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?

That was a vile thing for your 'D'H to say. If my DH had said that to my DS, I'd be leaving him in no doubt that it was unacceptable and he should be giving DS a sincere apology.

Luckily it wouldn't happen, because my DH isn't a total prick. Next time yours decides to crush your Ds's dreams, I hope you do a better job of sticking up for him.

DS1 used to play 5 a side at 15 with a lad who got some scouts very excited. However, when they checked up they found he was actually a year older than they'd thought (African immigrant). Interest disappeared very quickly, which surprised me as kids obviously develop at different rates. I suppose clubs must have minimum standards they expect at each age.

I think the lad had trials again when he was older though.

Yes, it is absolutely imperative that nine year olds have realistic career ambititions. Personally, I have been training my eight year old to become a mid-ranking civil servant for years. Initially, we hedged our bets by also training her to work on an IT support helpdesk, but she's eight now, so she needs to focus.

Really, unless a nine year old is exceptionally talented or is doing something detrimental to their future success (unlikely at nine) then imo the correct response to any and all their career ambitions is "that's nice". Nine year olds, on the whole, do not aspire to be tax accountants, or office managers, or to work on production lines. They do not envisage a future where they are a tree surgeon, a quantity surveyor or an estate agent. That isn't because they are "snowflakes", it is because they are nine.

Singing is entirely different. It’s often preferable to train at an older age and you can’t really tell pre puberty what an adult voice will be like.

If he's not that good then he needs to know! These parent these days pussyfooting about 🙄 tell him to train as hard as he can. It's hard work being a Footballer.

Telling him he’s got no hope isn’t encouraging him to train hard though, it’s encouraging him to give up.

Singing is entirely different. It’s often preferable to train at an older age and you can’t really tell pre puberty what an adult voice will be like

But if the mother hadn’t moved heaven and earth then the outcome would have been very different.

I believe we are here to help our dc in whatever way we can. I have known parents who have sat outside of church halls gymnasiums or in car parks for hours waiting for their dc to come out of acting, gymnastic, fencing classes. We don’t believe our children are going to be the next Olga Korbut or Brad Pitt but we do everything in our power to make sure if that is what they want then they are going to make a good attempt at it.

If they decide later it isn’t for them then they take away from the experience a fitter body or an extra bit of confidence.

For those that believe that at 9 if you are not good at something then you give it up. Surely then you wouldn’t have the extra curricular activities after the age of 9 because if someone was naturally talented then you wouldn’t need the lessons.

Or are you like I suspect the father in this who can’t be arsed to take his Ds to football so what better way to get out of it.

My mother told me I would never be a dancer. She spent several weeks talking about nothing else. Listing reasons from my short legs to my weight and my coordination.
It came as a huge surprise to me as I had only asked to have ballet lessons as I wanted to wear a tutu. I was 5.

Should add I worked as an aerobics instructor doing jazzercise classes in the early 80s

@eco1636 The age of the kids I work with are 9-11 year olds. There's nothing wrong with dreams, but dreams very rarely come true and that's the bit that needs to be got across. Sadly, as I said, some of the kids I work with have this expectation that it will happen, because their talent will be spotted and they will be plucked to be the star player. Therefore school doesn't really matter, because who needs an education if you're the star player? Even when it's suggested they need to be able to read the club contract and understand it, they have the answer "yeh but I'll have an agent for that and an accountant to manage my money!". When I suggest that even if they make it, then what happens when they hit their mid 30s and they can't do it anymore, or if they get injured, they shrug and say. "well I'll just be a pundit on Football focus". The bit that worries me is there is no thought whatsoever to the hard work and dedication it takes to be at the top. Of any profession.

[And if I had a £1 for every child that said they were going to be a YouTuber I'd be very rich! ]

@Oliversmumsarmy I'm not sure if the DH is talking about the DS giving up football altogether though?

Ds’s for tutor is an ex football player. He played for the reserves but sustained a career ending injury in his late teens. The club helped him retrain as a PE teacher.

It’s a great role model for ds as even this go ds wants to go into music/theatre it’s shown him you need a plan b, c & d.

What about the story of Jose Mourinho? He was dropped at 15 y.o. for being too slow. He worked hard at school and ended up studying Sports Science. He did the Portuguese equivalent of PGCE and became a PE teacher. The school's football teams were shit hot and that's how he got noticed.

He was a failure as a footballer though. His dad had been a pro, but despite his determination and hard work, he wasn't good enough.

His main talent was academic, he had a natural ability for languages. He was a translator at Barcelona when Bobby Robson was manager, and that's how he was discovered.

But hard work and determination alone couldn't make him a pro footballer.

Craft1905 do you genuinely think that most people could be doctors?

