Coaching Kids Quotes

There's a lot of talk these days about giving children self-esteem. It's not something you can give; it's something they have to build. Coach Graham worked in a no-coddling zone. Self-esteem? He knew there was really only one way to teach kids how to develop it: You give them something they can't do, they work hard until they find they can do it, and you just keep repeating the process.

Kids are baby goats. They're cute and they have redeeming social value. You are definitely not kids.

Athletes are born winners, there not born loosers, and the sooner you understand this, the faster you can take on a winning attitude and become sucessful in life.

Coach Hedge grunted like he was pleased to have an excuse. He unclipped the megaphone from his belt and continued giving directions, but his voice came out like Darth Vader's. The kids cracked up. The coach tried again, but this time the megaphone blared: "The cow says moo!

Just sit tight. Reinforcements should be here soon. Hopefully nothing happens before-" Lightning crackled overhead. The wind picked up with a vengeance. Worksheets flew into the Grand Canyon, and the entire bridge shuddered. Kids screamed, stumbling and grabbing the rails. "I had to say something," Hedge grumbled. He bellowed into his megaphone: "Everyone inside! The cow says moo! Off the skywalk!" "I thought you said this thing was stable!" Jason shouted over the wind. "Under normal circumstances," Hedge agreed, "which these aren't.

Back when I was on my first assignment as a seeker, I was way out in Arizona. Brought in this kid named Clarisse.” “Clarisse?” “Sibling of yours,” Hedge said. “Ares kid. Violent. Rude. Lots of potential.

It is a healthy approach not to expect persons to turn out precisely how you would have wished.

Valdez," said Coach Hedge with surprising gentleness. "Let me take the wheel. You've been steering for two hours." "Two hours?" "Yeah. Give me the wheel." "Coach?" "Yeah, kid?" "I can't unclench my hands.

A coach yells at the kid he thinks can improve but the coach will not yell at the kid who he/she knows won't.

A lot of students just don’t understand what’s out there,” she told me, shaking her head. “You have the kids who plan on being baseball players but don’t even play on the high school team because the coach is mean to them.

Life is about heart. Yours is as big as any kid’s I’ve ever coached. Don’t you ever forget that.

Developing better people should be the number one goal for any coach when dealing with kids. In trying to develop better people, we are going to develop more and better pros.

But you have to be a good friend to the kids who haven't got any friends. And you have to defend the ones who are weaker. Even when it's hard, even when you think it's a nuisance, even when you're scared. You always have to be a good friend. One day you're going to be the best. And then the coach will make you team captain. And then you will have to remember that a great deal is expected of anyone who's been given a lot.

Most Korean parents saw themselves as coaches, while American parents tended to act more like cheerleaders.

So, a crash course for the amnesiac,” Leo said, in a helpful tone that made Jason think this was not going to be helpful. “We go to the ‘Wilderness School’”—Leo made air quotes with his fingers. “Which means we’re ‘bad kids.’ Your family, or the court, or whoever, decided you were too much trouble, so they shipped you off to this lovely prison—sorry, ‘boarding school’—in Armpit, Nevada, where you learn valuable nature skills like running ten miles a day through the cacti and weaving daisies into hats! And for a special treat we go on ‘educational’ field trips with Coach Hedge, who keeps order with a baseball bat.

Je suis ce que je suis.” – Death “Is that a spell?” – Nick “It’s French, Nick. Means ‘I am what I am.’ Sheez, kid. Get educated. Read a book. I promise you it’s not painful.” – Death “I would definitely argue that. Have you seen my summer reading list? It’s nothing but girl books about them getting body parts and girl things I don’t want to discuss in class with my female English teacher. Maybe in the boys’ locker room and maybe with a coach, but not with a woman teacher in front of other girls who already won’t go out with me. Or worse, they’re about how bad all of us men reek and how we need to be taken out and shot ‘cause we’re an affront to all social and natural orders. Again – thanks, Teach. Give the girls even more reason to kick us down when we talk to one. Not like it’s not hard enough to get up the nerve to ask one out. Can you say inappropriate content? And then they tell me my manga’s bad. Riiight…Is it too much to ask that we have one book, just one, on the required reading list that says, ‘Hey, girls. Guys are fun and we’re okay. Really. We’re not all mean psycho-killing, bloodsucking animals. Most of us are pretty darn decent, and if you’ll just give us a chance, you’ll find out we’re not so bad.’” – Nick

What raises great kids is coaching them—to handle their emotions, manage their behavior, and develop mastery—rather than controlling for immediate compliance.

Valdes," said Coach Hedge with surprising gentleness. "Let me take the wheel. You've been steering for two hours." "Two hours?" "Yeah. Give me the wheel." "Coach?" "Yeah, kid?" "I can't unclench my hands.

Color blindness has become a powerful weapon against progress for people of color, but as a denial mindset, it doesn’t do white people any favors, either. A person who avoids the realities of racism doesn’t build the crucial muscles for navigating cross-cultural tensions or recovering with grace from missteps. That person is less likely to listen deeply to unexpected ideas expressed by people from other cultures or to do the research on her own to learn about her blind spots. When that person then faces the inevitable uncomfortable racial reality—an offended co-worker, a presentation about racial disparity at a PTA meeting, her inadvertent use of a stereotype—she’s caught flat-footed. Denial leaves people ill-prepared to function or thrive in a diverse society. It makes people less effective at collaborating with colleagues, coaching kids’ sports teams, advocating for their neighborhoods, even chatting with acquaintances at social events.

Teachers can teach, coaches can coach, guidance counselors can outline graduation requirements, but there’s one thing only parents can do: love their kids unconditionally and provide them with a safe base at home. For children who are stressed at school or in other parts of their lives, home should be a safe haven, a place to rest and recover. When kids feel that they are deeply loved even when they’re struggling, it builds resilience.

