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Fort Wayne has a baseball program called Wildcat. Every kid can play. Any kid can play any position. The goal is to let kids have fun.

Andrew played for a season or two. He is a soccer player (from first grade on) and so baseball didn’t stick. However, he gave it a try and he had fun.

I remember one day in particular, the day that he played catcher. He put on the mask and pads and went out to face the pitches of another 11-year-old. He is, obviously, much braver than his dad. As I watched, and shuddered, I began to understand something significant about the way our son’s brain works.

You see, at that point in his soccer life, he was a keeper, the guy who stands in the goal. The keeper is the guy who gets blamed for every goal and every loss. Of course, usually a goal happens because four other players don’t stop the ball, leaving one small person responsible to cover a net the size of Rhode Island.

I watched Andrew catching, the guy who would be responsible for every run that scored. Why did this child of two timid parents choose to end up in these mission-critical, blame-ridden positions?

As I thought about it, I realized that Andrew always gathered information, always looked for the way patterns emerged, always scanned the field. He didn’t have the killer instinct that was necessary to score goals, but he could see how plays were emerging.

He quit playing baseball, and he moved out of the goal in middle school. However, he has transfered that observational skill set to other aspects of life. He is a wonderful writer. He is considering journalism. He is a great photographer. He notices shoes, particularly athletic shoes (that’s a skill that is pretty obscure, but he does work in a soccer store selling…shoes). He is aware of underdogs in a significant way.

I write only partially in praise of Andrew. I’m mostly writing to encourage observation of our children, and integration of those observations. They have their futures in them, not in the form of specific careers but as capacities, as ways of thinking. Those capacities are most often evident in details, in small inklings, in traces. Taking the time to listen to how they are built allows affirmation of their strengths rather than impatience with their imperfections.

I, of course, understand all too well how do to both.

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Andrew Swanson turned 21 in February 2008. This post is part of a series of reflections on 21 years of being a dad.

by Jon Swanson

[tags]parents, parenting, kids, children, perspective, sports, lessons, baseball, soccer, observations, observational, growth, pride, journalism[/tags]

Photo graciously provided by ohad*, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved