C.J. Stroud, quarterback of the Houston Texans after taking his team to the playoffs: “I’m just blessed enough to be the vessel that Christ picked to lead this great franchise.” That response is compared to Megan Rapinoe’s shout during the parade celebrating the U.S. Women’s Soccer team’s 2019 World Cup title, “I deserve this,” she shouted repeatedly.
If your family watches sports, it’s inevitable that your child will watch with you and want to know who you’re rooting for. Who are the good guys? In whom should I place my emotional allegiance? And within that group, who will be my hero? Whose behavior should I watch as a model? The Oxford dictionary defines Hero as: “a person who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities.”
As your family grows and matures, there will be many distinctions you will make that will define your values and family name. We at OneFamily call this Family Identity. These qualities are the character traits you want to instill into your child’s inner integrity structure. For example: “We are the Marrs and we do our best, tell the truth, and represent God and our family when we’re away from home.” These internal qualities are but a few of the many virtues that you hope will self-govern your children in life. One distinction that will take a bit of couch time is deciding on how to coach your children when they experience victory or defeat.
The humility/self-esteem balance is fairly complex. Of course you want your child to feel good about themselves. You want them to recognize that an achievement, a victory, a win is something to celebrate and feel good about. At some point though too much of that can tip the thrill of victory into excessively needing attention. Conversely, when they lose, you don’t want them to excessively pout, lash out in words of frustration, blame others, or deflect from ownership of the outcome. Rather, you’d like for them to feel the hurt, learn the lesson, and recover themself to try another day. Both in winning and in losing there is a necessary step of finding the balance with self-control. From this point, you can then teach the family value of how to express oneself in victory or defeat.
And so, we come back to heroes. C.J. Stroud has hero qualities worthy of being a role model in our estimation. As the youngest quarterback in NFL history to win in the playoffs, there’s certainly outstanding achievement worthy of praise. In this over-the-top world of self-glorification, Stroud’s is a good hero model because he points congratulations to the factors of success – his mom, America, his teammates, and Jesus Christ, yet he does so without false humility. Stroud possesses noble qualities, qualities of self-control, qualities that demonstrate maturity beyond his years. He expresses himself in victory as a model worth following. And so, you should point these things out in contrast to people who don’t represent these qualities.
And another point – mom, dad – you are the true heroes. You are. Talk about outstanding achievement: Why is it a child can wake up in the dead of the night and make it all the way to your bed before throwing up? Who stays up with them when they can’t breathe because of a stuffed nose? Who changes their diapers? Who cleans all the food off their hands and face and chair and table – again. Who washes the clothes and dishes endlessly, bathes them, hugs them, gets them dressed, takes them to daycare, teaches them, and loves them so completely that they are all you talk about when you’re on date night? It’s you.
You are the ones who selflessly model the admirable, noble traits of a hero. And some day you’ll be praised for it.
You are a blessing to your children. But you are also a blessing to all those people who will come to admire your child’s own heroic qualities.
Lis and Dave Marr