My son’s high school baseball coach held a parents meeting last night, and amid the sign-up sheets for snacks and the shameless marketing of booster club items came some good old-fashioned parenting advice, although I doubt he intended it quite so.
Staring out into the audience of 40- and 50-something moms and dads, the 25-year- old coach acknowledged that there may be times during the upcoming season when the folks in the stands disagree with calls in the dugout. Maybe Coach would put in a player you don’t like or pull a popular pitcher. He might opt for a bunt when someone else thinks he should tell the batter to hit.
“At times like this,” he went on, “I always welcome your comments and concerns, but I do enforce the strict 24 Hour Rule.”
The 24 Hour Rule, it turns out, goes like this: Calm down, think about what you really want to say, and then contact the coach after 24 hours to discuss it. “I just find this works better for both of us,” he concluded.
Angry parents on the sidelines are not rare. And whether it manifests in a shouting match or malicious comments intended to undermine the coach’s credibility, when parents put their anger on display, nobody wins. Showing your anger is like peeing your pants. Only you feel it, but everybody else sees it.
Let’s face it, kids give parents ample opportunity to get upset, and we often feel quite justified in our anger, thank you very much. A disobedient 5-year-old or backtalking teenager, a child who lies about his homework or refuses to engage in family activities: Any of these can drive the best parent to the brink. But imagine how the conversation and the consequences might look different if parents simply abided by the 24 Hour Rule.
Often, anger is a necessary instigator of change. It forces couples into counseling, towns and nations to rise up. But these never succeed in the heat of the moment. I doubt very much that we’d have had the kind of success, say, in the civil-rights movement, had Martin Luther King Jr. simply pitched an all- out temper tantrum. Great leaders let their anger show by also modeling the good sense God gave them.
Courteousness, common ground. Good rules to live by.
And I don’t know about you, but I need a few good axioms to get me through the day. Along with the 24 Hour Rule, I like the 9 0/10 Rule. A friend turned me on to it when my kids were little: You can spend just 10 percent of your time complaining and kvetching about your problems, which leaves 90 percent of your time to focus on solutions.
I think I’ll add the young coach’s 24 Hour Rule to the 9 0/10 Rule, along with some other lovely little instructions to help us all just get along. Rules such as Don’t Take Yourself Too Seriously. Love Thy Neighbor. Pick Your Battles. And my favorite: the If Momma Aint Happy/Aint Nobody Happy Rule.
Charla Belinski writes about parenting and family life and is a parenting instructor with YouthZone in Glenwood Springs. Contact her at belinskis@comcast.net