Part of the genius of (Nick) Sabin's system was that he understood that no matter the skill set, he was inheriting vulnerable kids from various backgrounds. For those times when they made poor decisions, as they invariably did, the safety net must be strong as far and wide as possible.

Don’t worry about that now, kid.” Hedge put a drinking straw next to Nico’s mouth. “Have some Gatorade.” “I—I don’t want—” “You’ll have some Gatorade,” the coach insisted. Nico had some Gatorade.

Hey, I got an idea, let’s go to the movies. I wanna go to the movies, I want to take you all to the movies. Let’s go and experience the art of the cinema. Let’s begin with the Scream Of Fear, and we are going to haunt us for the rest of our lives. And then let’s go see The Great Escape, and spend our summer jumping our bikes, just like Steve McQueen over barb wire. And then let’s catch The Seven Samurai for some reason on PBS, and we’ll feel like we speak Japanese because we can read the subtitles and hear the language at the same time. And then let’s lose sleep the night before we see 2001: A Space Odyssey because we have this idea that it’s going to change forever the way we look at films. And then let’s go see it four times in one year. And let’s see Woodstock three times in one year and let’s see Taxi Driver twice in one week. And let’s see Close Encounters of the Third Kind just so we can freeze there in mid-popcorn. And when the kids are old enough, let’s sit them together on the sofa and screen City Lights and Stage Coach and The Best Years of Our Lives and On The Waterfront and Midnight Cowboy and Five Easy Pieces and The Last Picture Show and Raging Bull and Schindler’s List… so that they can understand how the human condition can be captured by this amalgam of light and sound and literature we call the cinema.

I don’t run. My private life is my business. Not many people know my secret. But if some asshole decides to confront me, I never duck him. That only looks weak. I have every right to be here. I have every right to coach those kids.

My short-term factual memory can be like water; events are a brief disturbance on the surface and then it closes back up again, as if nothing ever touched it. But it’s a strange fact that my long-term memory remains strong, perhaps because it recorded events when my mind was unaffected. My emotional memory is intact too, perhaps because feelings are recorded and stored in a different place than facts. The things that happened deeper in the past, and deeper in the breast, are still there for me, under the water. I won 1,098 games, and eight national championships, and coached in four different decades. But what I see are not the numbers. I see their faces. 'Pat should get a tattoo!' The kids laughed. 'What kind should she get?' 'A heart. She should get a heart.' Little did they know. They are the tattoos.

You know my brother Robbie?” Dakota asks in a hushed voice. I snicker loudly. “No, kid, I don’t know Robbie. I just coach his team.” A sheepish flush blooms on her cheeks. “Oops. Right. That was a stupid question.” “Ya think?” Giggling, she says, “Anyway, you can’t tell anyone, but Robbie has a girlfriend!” I raise my eyebrows. “Yeah? And how do you know that? Are you spying on your big brother?” “No, he told me, dum-dum. Robbie tells me everything. Her name is Lacey and she’s in eighth grade.” Dakota shakes her head in amazement. “That’s a whole grade higher than him.” I stifle the laughter threatening to spill over. “Landed himself an older woman, huh? Good for Robbie.” Dakota lowers her voice to a whisper and proceeds to tell me every single detail about her brother’s eighth-grade girlfriend. I listen obligingly, all the while trying to pinpoint exactly when it was that hanging out with middle-schoolers became the highlight of my days.

The biggest threat to children is always inside their houses. The predator with the ski-mask who grabs the kid out of a van, while a real thing, is a tiny percentage of those who prey upon children. Most victimization of children is within the Circle of Trust — not necessarily a parent, but somebody who was let into that circle, who can be a counselor, or a coach, or someone at a day-care center. The biggest danger to children is that they're perceived as property, not human beings.

Ruby and Aaron are both crazy patient; they’re good parents.” “I could be a good dad,” Ivan whispered, still feeding Jess. I could have told him he’d be good at anything he wanted to be good at, but nah. “Do you want to have kids?” he asked me out of the blue. I handed Benny another block. “A long time from now, maybe.” “A long time… like how long?” That had me glancing at Ivan over my shoulder. He had his entire attention on Jessie, and I was pretty sure he was smiling down at her. Huh. “My early thirties, maybe? I don’t know. I might be okay with not having any either. I haven’t really thought about it much, except for knowing I don’t want to have them any time soon, you know what I mean?” “Because of figure skating?” “Why else? I barely have enough time now. I couldn’t imagine trying to train and have kids. My baby daddy would have to be a rich, stay-at-home dad for that to work.” Ivan wrinkled his nose at my niece. “There are at least ten skaters I know with kids.” I rolled my eyes and poked Benny in the side when he held out his little hand for another block. That got me a toothy grin. “I’m not saying it’s impossible. I just wouldn’t want to do it any time soon. I don’t want to half-ass or regret it. If they ever exist, I’d want them to be my priority. I wouldn’t want them to think they were second best.” Because I knew what that felt like. And I’d already screwed up enough with making grown adults I loved think they weren’t important. If I was going to do something, I wanted to do my best and give it everything. All he said was, “Hmm.” A thought came into my head and made my stomach churn. “Why? Are you planning on having kids any time soon?” “I wasn’t,” he answered immediately. “I like this baby though, and that one. Maybe I need to think about it.” I frowned, the feeling in my stomach getting more intense. He kept blabbing. “I could start training my kids really young…. I could coach them. Hmm.” It was my turn to wrinkle my nose. “Three hours with two kids and now you want them?” Ivan glanced down at me with a smirk. “With the right person. I’m not going to have them with just anybody and dilute my blood.” I rolled my eyes at this idiot, still ignoring that weird feeling in my belly that I wasn’t going to acknowledge now or ever. “God forbid, you have kids with someone that’s not perfect. Dumbass.” “Right?” He snorted, looking down at the baby before glancing back at me with a smile I wasn’t a fan of. “They might come out short, with mean, squinty, little eyes, a big mouth, heavy bones, and a bad attitude.” I blinked. “I hope you get abducted by aliens.” Ivan laughed, and the sound of it made me smile. “You would miss me.” All I said, while shrugging was, “Meh. I know I’d get to see you again someday—” He smiled. “—in hell.” That wiped the look right off his face. “I’m a good person. People like me.” “Because they don’t know you. If they did, somebody would have kicked your ass already.” “They’d try,” he countered, and I couldn’t help but laugh. There was something wrong with us. And I didn’t hate it. Not even a little bit.

