The Invisible Line

Invisible Line

While reading the Mothers and Daughters short stories I was reminded about the first time that I saw a blatant case of an overbearing parent. I was at an ice rink to play hockey. It was around 9am on a Saturday and I was there for hockey practice. Before our practices would start we would watch what was going on in the other rinks and it happened to be figure skaters. The "skater parents" were out in force. They would sit there and stare intently at their children (usually little girls) like lions stalking their prey, sometimes talking to themselves to make notes of what their children had done wrong. I would occasionally catch the hockey parents doing this, but usually they were being social with each other and talking about daily life. The skater parents were different. They would do this for 2 hours straight, taking short breaks only to refill their coffee. As I was watching one of the skaters I heard a crash on the other side of the rink as if someone had been body checked into the boards. A girl had slammed into the side of the rink while attempting a spin. She was now lying on the ice with her hands over her knees. Her mother stood up shouting "Damn it!" Expecting the mother to switch into caretaker mode and run to her aid I was shocked when the mother ran down to the ice and started yelling at her daughter for screwing up her jump. "Great! Now what will we do about the competition?" she yelled. This mother had her priorities out of order and had clearly crossed the line.

While I don't know exactly where that line I have connected a few behaviors with crossing the line.

The first problem is poorly planned goals and priorities. Having been able to watch these figure skaters grow up, I was able to see where this intense training led them in life. Most were home schooled by their parents so they could focus on skating. This gave them little contact with people outside of the skating rink which warped their social skills. The "I don't have time for people" attitude prevails in their adult lives which leads them to solitary lives. The other negative to their home schooling is a poor education. Their parents would focus on their skating and not their schooling leaving them with an incomplete education. The lower priority of an education transfers to the skaters means that most never graduate college. Of the hundred or so figure skaters that I knew growing up, all except for 2 came from upper and upper-middle class families and less than 15 have a college degree. Those two came from a lower class family that led their children by example. The parents would pay for their lessons by trading their time to clean the ice rink for free ice time.

Those two enjoyed what they did and had a respect for what their parents went through to allow them to do