Many times in my life coaching work, I get to work with parents looking to develop a healthier image/esteem/confidence in their kids. Many times, they will want definitive answers: is spanking good or bad? Is it ok for my son to cry? Is it ok that my daughter is tough? Am I too tough and competitive? Am I too easy and not challenging them enough?

The answer is always the same. Find the balance. Children need (and want) both love and discipline. And here’s my experience that cemented that lesson for me.

When I signed up my son Jonathan to play tackle football a couple years ago, we were both a little anxious. His anxiety existed because he had grown up watching football and seeing my passion for it, both playing and watching, and he was afraid of getting hit - a normal reaction for first time players.

My anxiety rested in that little checkmark that I put on the application form - the box asking if Dad would be participating. Being an aggressive personality and passionate about football, my wife and I decided that I should check it - the box for ‘head coach’ - both to spend time with my son on the field and to teach others which is my passion.

Being a first-time coach, I had choices to make and obstacles to overcome. As I had not been a coach before, I had an ‘initiation’ to go through. When I looked around the room at our first coaches meeting, it was obvious most coaches came in with ‘buddies’. They had coached their kids together in soccer and basketball and, having a good idea of the kids’ talents, they joined forces to give their teams a competitive edge. Jeez this is just second grade!

So they paired me up with other first-time coaches for assistants and handed out the roster. We all did a double take as the rosters included every team and included both the kids’ weight and speed in the 40-yard dash. Out of 12 teams, we had something like the 11th slowest bunch and the 11th smallest team. Crap.

I assure you that I wanted to bond with my son and my kids and to create a great team experience. But make no mistake, I wanted these kids to experience winning and learn tough love and hard work.

So, I put in some overtime on planning our practices. I knew to make our kids competitive, we had to keep it simple and then we had to do simple better than any other team. I also had to push them and here is the key - you should only push kids within their own personal limits. My son, who was used to my tough love along with other kids on the team, ran many, many laps for lack of concentration or goofing around. With other kids who were more embarrassed easily, I or my assistants just pulled them aside or whispered direction and encouragement between plays.

Competition builds a healthy self-esteem and confidence, but my challenge was to meet each kid at their own breaking-point and push them to their best efforts, without pushing them over. And, thanks to a great group of parents - all of whom mirrored their child’s personality - as they stayed late and we were the last team off the practice field every night.

We started off 0-2, but we didn’t change our routine. And how do you think our kids responded? We kept up with the encouragement and with the tough love. You know what? We won the rest of our games to make it into the season-ending playoffs in the championship bracket. On one beautiful fall Saturday, our little team of misfits pushed, shoved, blocked, ran and passed themselves into a win from our nemesis, a tie with the best team in the league and a 1-touchdown loss to the eventual champion.

I assure you that at our season-end party, our kids walked 2 inches taller than when we started the season. Not just because we overcame so much and earned the respect of all the other teams, coaches and players, but as much because of how we did it.

We gave them balance. We encouraged them to find their strengths, however big or small and put them in competitive situations where they could succeed. And succeed they did not in wins alone mind you, but in personal growth. To this day, my son still talks about that season and how much fun he had with me and his team. And this is from the kid who ran more laps than anybody on our team!

The best checkmark I ever made.

Today was a day that reminds me why I’ve always worked harder than the next guy. We took off in the middle of the day to go play tennis with the kids, grab a fresh deli pizza on the way home, watch a movie and eat some watermelon on a 95°F day.

It was hot, exhausting and simply perfect.

Can you image taking 5 kids (9 years to 2 months) to play tennis? I know from experience that most people cringe when hearing me say things like that. “What?! You go out in public?” Yes. And we play tennis. And we go to the movies and parks and museums and, yes sometimes we go crazy.

But here’s the image. Now, let me preface this for those of you who don’t know me – I am a very loving father. I say ‘I love you’, I say ‘you are an important part of this family’, I say ‘man, I really appreciate the person you are becoming and I enjoy your personality’. I’m a Teddy Bear, ok? But Teddy Bear goes commando (not the underwear kind, the military kind of commando.) And then I start saying things like ‘Get it done – NOW!’, ‘Move it, I’m not waiting 20 minutes to load the car’, and ‘Cry and you’ll get another.’ Yeah, I’m a regular ole softy-kinda-hardass. When I’m loving, I am doting. When I am upset, toe the line and face the consequences cause here comes your own little mini-version of hell.