How many men are on the football field at a time?” he asked us. Eleven on a team, we answered. So that makes twentytwo. “And how many people are touching the football at any given time?” One of them. “Right!” he said. “So we’re going to work on what those other twenty-one guys are doing.” Fundamentals. That was a great gift Coach Graham gave us. Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. As a college professor, I’ve seen this as one lesson so many kids ignore, always to their detriment: You’ve got to get the fundamentals down, because otherwise the fancy stuff is not going to work.

Life assurance* is a lottery ticket we buy for our kids. *also called Life insurance 28 Jun National Insurance Awareness Day

do. In a normal year, being a mentor to the tributes is the stuff of nightmares. I can’t walk by the school now without wondering what kid I’ll have to coach.

Think that everyone who works for you is like your kids,” Bill once said. “Help them course correct, make them better.

you were a kid and couldn’t defend yourself. Girls wear pink, boys wear blue. Boys are tough. Girls are sweet. Women are caregivers with soft bodies. Men are leaders with hard muscles. Girls get looked at. Guys do the looking. Hairy armpits. Pretty fingernails. This one can but that one can’t. The Gender Commandments were endless, once you started thinking about them, and they were enforced 24/7 by a highly motivated volunteer army of parents, neighbors, teachers, coaches, other kids, and total strangers—basically, the whole human race.

Say your son or daughter jumps into the car after soccer practice and says, “I hate it. I’m never going back. I quit.” This always strikes a nerve with parents who are likely to respond with: “You can’t quit. Where’s your team spirit?” or “Oh my God, what happened? I’m going to call the coach!” or “Are you hungry? Let’s go eat. You’ll feel better.” None of that is listening. Grilling them about what happened is interrogating. Telling them they shouldn’t feel how they feel is minimizing. And changing the subject is just maddening. Kids, like all of us, just want to be heard. Try instead, “Have you always felt this way?” or “What would quitting mean?” Look at it as an invitation to have a conversation, not as something to be fixed or get upset about.

Gah!’ Coach Hedge yelled. The canopy ripped and he fell behind the bar with a crash of bottles and glasses. The satyr recovered well. He popped up with a dozen miniature plastic swords in his hair, grabbed the soda gun and served himself a drink. ‘I like it!’ He tossed a wedge of pineapple into his mouth. ‘But next time, kid, can we land on the floor and not ten feet above it?

kid,” Hedge said, “you blew up some stuff. You attacked some Romans. Awesome! Excellent! But did you have to knock out the satellite channels? I was right in the middle of watching a cage match.” “Coach,

Don’t worry. You gave him the right answer.” Actually, Michael was after something more important than the fate of his Briarcrest teammate. “I wanted to see what type of person he was,” he said later. “If he’s pulling scholarships that they’d promised kids, would you want to play for that kind of person? Be around that kind of person?” Coach O wasn’t that kind of person, he decided; more interestingly, Coach

If you have no arms To hold your crying child but your own arms And no legs but your own to run the stairs one more time To fetch what was forgotten I bow to you If you have no vehicle To tote your wee one but the wheels that you drive And no one else to worry, “Is my baby okay?” When you have to say goodbye on the doorsteps of daycare or on that cursed first day of school I bow to you If you have no skill but your own skill To replenish an ever-emptying bank account And no answers but your own to Satisfy the endless whys, hows, and whens your child asks and asks again I bow to you If you have no tongue to tell the truth To keep your beloved on the path without a precipice And no wisdom to impart Except the wisdom that you’ve acquired I bow to you If the second chair is empty Across the desk from a scornful, judging authority waiting For your child’s father to appear And you straighten your spine where you sit And manage to smile and say, “No one else is coming—I’m it.” Oh, I bow to you If your head aches when the spotlight finally shines on your child because your hands are the only hands there to applaud I bow to you If your heart aches because you’ve given until everything in you is gone And your kid declares, “It’s not enough.” And you feel the crack of your own soul as you whisper, “I know, baby. But it’s all mama’s got.” Oh, how I bow to you If they are your life while you are their nurse, tutor, maid Bread winner and bread baker, Coach, cheerleader and teammate… If you bleed when your child falls down I bow, I bow, I bow If you’re both punisher and hugger And your own tears are drowned out by the running of the bathroom faucet because children can’t know that mamas hurt too Oh, mother of mothers, I bow to you. —Toni Sorenson

When Aaron came home from the tryout, why didn’t he take up the coach’s challenge to return, to try harder? When Julia discovered that she wasn’t as smart as she thought, why did she collapse? The answer in both cases is that these kids are fragile. It doesn’t take much for them to give up and retreat, as Aaron did, or to fall apart, as Julia did. Fragility has become a characteristic of American children and teenagers to an extent unknown 25 years ago. That

Coach McConaughy grabbed the whistle swinging from a chain around his neck and blew it. “Seats, team!” Coach considered teaching tenthgrade biology a side assignment to his job as varsity basketball coach, and we all knew it. “It may not have occurred to you kids that sex is more than a fifteenminute trip to the backseat of a car. It’s science. And what is science?” “Boring,” some kid in the back of the room called out. “The only class I’m failing,” said another.

