Thread by @SteveEnglishbey

I recently had an experience with trying to convince a mom that her 15yr old son needs to work with me that I think unfortunately is symbolic of at least part of the cultural zeitgeist that we are living in. Here's the context:

I had talked to this mom about her son a couple of times at the gym about my background and teaching experience. Now I hasten to add that in these situations I am very sympathetic to parents in their pursuits to find good instruction.

My basic premise is along the lines of: "Why the hell should you trust me as someone who is REALLY knowledgeable and could REALLY help your son/daughter? Why would you NOT think that I am simply one of MANY who claims to be really good?"

In other words, I fully understand and really expect at least some degree of skepticism in these situations.

What I try to do in these situations is to find ways to talk to them in ways that hopefully seem rational to them.

I try to do this in any number of ways [like find things I have written or shown --via you tube for ex.---point to refences that have talked about me, etc.

And I did some of this in this case. But I also did something that is common to me trying to convince people to work with me. Which is to analyze video that I have ask people to send to me.

This gives me the chance to really observe and talk about a single person in a very practical and specific manner,i.e., I'm not talking theory or generalities, I am talking specifically about YOUR son or daughter.

In this case I am talking about I met the son and I ask if he had any video of him swinging. He did and he showed me a recent batting cage swing.

Now, before I talk about this swing, I need to preface my comments. Prior to seeing this swing, I told the mom this:

"Look, if your son [who is 15] is not REALLY interested in working to develop, don't come to me. I don't want to waste your money or my time."

And when I was introduced to the son, among my first words were: "Do you really want to play college baseball?" [And he said yes].

So, with these predicates in mind I looked at the swings. And said the following: Based on THIS one swing you have a very fundamental flaw. You drop the lead arm under the shoulder line and you finish the swing almost along the waist."

And added: Your flaw is pretty typical. And it is a violation of something that is essentially an absolute, i.e., there are ZERO elite level hitters who drop the lead arm like you are doing.

AND I said this: "Look I'm not trying to be mean here and I'm not trying to scare you, but the bottom line is that THIS swing will NOT scale. You will not be able to play in college with THIS swing."

I then added that...."I don't make these rules, so to speak, I just know the rules really well."

And I ask him to ...."check out what I am saying..go to you tube, find some good hitters, slow it down, and see if what I am saying here is incorrect."

A few days later, I called the mom. And she said they had decided to stay with their current instructor [she had not told me they had an instructor prior to this].

I said ok but I ask her if she knew as to whether that instructor had ever talked about the specific flaws I talked about [the mom had been present when I talked to the son].

She was vague about this, but I got the impression that, no, he had NOT seen or talked about what I had told them.

But she then added----I think she felt a real need to add--that she thought I was rude, mean and arrogant. And that I had destroyed her son's confidence.

She said: "He spent all day looking at MLB hitters." [Uh, well I told him to do that I thought]. And he is VERY upset about what you said. NO one has ever said such things and he is a freshman on varsity. How could you be so mean and rude."

She continued: "You just saw one swing. How arrogant and mean of you to say he's not going to college based on one swing."

I corrected her by saying that: "I did NOT say that. What I said was that the swing I saw would not scale." And added: "While one swing is not definitive, my experience is that that swing is likely close to his typical swing."

I told her that I do understand her perspective [a mom trying to protect her son].But, conversely, she did not understand and I don't think that she was really was capable of understanding my perspective.

As I told her: "I'm not paid to tell people how good they are. I'm paid to help people understand their flaws and from there help them find ways to eliminate those flaws.

I told her of something that struck me pretty profoundly yrs. ago watching High School players: "I saw alot of players who threw pretty well, were physically pretty good, who moved pretty well, but had no clue how to really use their body to swing a bat."

This mom did not and really could not understand that my blunt honest comments were meant to HELP her son. Prevent him from being one of those typical players I described above.

Bottom line: I think this mom is all too typical of the kind of parent who, in thinking they are protecting their kids, are actually doing them a good deal of harm.

How so? In trying to protect them against life's harsh realities, they are creating a generation ill -prepared for such realities.

Don't believe me? Well you should at least be aware that there are numerous academics who are talking about this. One is psychologist Johnathan Haidt [and no he is NOT a right wing Trump loving type!]

His relatively recent book ["The Coddling of the American Mind"] really should be required reading for anyone who has kids. Here's a you tube presentation that explains his thinking well:

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