So, when we play tennis, there’s plenty of ‘Great shot!’s but there’s plenty of ‘What? There’s no crying in tennis! Run to the corner and back and let’s see how your attitude is.’ I do that with the girls too. ;) In fact, Jonathan threw a temper and smarted off once today – once. He didn’t realize Daddy had ‘skills’ until a green fuzzy object gave him a new crew at 60mph from 80 feet. Yeah, I still got game. And his reflexes are pretty darn good – of course, he gets ‘practice’, so they should be good.

We ran 1 lap to warm-up, 2 to warm down – as a family. Even 2-year old Olivia. But don’t think it was all militant. There was plenty of laughter when someone hit a ball over the fence or buzzed the tower of someone looking the other way.

But, guess what? At the end of the day, we circled up, hands in the middle, hoorah! Everyone is tired, everyone feels like a tight member of the team and everyone feels like they did something pretty rewarding. In two days of playing, Lauren and Nicole are drop hitting shots into the server’s box and Jonathan is hitting long volleys. Nicole – the youngest player at 5½ is even maneuvering to hit (though not successful yet) backhand shots. Wow.

So what’s the takeaway here:

Find the middle road
Be a Commando, kids need to respect their parents, but only use that personality to reel everyone back into established boundaries, be a Teddy Bear most of the time and let them know the difference. There’s no problem in telling a child he/she is not meeting expectations or not pulling their expected weight – it IS a problem however if you are degrading them or deflating their spirits in attempt to ‘motivate’ change – won’t happen so don’t do it.

Push your child’s limits in a supportive way and stick with it despite unknowledgeable opposition
Don’t praise them when they suck. They know they suck and they know you suck when you tell them that they don’t. Trust me – I’ve coached kids and I am raising quite a brew. When kids experience ‘real’ success and overcome a ‘real’ challenge, they appreciate the times they sucked and they appreciate the accomplishment. But mostly, they’ll appreciate that you noticed the difference and made a big deal over it. If I were to put together a Top Ten list to raise great children, appropriate praise would be #2 only to #1 security. (I’m probably going to write on that this week FYI).

When our 2nd grade tackle football team started 0-2, the parents realized and appreciated the lessons and the teaching that was going on. But they were probably starting to prepare, as I would have as a ‘parent-only’, a big ‘you sucked, but you tried your best’ speech for what looked like an 0-5 season. To make matters worse, I had an assistant coach who was adamant that we needed to change our plan.

My 2-word response to his lengthy plea started with ‘No’ and ended with ‘change’. We then went 3-0 to finish and moved into the top playoff bracket in which we mopped up the team that bullied us for our first loss, tied the league’s 2nd place team and lost to the #1 team to finish 3rd in a league of 12. I assure you, had we implemented change just as the kids were getting used to their blocking assignments, we would have gone 0-5.

And trust me, those kids, those parents, those coaches felt achievement. It wasn’t a BS end of season party – we were celebrating hard work, a few practices that required headlights and we were basking in accomplishment. And that accomplishment was real and it was valid only because we had the good fortune to start off sucking. :) We should all be so fortunate!

If your job keeps you from spending that kind of quality time, quit
I have two businesses and we’re doing work on 4 continents – I ‘get’ job satisfaction, I ‘get’ career motivation and I ‘get’ cash flow. And from time to time, I’ve had to push and ask my wife and children to sacrifice emotionally, physically and financially. But if those sacrifices are not short-term and sporadic (3-6 months, no more than once a year) and if our kids are hating life and learning values, morals and priorities from someone other than me and my wife – then who cares?

Chase the carrot with your spouse and kids and let them have a say in which carrot from time to time. After all, you’re not the only one sacrificing and you damn well should not be the only one enjoying the spoils. But, don’t be the parent who forever chases that carrot only to find at the end of the race, there was no reward worth the sacrifice. I’ve seen that happen first-hand and it’s not pretty. The only acceptable thing you can say after many wasted years is “I’m sorry. My priorities were wrong. I would not make the same choices again and I won’t from now on.” But for too many parents and adult children, that comes too little and too late.

Go – work hard, play hard and have fun. As we say at LifeMAPP - Life’s too short for trial and error.™