Like a lot of gym teachers, Coach Babcock loved to torture his students. He felt he had failed as a teacher if his students didn't cry out for mercy. He often bragged that he held the school district's record for causing the most hysterical breakdowns in one afternoon. He used such classic forms of torture as weight training, wrestling, long-distance running, rope climing, wind spirits, chin-ups, and the occasional game of wet dodgeball (the wet ball was superloud when it hit a kid, and it left a huge red welt). But his favorite device of torment was so horrible, so truly evil, that it would drive most children to the brink of madness. It was the square dance. For six weeks of the school year, his students suffered through the Star Promenade, the Slip the Clutch, and the Ferris Wheel. As Babcock saw it, square dancing was the most embarrassing and uncomfortable form of dancing ever created, and a perfect way to prepare his students for the crushing heartbreak of life. Square dancing was a metaphor for like- you got swung around and just when you thought you were free, you got dragged back into the dance. He really thought he was doing the kids a favor.

And we almost got away with it except this one kid—I forget his first name, but his last name was Ferilikins or something—told the coach, “They were playing bodies” and then explained that “Person A punched Person B” (not his exact words).

We are supposed to consume alcohol and enjoy it, but we're not supposed to become alcoholics. Imagine if this were the same with cocaine. Imagine we grew up watching our parents snort lines at dinner, celebrations, sporting events, brunches, and funerals. We'd sometimes (or often) see our parents coked out of our minds the way we sometimes (or often) see them drunk. We'd witness them coming down after a cocaine binge the way we see them recovering from a hangover. Kiosks at Disneyland would see it so our parents could make it through a day of fun, our mom's book club would be one big blow-fest and instead of "mommy juice" it would be called "mommy powder" There'd be coke-tasting parties in Napa and cocaine cellars in fancy people's homes, and everyone we know (including our pastors, nurses, teachers, coaches, bosses) would snort it. The message we'd pick up as kids could be Cocaine is great, and one day you'll get to try it, too! Just don't become addicted to it or take it too far. Try it; use it responsibly. Don't become a cocaine-oholic though. Now, I'm sure you're thinking. That's insane, everyone knows cocaine is far more addicting than alcohol and far more dangerous. Except, it's not...The point is not that alcohol is worse than cocaine. The point is that we have a really clear understanding that cocaine is toxic and addictive. We know there's no safe amount of it, no such thing as "moderate" cocaine use; we know it can hook us and rob us of everything we care about...We know we are better off not tangling with it at all.

I'm too angry to speak, or I would ask her how she could call those guys kids. They're bigger than most teachers. Their coaches buy them alcohol. Some of them have beards. How come guys like Gavin are treated like men most of the time, but when they fuck up, they're just kids?

On the first day of practice, we were all scared to death. Plus he hadn't brought along any footballs. One kid finally spoke up for all of us 'Excuse me, Coach. There are no footballs.' And Coach Graham responded, 'We don't need any footballs.' There was silence while we thought about that... 'How many men are on the football field at a time?' he asked us. Eleven on a team, we answered. So that makes twenty-two. 'And how many people are touching the football at any given time?' One of them. 'Right!' he said. 'So we're going to work on what those other twenty-one guys are doing.' Fundamentals. That was a great gift Coach Graham gave us. Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. As a college professor, I've seen this one lesson so many kids ignore, always to their detriment: You've got to get the fundamentals down, because otherwise the fancy stuff is not going to work.

Parents who view themselves as educational coaches tend to read to their children every day when they are small; when their children get older, they talk with them about their days and about the news around the world. They let their children make mistakes and then get right back to work. They teach them good habits and give them autonomy. They are teachers, too, in other words, and they believe in rigor. They want their children to fail while they are still children. They know that those lessons—about hard work, persistence, integrity, and consequences—will serve a child for decades to come.

When we hoard opportunities, we help our own children but hurt others by reducing their chances of securing those opportunities. Every college place or internship that goes to one of our kids because of a legacy bias or personal connection is one less available to others. We may prefer not to dwell on the unfairness here, but that’s simply a moral failing on our part. Too many upper middle-class Americans still insist that their success, or the success of their children, stems entirely from brilliance and tenacity; “born on third base, thinking they hit a triple,” in football coach Barry Switzer’s vivid phrase.

They suspected that children learned best through undirected free play—and that a child’s psyche was sensitive and fragile. During the 1980s and 1990s, American parents and teachers had been bombarded by claims that children’s self-esteem needed to be protected from competition (and reality) in order for them to succeed. Despite a lack of evidence, the self-esteem movement took hold in the United States in a way that it did not in most of the world. So, it was understandable that PTA parents focused their energies on the nonacademic side of their children’s school. They dutifully sold cupcakes at the bake sales and helped coach the soccer teams. They doled out praise and trophies at a rate unmatched in other countries. They were their kids’ boosters, their number-one fans. These were the parents that Kim’s principal in Oklahoma praised as highly involved. And PTA parents certainly contributed to the school’s culture, budget, and sense of community. However, there was not much evidence that PTA parents helped their children become critical thinkers. In most of the countries where parents took the PISA survey, parents who participated in a PTA had teenagers who performed worse in reading. Korean parenting, by contrast, were coaches. Coach parents cared deeply about their children, too. Yet they spent less time attending school events and more time training their children at home: reading to them, quizzing them on their multiplication tables while they were cooking dinner, and pushing them to try harder. They saw education as one of their jobs.

Listen, does your boy know how to work? Try to teach him to work, to sacrifice, to fight. He better learn now, because he’s going to have to do it some day. Lloyd Hale was a sophomore on that first team we took to Junction, and he asked me one time what I meant by “fight.” Well, I don’t mean fistfight, like we used to do back in Arkansas, I told him. I mean, some morning when you’ve been out of school twenty years and you wake up and your house has burned down and your mother is in the hospital and the kids are all sick and you’re overdrawn at the bank and your wife has run off with the drummer, what are you going to do? Throw in?