If you're reasonably bright, decide you want to do medicine, and work really hard, you can make it. If you're a reasonable footballer, you are never going to be a pro regardless of hard work. You need to be exceptional before you even factor in the hard work.

ShawshanksRedemption

Well do you seriously think the boy will be returning to play.

If someone who knows me tells me I am shit at something then I give up.

For those that believe that at 9 if you are not good at something then you give it up. Surely then you wouldn’t have the extra curricular activities after the age of 9 because if someone was naturally talented then you wouldn’t need the lessons.
I don't believe people should give things up if they aren't amazing.
I do believe that we don't do anyone any favours by blowing smoke up their arse (excuse the expression)or giving trite soundbites that we know arent the case. That is true for adults and children (although the delivery and handling of the situation would differ).

Telling children who aren't particularly strong at things that they can totally make a career in a really difficult area whilst being leagues below the top performers and few who might make it seems wrong to me. Not only are we lying to them, and they'll realise it in due course, but they could be missing out on developing other talents and skills because nobody's told them that their chances in area A are almost none. Obviously, they wouldn't have to give up the extra curricular, but managing expectations is only fair

My son is a talented footballer. His abilities were noticed at about 8-9 years. He went through the process of training with better and better teams and coaches, until he was accepted into the youth team of a First Division Club at the age when he could have left full-time education. He then gave up his ambition of becoming a professional footballer, because he did not enjoy it any more.
I do not blame him. The process of making professional footballers out of schoolboys is one of the most stressful, remorseless, competitive, joyless things I have ever seen.
The OP's husband has actually done his son a favour; the boy could have been sucked into an unpleasant thing. Being told by his father that he and his friend would not make it, is far preferable to being told the same thing again and again by ruthless coaches every match or training session.
I hope the young boy will get over it soon, as boys his age do, and express his ambition to be an astronaut or something.
(And by the way, my son is a happy young man in a good trade, and plays football for fun for Semi-Pro teams).

If someone who knows me tells me I am shit at something then I give up.

Really, even if you enjoy doing it. I will never be a top chef but I still like to cook. Millions of kids do activities from sport to music or whatever, knowing they aren't great at it, but they like doing it.

Hundreds of thousands of men play football every weekend, having known from an early age they were basically hopeless.

Your DH should have simply said "Give it your best shot; see how it goes." At 9 I wanted to be a ballerina, a concert pianist or an astronaut. Depending on my mood.

Managing expectations doesn’t mean telling a child they’ve no hope of being a pro footballer and making them cry though does it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he stops playing altogether after a horrible blow like that.
As a teacher if a gcse student told you they really wanted to get an a* (or whatever the current equivalent is) in maths and you knew that it would be beyond them even if they worked really hard would you just say ‘nope, not gonna happen’ or would you encourage them to work hard and do the best they can?
People aren’t suggesting the dad should have said ‘yeah you’ll play for Barca one day’ or even suggested he had a chance but you don’t just flatten ambition in the way he did. It was cruel imo.

At 9 I wanted to be a ballerina, a concert pianist or an astronaut.

Which one did you eventually become?

FuckingYuleLog
I've already said his delivery and method was out of order.

I was on about managing expectations in response to claims of 'tell him he can be anything he wants / tell your DC he can totally make it as long as he works hard'. It's nonsense.

I've been in that position when a student wanted an A at A level but got a low D at AS. Of course I didn't tell them an A was impossible (having known them for 4 or 5 years it was fairly unlikely). I did say to then that based on current performance it was highly unlikely and why. Then I broke the knowledge and steps required for each grade. I was honest with them and said 'look, you don't want me to lie to you and patronize you and I'm not going to do that because I like you, respect you and care about you. An A is unlikely. It will require x, y and z and I've not seen that yet. Rather than focus on an A, why not work to secure the B and then once your knowledge and skills are secure then we can review and look at the fair and nuance required to get an A'. In the end they got a B and I saw elements of A grade in class but they couldn't reproduce it in the exam. They valued my honesty. Sometimes I find with students that they respect you if they trust you know what you're doing and you care. In my experience no student likes the staff who lie to them in the name of boosting confidence. They feel patronized and resent the teacher.

That was utterly shit of your DH. Like others have said, 9 year olds don't tend to aspire to be accountants or insurance underwriters.

I agree that that moment will probably stick with your DS for the rest of his life.

My 8 year old brother’s ambition was to play for Arsenal. My grandad said one day ‘if he had any real promise, we’d know by now.’

So he became a lawyer instead

He’s perfectly happy and doesn’t hold it against his grandad. He cherishes his memory. He was a lovely man.

I agree that that moment will probably stick with your DS for the rest of his life.

Perhaps the children whose parents told them they could be anything they wanted if they worked hard enough might grow up to resent their parents, when they realise just what a twee and untrue platitude it was!