their throat making them believe in him lock, stock and barrel. I'm softly softly on everything, putting the ball in DS's court to make his own mind up about things.
AIBU to be bit gutted with DH?

I really wish people would stop saying if they aren’t picked up by an academy by 9 they never will be, it’s really not true

My ds2 didn’t get scouted and until he was 14 and had 3 lots of 6 week trials at 3 different clubs before being signed and that’s the case with a lot of boys he knows through football and Scholl

Kids figure it out on their own, they don't need their parents to crush their dreams. If he was 16 I would understand, not 9.

So OP, lots of people on here think your DH is a dick, me included but you haven't said what you intend to do now. Are you going to have it out with him and get him to apologise to your son and look at more positive things, are you going to investigate it further and see what if anything can be done for your son to further his dream at this stage, or are you going to come back on and tell us your DH is a great dad and just had a bad day?

I feel sorry for your ds for the way your dh broke the news to him but it sounded like he needed to be told.

My friend’s DS is 14 and plays in the a team for a championship academy team. He has played with them since he was 6. Friend has been touring the country and Europe at weekends and holidays with him since then. He was scouted for a premier league academy, they moved to London for a bit, he was then dropped by that academy. It is his dream to be a professional footballer but he is working hard for his gcse’s as his back up plan as he has seen academy team-mates dropped at 16 and no one else pick them up. There is no way that anyone in his stream at age 9 playing for the b team would make it.

Your DH should let him have his dream until he's doing his GCSE's.

Trouble is that he may not put much effort into his school work for the next 5/6 years and not prioritise his GCSEs if he believes he can become a pro footballer. Then by the time he realises and needs a plan B, he'll have a hell of a lot of work to undo the damage he's done to his education.

My nephew was exactly like the OPs son. Determined to be a pro footballer right from primary school, so basically just spent all his spare time training, playing in both the school team and a local youth team, to the detriment of his GCSEs and he ended up with a B, a couple of Cs and mostly Ds and Es. He tried but couldn't get accepted into any football academies - he's now 25, had a succession of dead end minimum wage jobs and just plays in his pub team. He now wishes that someone had told him a lot younger that he wasn't up to the grade and he says himself he'd have pulled back and studied more instead as he really regrets his poor education now.

Don't most 9 year olds want to be footballers or actresses lol. My son did and by the age of about 12 realised for himself that it wasn't likely to happen to him (Think Forrest Gump ) and has now started the process to get into refereeing and at 14 is already earning money refereeing the lower leagues.

it is our job to tell our children the truth, not as brutally as the op's dh did but saying 'you can be anything you want to be' is just not true, whether that's anyone becoming a pro gymnast / tennis champ or changing sex. Some things are just not possible for some people.

Your DH was being pretty mean.
In career development terms a 9yr old is at what we call 'fantasy' stage. He's starting to understand what he enjoys and how that translates into careers. As he continues to progress he'll start to understand what jobs involve and what he needs to do to get there. He'll figure out whether he's good enough in his own time. A parents job is to encourage and support - injecting a sense of realism is also important but that can come in the shape of looking at back up plans, the need to continue with academic study because even if you make it it tends to be relatively short lived.

‘You can be whatevèr you want to be, you just have to work hard’ is one of the absolute worst and most damaging lies you can tell to a child.

It’s so utterly untrue, it’s akin to saying, ‘you absolutely can be a unicorn if you want to be’!!

I think your DH could have been kinder about it, but I don’t think he’s wrong in the grand scheme of things.

Yeah no need to just crush the little boy’s dreams. Is he going to make it? Probably not, but he can give it a good damn try. As long as he enjoys playing then all good.

I love this Alex Ferguson quote and Alan Shearer was told by his pe teacher to find a new career choice because he’d never make it as a footballer. I wouldn’t tell a 9 year old he wasn’t capable because I don’t think it’s a good message and I wouldn’t write off anyone let alone a 9 year old.

9 is perfectly old enough to be able to see if you could make the grade or not, and perfectly old enough be told you'll never be a pro footballer.

No, it isn't. It really isn't.

9 is perfectly old enough to be able to see if you could make the grade or not

That’s incorrect.

I’m a coach of a different team sport. It’s inxredibly common for kids to be good pre-puberty and lose their skills or kids not to be great and “find” skills as their physique develops. There’s also an ability to read the game with maturity.

I am always honest. If a child says “I want to play professionally” I would say “that’s brilliant, what a fab aim. It’s really hard work so you have to train hard”.

That’s quite damaging. I speak from experience. Your son can be encouraged without being given false hope. Quashing that ambition in that way quashes self esteem along with it.

Wow. Agree with others that it’s incredibly mean to crush his dreams like that. Let kids be kids for a short time and have little fantasies. I will say that if he loves football, although he may not be able to be a pro player he could aim to work in football in analytics/sports science. You don’t need to be exceptionally academic either. My db didn’t get great a level grades but with a lot of dedication and drive now works as a sports scientist for a major team and is doing a PhD in his field of expertise. He did a sports science degree at a fairly mediocre (academically speaking) uni. Perhaps you could talk about other career options within the game so he’s not so disappointed.

Your poor DC, I feel so sorry for him. I would tell him it's a load of rubbish and he can be whatever he wants to be he just has to work hard.