So it’s empty, and this guy is a paraplegic coach helping disabled kids. He survived losing his mother at a young age, his best friend and boyfriend as a teenager, and he’s paralyzed now. Yet he’s the male version of Mother Theresa,” Donny states dryly. “And we’re accusing him of helping a murderer. I repeat: We’re going to hell.

Since the 1980s, a growing body of research finds that mattering—the feeling that we are valued and add value to others—is key to positive mental health and to thriving in adolescence and beyond. “Mattering” offers a rich, almost intuitive framework for understanding the pressure assailing our kids—and how to protect them from it. It is as profound as it is practical. It doesn’t involve spending more money on tutors or coaches or adding another activity to an already overpacked schedule. Instead, it offers a radical new lens for how we as adults—parents, teachers, coaches, and mentors—see our kids and communicate to them about their worth, potential, and value to society.

She took my hand and squeezed it. “You sold yourself short. You could’ve been more than a teacher and a coach.” I returned the squeeze and said, “Listen to me, Savannah. There’s no word in the language I revere more than teacher. None. My heart sings when a kid refers to me as his teacher and it always has. I’ve honored myself and the entire family of man by becoming one.

I used to call players in and sit them down privately and say, “This is the deal.” I find myself doing it less and less, and here’s why: you know when they leave your office, they’re going to lie. You could say ten things and nine of them are “You are greatest in the world at nine things, but you suck going to your left.” They leave and say, “Coach says I suck.” I like to say things right in front of the team about reality. I like to say, This is what you’re doing and this is why it’s costing us, and does anybody have any questions? Because now they have to confront. They can’t go their separate ways and say, “He said …” No. Everybody heard it. And everybody on the team already knows it. They just want someone else to say it. You are just the voice of the team calling out that player—and now that player has to react. They have to either admit it, and fix it, or say everybody else is wrong. And if they do that, they further separate themselves from the team. College kids are still kids and are looking for direction. What gives you the stomach to do it is you know you’re right, and you’re only saying what they already know and believe. —GENO AURIEMMA

This is an unusual paragraph. I'm curious as to just how quickly you can find out what is so unusual about it. It looks so ordinary and plain that you would think nothing was wrong with it. In fact, nothing is wrong with it! It is highly unusual though. Study it and think about it, but you still may not find anything odd. But if you work at it a bit, you might find out. Try to do so without any coaching.

Another by-the-way she told me was her real name. Agnes. Some kids in first grade turned it around to tease her, and to shut them up she said she liked Angus better. Then decided she really did. Likewise, her daddy used to take her to every practice and game, sitting her up on his shoulders. Coach’s girl, in her tiny Generals jersey some lady made for her, riding high for all to see. Then in fifth grade he stopped letting her come to practices because it was no place for a young lady. She said fine, she hated football. Then decided she really did. And that’s the story on a motherless girl named Angus. Unbeatable. Coach was a big guy with big hands holding the world by its neck, with every game a win or else the world ends. Storm in a shot glass type of thing. And Angus was the opposite. A whole ocean, dark and chill.

250.   This is an unusual paragraph. I'm curious as to just how quickly you can find out what is so unusual about it. It looks so ordinary and plain that you would think nothing was wrong with it. In fact, nothing is wrong with it! It is highly unusual though. Study it and think about it, but you still may not find anything odd. But if you work at it a bit, you might find out. Try to do so without any coaching.

So at my old school,” he said. “There was this kid on the baseball team. People thought, I don’t know. They saw that he went to some website or something.” ... “They made it impossible for him to play. Every day, the found another way to mess with him. Then one Friday after school, they locked him in the storage closet.” He winced, as if remembering and I knew. I knew then. “All night long and the whole next day. A tiny, dark, disgusting airless space. His parents thought he was at the away game and someone told the coaches he was sick, so no one even looked for him. No one knew he was trapped in there.” His chest was heaving and I was remembering how he told me he didn’t used to have claustrophobia and now he did. “He was really good too, probably the best player on the team or could have been. And he didn’t even do anything. The guy just went to these sites and someone saw. Do you get it? Do you get what it would mean for me? The assistant captain? I want to be captain next year so maybe I can graduate early. No scholarship. No nothing. These guys aren’t” - he made finger quotes - “evolved. They’re not from Northern California. They don’t do all-day sits or draw pictures.” The dagger went straight in. “It’s brutal in a locker room.

Look, no one wants to hear that maybe she’s the reason her mother flew the coop. But my advice to you is to put this behind you. File it away in the drawer that’s saved for all the other crap that isn’t fair, like how the Kardashians are famous and how good-looking people get served faster at restaurants and how a kid who can’t skate to save his life winds up on the varsity hockey team because his dad is the coach.

I would fall in love with someone’s potential rather than with who they actually were. I’d walk in, find a guy who was smart and funny but a complete mess, and light up like a talent agent from the 1950s. I’d think to myself, “This kid’s gonna be a star!” I’d take on a guy the way Michelle Pfeiffer took on the punk-ass kids from Dangerous Minds, seeing the best in them and pushing them to be better. And also like Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds, I had to teach a couple of guys how to read. Of course, this dynamic caused my relationships to feel maternal, making my partner resent me and making sex feel like incest. To add insult to injury, I basically ended up coaching a guy to be the best he can be for the next girl who came along. To anyone dating my exes, you’re welcome for getting them together so you could have the perfect boyfriend. Love you, girl.

