Managing expectations — ours
The quiet creep of hope after a good tournament, the trophy trap, measuring a nine-year-old against a future we've invented for him. Catching ourselves is a weekly practice.
This is the hardest category, and the one with the least written about it: the emotional weather of it all — his, and ours. Managing hope, sitting with disappointment, and the daily discipline of being the parent and not the coach.
The quiet creep of hope after a good tournament, the trophy trap, measuring a nine-year-old against a future we've invented for him. Catching ourselves is a weekly practice.
The KSFA cup with no goals. Being marked out of a game. A benching. How we've tried to sit beside him in those rather than fix them — and how often we've got that wrong.
The two aren't always the same, and reading the gap is the whole job. When to listen to the nine-year-old, when to gently steer, and how to tell which moment you're in.
The strongest pull of all — to coach from the touchline, whether you know nothing or think you know everything. Learning to shut up and just be the parent has been the hardest skill either of us has picked up.
The sideline, the comparison with other parents, the ego that sneaks in through the back door. He watches how we behave far more than he listens to what we say.
He's nine. Whatever we're optimising for, it isn't this weekend's medal — and remembering that, on the drive home from a loss, is the point of writing any of this down.
Still being writtenThese are starting points, not conclusions — the specifics, the stories and the numbers get filled in as we live them.