Utter tosh. Certain things require hard work combined with natural ability. If you don't have the natural ability, no amount of hard work is going to make you a pro footballer.

That's why pro footballers earn more that doctors. With hard work, most people can be a doctor, but very few can be a pro footballer, regardless of how hard they work.

I totally agree that your DH was harsh, and there was no need for him to say anything. But I also don't think it's necessarily healthy for children to think they can do anything they want. It's simply not true. Different people have different strengths and weaknesses. Some things come naturally, others take a lot of hard work. For some children no matter how hard they work at something they may never be great at it.

My son loves football but frankly isn't great at it. He goes to training every week as he enjoys it but is never picked for the team and doesn't play matches. It does bother him sometimes, he knows he's not as good as the others- but we make it clear that he can continue to go to training for as long as he's still enjoying it, we don't care that he isn't part of the team as long as he's having fun.

What a git. What exactly was he trying to achieve?

At your ds' age I wanted to be an astronaut. There are so many reasons why this was never going to happen that Im not going to list them. I came to that realisation in my own time as I grew up - the same way most children who want to be top footballers or famous actors or award winning musicians do.

The world crushes enough dreams, you don't need your parents to do it too.

Football or any other sports at this age are not about discovering the next super star.
It is about fun, interactions with other kids, social networking, confidence building. being part of something and exercise.
If they are member of a club they will go through the years a some level and may well go onto have friends for life.
If they leave home and go to uni they can join the sports clubs if not they can join other clubs locally.
They will always have friends through sport. I know veterans that are still playing in their 60's and have played together since they were kids.
It is not all about being scouted by some professional club.

You can be whatevèr you want to be, you just have to work hard’ is one of the absolute worst and most damaging lies you can tell to a child.
Maybe not the most damaging lie but certainly the sort of true soundbite that doesn't really do anything other than mislead the child and make the adult feel good about themselves.
It's up there with 'you can do whatever you like as long as you believe in yourself' and other such nonsense where people take exceptions and hold them out as examples (e.g. 'here's someone in a different sport who didnt make it until they were 30 so its a good job they never gave up' / don't worry about gcses because Richard Branson didn't need them. All well and good til you compare how many bransons there are and how many others students have fewer opportunities because adults in their life told them one off stories).

There's a really undermining of growth mindset and self efficacy at times from adults. They dont mean telling people they can do whatever like want as long as they dream big, shoot for the moon etc. They are principles about how people making effective judgements on what they need to do to achieve a goal.

It's possible to encourage children to develop their hobbies and skills without implicitly or explicitly reinforcing that they can be whatever they dream of if they just work hard and believe.

I've seen secondary students tell me theyre going to be in musicals or a singer. But they aren't doing graded music exams, don't want to do GCSE music because they can't read music and have no interest in it and they already do some singing in a small town youth theatre. They're planning on going to drama school so don't need to worry too much. It'll all be fine though because they'll shine in the audition. It then becomes an awkward conversation between me and parents (not with pupil present) where I outline just what our high performing musicians, actors, dancers are doing in and out of school, some of them won't get into stage schools and conservatoires and ultimately their child is nowhere close right now (so it might be worth managing expectations).
It would have been kinder for parents to manage expectations before gcse options time or if they child did want to seriously improve then get them doing things to get better.

I totally agree Maisy. I have a child who wants to perform in musical theatre. There has to be natural aptitude, hard work, a willingness to try anything (the more strings to your bow the better) and ven then sometimes it’s pure luck or the way you look.

Dd spent 5 years in vocational lower school and is in her first year of professional training and she knows there are no guarantees.

Ds has similar aspirations but as a non dancer (he has started classes but is too far behind) he knows his path will be different and he’s considering chorus training or arranging as options. He’s gone from beginner to proficient piano in a year but knows his keyboard skills are not high enough for actual musical directing. But first he has to pass his nemesis GCSE English. ). He therefore spends every spare moment working on his theory and composition skills and developing aural skills.

It's possible to encourage children to develop their hobbies and skills without implicitly or explicitly reinforcing that they can be whatever they dream of if they just work hard and believe

I agree

RebeccaWrongDaily - the pro clubs were Rochdale, Oldham, and Bolton.

It does seem that your DH's delivery was a little harsh there, OP!

Equally, I know that children are signed for junior teams quite early on - I can think of at least two in DD's junior school who signed schoolboy forms - so I can also believe that if you are good you are likely to be scooped up early by a team in the majority of cases.

A friend's sibling was gutted when his parents refused to let him join a top team's junior programme - they had heard how brutal the team were at dropping children and it put them off.

DS has played for our village team since he was 7, always loved it but always pretty average. Interestingly he has been scouted for a national tennis program and invited to rugby trials for our top club, neither of which he has been very interested.

However at 12 he has suddenly blossomed amazingly, has great stamina, is incredibly fast and reads the game superbly. He has gone from pootling around as left back to taking the ball, running the length of the pitch, taking on two or three players and crossing the ball onto the center forward's toe.

It's quite a stunning transformation and suggests to me that those scouts from other sports spotted some hidden potential.

I mean I don't think he's going to be scouted or anything, but the difference in him is amazing.