FAITH. Too many people have no faith. They are cynical. “This leadership training and personal development stuff doesn’t work.” Or “I’m too old to change.” Cynicism stems from disappointment. Cynical and faithless people were not always like that. They were filled with possibilities and hope as kids. But they tried and perhaps failed. And rather than staying in the game, recognizing that failure is the highway to success, they shut down and grew cynical. Their way to avoid getting hurt again.

But it's going to. It'll matter a lot in five years or so when you decide you want children. You're barely out of your twenties. I'm forty. I waved a hand in the vicinity of my abdomen. Factory's closed. Been there, done that, sent her to college. He looked at me, increduolous. I don't give a damn about kids. But you like kids. Sure I like kids. The ones I teach. The ones I coach. The ones my cousins have, that I can feed sugar to and give back to their parents. He shrugged. Doesn't mean I want kids of my own.

What I hadn't expected was to be blindsided by a history lesson that betrayed every hard-won experience I'd had as a player and now a coach at the same school I'd attended. . . Whoever was responsible for sending a championship team into virtual obscurity was either a serious egomaniac or just plain mean. It stung. After all, wasn't the story told at today's funeral the stuff of legacies? Of school lore passed on to the next class, and the next, building institutional pride as well as magical identities that made every kid in the state want to play there?

So,” Will begins, “do you play ball as well as you run?” I laugh a little. I can’t help it. He’s sweet and disarming and my nerves are racing. “Not even close.” The conversation goes no further as we move up in our lines. Catherine looks over her shoulder at me, her wide sea eyes assessing. Like she can’t quite figure me out. My smile fades and I look away. She can never figure me out. I can never let her. Never let anyone here. She faces me with her arms crossed. “You make friends fast. Since freshman year, I’ve spoken to like . . .” She paused and looks upward as though mentally counting. “Three, no—four people. And you’re number four.” I shrug. “He’s just a guy.” Catherine squares up at the free-throw line, dribbles a few times, and shoots. The ball swished cleanly through the net. She catches it and tosses it back to me. I try copying her moves, but my ball flies low, glides beneath the backboard. I head to the end of the line again. Will’s already waiting it half-court, letting others go before him. My face warms at his obvious stall. “You weren’t kidding,” he teases over the thunder of basketballs. “Did you make it?” I ask, wishing I had looked while he shot. “Yeah.” “Of course,” I mock. He lets another kid go before him. I do the same. Catherine is several ahead of me now. His gaze scans me, sweeping over my face and hair with deep intensity, like he’s memorizing my features. “Yeah, well. I can’t run like you.” I move up in line, but when I sneak a look behind me, he’s looking back, too. “Wow,” Catherine murmurs in her smoky low voice as she falls into line beside me. “I never knew it happened like that.” I snap my gaze to her. “What?” “You know. Romeo and Juliet stuff. Love at first sight and all that.” “It’s not like that,” I say quickly. “You could have fooled me.” We’re up again. Catherine takes her shot. It swishes cleanly through the hoop. When I shoot, the ball bounces hard off the backboard and flies wildly through the air, knocking the coach in the head. I slap a hand over my mouth. The coach barely catches herself from falling. Several students laugh. She glares at me and readjusts her cap. With a small wave of apology, I head back to the end of the line. Will’s there, fighting laughter. “Nice,” he says. “Glad I’m downcourt of you.” I cross my arms and resist smiling, resist letting myself feel good around him. But he makes it hard. I want to smile. I want to like him, to be around him, to know him. “Happy to amuse you.” His smile slips then, and he’s looking at me with that strange intensity again. Only I understand. I know why. He must remember . . . must recognize me on some level even though he can’t understand it. “You want to go out?” he asks suddenly. I blink. “As in a date?” “Yes. That’s what a guy usually means when he asks that question.

The secret of parenting is not in what a parent does but rather who the parent is to a child. When a child seeks contact and closeness with us, we become empowered as a nurturer, a comforter, a guide, a model, a teacher, or a coach. For a child well attached to us, we are her home base from which to venture into the world, her retreat to fall back to, her fountainhead of inspiration. All the parenting skills in the world cannot compensate for a lack of attachment relationship. All the love in the world cannot get through without the psychological umbilical cord created by the child’s attachment.

consider trying to forgive him yet again. He did his part, so I returned to our home in Virginia that summer of 2010. I wasn’t hopeful, but I didn’t have the strength to end our marriage—or to save it. We attended counseling together for a while, but the conversations reached dead ends. Nonetheless, Robert attempted to rebuild our connection. He wasn’t staying out all night. He helped with the kids and seemed committed to fixing the broken bond between us. Before we knew it, training camp was starting again and he would once again be competing for a spot on the roster. The coaching staff had experienced some changes,

It’s the wretched contradiction of parenting. Once, you were their favorite human on the planet, and they were yours. For the rest of your life, your child will remain your heart . . . but it’s not mutual. It’s not supposed to be. Your importance is dwarfed by their friends. Romantic interests. Cool professors and great coaches. A spouse, someday, and kids of their own, and you . . . you got left behind at a certain exit on the highway of their life, and all you can do is look down the road after them and remember when you were so needed, so loved, so sure of your place in the world, because you were Mommy, and that was everything.

Teachers can teach, coaches can coach, guidance counselors can outline graduation requirements, but there’s one thing only parents can do: love their kids unconditionally and provide them with a safe base at home. For children who are stressed at school or in other parts of their lives, home should be a safe haven, a place to rest and recover. When kids feel that they are deeply loved even when they’re struggling, it builds resilience. Battling your child about due dates and lost work sheets invites school stress to take root at home. So instead of nagging, arguing, and constant reminding, we recommend repeating the mantra, “I love you too much to fight with you about your homework.

