Parents Who Need To Stop Living Through Their Kids

From the same network that brings you "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy", "Showbiz Moms and Dads", and "Showdog Moms and Dads"... we now bring you "Sportskids Moms and Dads". This is so wrong on so many levels. And it started being wrong with "Showbiz M & D". I have a message for all you parents out there. Leave your kids alone, let them be kids. Don't force them to be something they aren't.

I'm sure many of us like watching people make complete asses of themselves on television-- it's entertaining to see how moronic someone can be for something as mundane as a bit of cash. But isn't that what we have "Fear Factor" and "Americas Funniest Home Videos" for?

OK, let's start with "Showbiz Moms and Dads". We know there are over the top parents who think the darlings are just sooooooooo cute. Shut up. All babies are cute when they are born. Nobody walks up to a new parents and goes "my god, what a pug-fugly baby that is!" Everybody goes ga-ga over babies. That's fine, their so full of joy, and eventually so full of energy-- they are just a bundle of joy. But then kids grow up-- if their parents let them. But when they start to learn to talk, they lose some of that charm. All of a sudden, "oh, what a beautiful baby!" becomes "my, what a cute kid." And I don't ever want to hear the term "six-year-old beauty queen" again. No six-year-old is eligible to be a beauty queen. Beauty queen need to be old enough to drink somewhere in the world-- giving us, the average slob a chance to catch them on a drunken crawl and dupe them into our lives. Only kidding. But still, until you have curves, you can't be a beauty queen.

Jon-Benet Ramsey: Did her parents kill a six-year-old beauty queen? Hell no. They killed a six-year-old spoilled brat who was probably so self-centered and so annoying that the parents felt it only right to rid the world of her and the misery she was bringing everyone else. It's as simple as this: your mother brought you into this world... she can certainly take you out of it. J-B Ramsey probably became a monster of her family's creation-- parents building up her confidence, wildly spending money on her, a jealous brother-- so much so that she started to believe she was above everyone else. My, what a harsh come down it must have been for her.

And this brings us to the sportskids portion of our rant. May I ask wht parents are thinking putting some much pressire on their kids to play sports well? I mean, the pressure they get from their littel friends is probably unbearable-- and that's just at recess, why would you tell your child they need to be a superstar at the ripe old age of seven?

I just have to laugh at these parents who spend so much money to send their kids to camps, pay for private coaches, have to buy the most recent models of equipment, and play the politics just so their kids can make a select travel team. I got news for you freaks-- it guarentees nothing. In fact, you're probably going to burn your kids out by the time they are 15-- rendering you little plan for the big bucks when they turn pro, useless.

Are you ready for this? (I really wish 'ellisfan' was here for this one) I grew up with the realistic dream of playing Division-1 college hockey. In the fourteen years I played hockey before I went to college, I played a half-season of travel select hockey-- and that was my senior year of high school when I played for a team made up of house league all-stars. Right out of high-school, I went on to play college hockey. I went back played a couple years in juniors, took a couple years off, and then returned to the college game, at the Division-1 level. It doesn't matter to me that I didn't play a minute at the D-1 level, but I proved to myself that I could get there. That's all I wanted. And that is a big difference in my mindset, and the mindset some of you parents have enstilled in your children. You have them thinking they are god's gift to whatever. I hate to fight, and claw, and scratch to get where I am... I set a realistic goal for myself, and I reached it. There were some setbacks along the way, but I fought through and attained my goal. But here's the bigger part of it-- someone once asked me how it felt to play D-1 hockey. My answer: "no different than watching the game from section 123-- I just got a major seat upgrade, that's all."

I got to the highest levels of amateur hockey. And I got there with people with more money, better equipment (I was getting hand-me-downs from my brother until my junior year of high school), and you putting me down because I grew up playing on an outdoor rink. Gasp, and outdoor rink? Yea, you know, how they learn to play in Minnesota and Canada.

Something you don't know about me, is that when I was in sixth-grade, I had college coaches asking where I would be playing high school baseball. But just a couple months later, I had one of those moments where I had to decide if it was worth it. I decided it wasn't worth playing the politics anymore, and I walked away from baseball. I might have gone back and played in high school, but a move out to Nebraska where baseball season and soccer season are the same made me choose. Soccer won out.

And believe me, there were setbacks. Injuries galore. With the exception of a few minor concussions in high school, I had been relatively injury-free. That changes when I got to college this first time. You show up for your first ice time with a college team, you're playing great, as you know you can, and then suddenly you split to make a save, and feel that burn-- the wheels are coming off. Or it's playing roller hockey in the offseason, with your friends, and you take a hit-- and for a several minutes, your friends wonder if you'll ever walk again. What they don't know about is the back pain has become the norm for you since that incident. Just one injury can derail a promising career-- there are still no guarentees. And it can all be summed up by your brother, who after seeing you in action last week says, "I haven't seen you play like that since high school" (the last time you were fully healthy and in shape). The only difference was-- I was pushing myself. My parents had told me to take a rest. I just didn't listen, and they understood it was my choice, not theirs. My parents are proud of me for never giving up, they are proud of my making a D-1 team-- they don't care if I never played, they're just glad I applied myself to reaching a goal, a realistic one I set for myself.

Things happen that you can't control. You can spend all the money you want. Pressure your kids to do well all you want. You can't force them to become something they aren't. And your driving them to wherever before an after school, while other kids are out with their friends, that doesn't help either. Let them be kids.

Parents, the pressure you are putting on your kids is too much. Let them develop naturally. We are not glorifying you by putting you on TV. We are making a mockery of you. We sit back and say "my god, what a flippin moron", or "I hope I never become that obsessive over something my kids do, cuz this lady needs to be shot." It maybe entertaining for us to watch, but when you look back on yourselves is it really worth embarrassing yourself and your family? What is more embarrassing: the fact that you pushed your kid to the point of rebellion where you never get to see the end of the potential, or the fact that we now have the video evidence of what a monster you've become?