Research has established that, oftentimes, when kids are struggling, it is not therapy for the child himself but coaching or therapy for the parent that leads to the most significant changes in the child. This is powerful research, because it suggests that a child’s behavior—which is an expression of a child’s emotion regulation patterns—develops in relation to a parent’s emotional maturity. There are two ways to interpret this data. The first is, “Oh no, I’m messing up my kid because I’m messed up. I’m the worst!” But there’s another, more optimistic and encouraging interpretation: “Wow, this is amazing. If I can work on some of my own emotion regulation abilities—which will feel good for me anyway!—my

I tell them to recruit kids whose coaches report that they had tremendous work ethics. They lifted weights on their own during the off-season. They showed up early for practice, stayed late, and asked for extra help on their skills. They were leaders who helped push everyone on the team to work harder. And they displayed these traits both when the team did well and when it struggled through adversity. It’s relatively easy to be enthused and hardworking on a team that’s winning. It shows more character to display those same attributes on a team that’s losing. It speaks to a person’s mental toughness, toughness that will be invaluable in dealing with the setbacks and rejections that inevitably come along in a business career.

Isn’t it wonderful that he’s so excited to meet you, Zeke?” She smiles, eyebrows rising a fraction…gives her head an encouraging little nod up and down until I hear myself saying, “Yes?” The kid does a fist pump. “I’ve seen all your home games, and last week at Cornell?” His voice cracks with excitement. “Holy shit man, that pin on JJ Beldon was sick! Seriously sick. My friends and I lost our minds.” Violet nudges my arm gently with a smile on her face. “Thanks?” She pats my arm and— Wait just one damn minute. Is she…is Violet coaching me on how to be nice? Her hand is still on my sleeve and I look down into her pretty, upturned face. Down at her bold, dark lips. Her huge eyes and long lashes. All that pale blonde hair. She’s a damn wet dream. Fuck me.

This kind of parenting was typical in much of Asia—and among Asian immigrant parents living in the United States. Contrary to the stereotype, it did not necessarily make children miserable. In fact, children raised in this way in the United States tended not only to do better in school but to actually enjoy reading and school more than their Caucasian peers enrolled in the same schools. While American parents gave their kids placemats with numbers on them and called it a day, Asian parents taught their children to add before they could read. They did it systematically and directly, say, from six-thirty to seven each night, with a workbook—not organically, the way many American parents preferred their children to learn math. The coach parent did not necessarily have to earn a lot of money or be highly educated. Nor did a coach parent have to be Asian, needless to say. The research showed that European-American parents who acted more like coaches tended to raise smarter kids, too. Parents who read to their children weekly or daily when they were young raised children who scored twenty-five points higher on PISA by the time they were fifteen years old. That was almost a full year of learning. More affluent parents were more likely to read to their children almost everywhere, but even among families within the same socioeconomic group, parents who read to their children tended to raise kids who scored fourteen points higher on PISA. By contrast, parents who regularly played with alphabet toys with their young children saw no such benefit. And at least one high-impact form of parental involvement did not actually involve kids or schools at all: If parents simply read for pleasure at home on their own, their children were more likely to enjoy reading, too. That pattern held fast across very different countries and different levels of family income. Kids could see what parents valued, and it mattered more than what parents said. Only four in ten parents in the PISA survey regularly read at home for enjoyment. What if they knew that this one change—which they might even vaguely enjoy—would help their children become better readers themselves? What if schools, instead of pleading with parents to donate time, muffins, or money, loaned books and magazines to parents and urged them to read on their own and talk about what they’d read in order to help their kids? The evidence suggested that every parent could do things that helped create strong readers and thinkers, once they knew what those things were. Parents could go too far with the drills and practice in academics, just as they could in sports, and many, many Korean parents did go too far. The opposite was also true. A coddled, moon bounce of a childhood could lead to young adults who had never experienced failure or developed self-control or endurance—experiences that mattered as much or more than academic skills. The evidence suggested that many American parents treated their children as if they were delicate flowers. In one Columbia University study, 85 percent of American parents surveyed said that they thought they needed to praise their children’s intelligence in order to assure them they were smart. However, the actual research on praise suggested the opposite was true. Praise that was vague, insincere, or excessive tended to discourage kids from working hard and trying new things. It had a toxic effect, the opposite of what parents intended. To work, praise had to be specific, authentic, and rare. Yet the same culture of self-esteem boosting extended to many U.S. classrooms.

not if Shannon is over her illness.  Come, Dytyna.  We discuss your performance now." "When will we know if I'll be competing?" "We will not know until Monday when we check in at the Olympic arena.  Coach Taylor will know then." "I'm going back to the hotel to call your father, Kerri.  We plan on meeting for lunch then will head on over to the hockey arena.  Two kids in the Olympics!  Whoa.  I'll see you later."  She leaned down and gave Kerri a hug before she kissed her forehead.  "Stay out of trouble." "I can hardly get into any trouble in the Olympic village, Mom."  At almost seventeen, Kerri was still able to feel embarrassed at receiving her mother's counsel, and she thought that her mother's advice was unfounded.  The village was closed off, after all, from the rest of Turin and from the fray of the crowds that converged upon the venues.  She watched her mother walk away before she stood up and adjusted the strap

That's quite a pile," he said. "I suppose you want me to spin it into gold." "Well, the situation has changed just a bit," said the miller's daughter (who also had a name--it was Meredith). "If you don't, I will die. If you do, I marry the king." Now that, thought Rumpelstiltskin, has possibilities. After all, getting to be the queen was a big step up for a miller's daughter. She would surely pay him anything. And there was only one thing in the world he really wanted--a little child to love and care for. "Okay, here's the deal," he said. "I will spin the straw into gold, just like before. In return, once you become queen, you must let me adopt your firstborn child. I promise I'll be an excellent father. I know all the lullabies. I'll read to the child every day. I'll even coach Little League." "You've got to be kidding," Meredith said. "I'd rather marry you than that jerk!" "Really?" said Rumpelstiltskin, and he blushed all the way from the top of his head to the tip of his toes (which admittedly wasn't very far, because he was so short). "Sure," she said. "I like your ideas on parenting, you'd make a good provider, and I have a weakness for short men.

Hey, I got an idea, let’s go to the movies. I wanna go to the movies, I want to take you all to the movies. Let’s go and experience the art of the cinema. Let’s begin with the Scream Of Fear, and we're gonna have it haunt us for the rest of our lives. And then let’s go see The Great Escape, and spend our summer jumping our bikes, just like Steve McQueen over barb wire. And then let’s catch The Seven Samurai for some reason on PBS, and we’ll feel like we speak Japanese because we can read the subtitles and hear the language at the same time. And then let’s lose sleep the night before we see 2001: A Space Odyssey because we have this idea that it’s going to change forever the way we look at films. And then let’s go see it four times in one year. And let’s see Woodstock three times in one year and let’s see Taxi Driver twice in one week. And let’s see Close Encounters of the Third Kind just so we can freeze there in mid-popcorn. And when the kids are old enough, let’s sit them together on the sofa and screen City Lights and Stage Coach and The Best Years of Our Lives and On The Waterfront and Midnight Cowboy and Five Easy Pieces and The Last Picture Show and Raging Bull and Schindler’s List… so that they can understand how the human condition can be captured by this amalgam of light and sound and literature we call the cinema.

In June 1981, a strike shuttered the major leagues for fifty days, the first time in baseball history that players walked out during the season. Determined to make his people earn their keep, George Steinbrenner ordered his major-league coaches into the minors to scout and help mentor the organization’s prospects. Berra drew Nashville, where Merrill was the manager. Merrill was a former minor-league catcher with a degree in physical education from the University of Maine. He began working for the Yankees in 1978 at West Haven, Connecticut, in the Eastern League and moved south when the Yankees took control of the Southern League’s Nashville team in 1980. Suddenly, in mid-1981, the former catcher who had never made it out of Double-A ball had the most famous and decorated Yankees backstop asking him, “What do you want me to do?” Wait a minute, Merrill thought. Yogi Berra is asking me to supervise him? “Do whatever you want,” Merrill said. “No,” Berra said. “Give me something specific.” And that was when Merrill began to understand the existential splendor of Yogi Berra, whom he would come to call Lawrence or Sir Lawrence in comic tribute to his utter lack of pretense and sense of importance. “He rode buses with us all night,” Merrill said. “You think he had to do that? He was incredible.” One day Merrill told him, “Why don’t you hit some rollers to that lefty kid over there at first base?” Berra did as he was told and later remarked to Merrill, “That kid looks pretty good with the glove.” Berra knew a prospect when he saw one. It was Don Mattingly, who at the time was considered expendable by a chronically shortsighted organization always on the prowl for immediate assistance at the major-league level.

The government doesn’t care if our kids learn to think or learn for the sake of learning, as long they learn to love their country, and grow up and pay taxes. How much of what we learnt in 10 years of our schooling actually comes handy in our day-to-day lives? Why can’t we learn useful skills, like cooking, in school that actually come in handy when it comes to survival? Does schooling need to last for 10 years? Is it possible to complete schooling in 7 years? Nobody knows and schools have done a great job at not letting us ask questions. We live in times where we cautiously invest 4 years in undergrad schools or 2 years in B-schools in the hope that we acquire strong skills or at least secure a job. Schooling, as it exists, is a 10-year course that neither helps us get a job nor imparts a skill and unfortunately, it is compulsory. Half the jobs that exist today won’t even exist 10 years from now. That’s how fast the world is progressing. We still ask our kids to learn when Shah Jahan was born. It is a joke that at the end of these 10 years, we are expected to choose a career in science, commerce, or arts when school education hardly helped us explore ourselves. Some of the world’s greatest artists, athletes, inventors and scientists are from India. Unfortunately, they are all engineers and tragically none of them know about their talents. The biggest reason for this tragedy isn’t the society, parenting, coaching or anything else. The school is the reason and they too are all eventually victims of the same century-old schooling system. In the legendary words of Kevin Spacey from Usual Suspects, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” and our school is our society’s biggest devil.

You might expect that if you spent such an extended period in twelve different households, what you would gather is twelve different ideas about how to raise children: there would be the strict parents and the lax parents and the hyperinvolved parents and the mellow parents and on and on. What Lareau found, however, is something much different. There were only two parenting “philosophies,” and they divided almost perfectly along class lines. The wealthier parents raised their kids one way, and the poorer parents raised their kids another way. The wealthier parents were heavily involved in their children’s free time, shuttling them from one activity to the next, quizzing them about their teachers and coaches and teammates. One of the well-off children Lareau followed played on a baseball team, two soccer teams, a swim team, and a basketball team in the summer, as well as playing in an orchestra and taking piano lessons. That kind of intensive scheduling was almost entirely absent from the lives of the poor children. Play for them wasn’t soccer practice twice a week. It was making up games outside with their siblings and other kids in the neighborhood. What a child did was considered by his or her parents as something separate from the adult world and not particularly consequential. One girl from a working-class family—Katie Brindle—sang in a choir after school. But she signed up for it herself and walked to choir practice on her own. Lareau writes: What Mrs. Brindle doesn’t do that is routine for middle-class mothers is view her daughter’s interest in singing as a signal to look for other ways to help her develop that interest into a formal talent. Similarly Mrs. Brindle does not discuss Katie’s interest in drama or express regret that she cannot afford to cultivate her daughter’s talent. Instead she frames Katie’s skills and interests as character traits—singing and acting are part of what makes Katie “Katie.” She sees the shows her daughter puts on as “cute” and as a way for Katie to “get attention.

The immorality of those families whose children are burnt alive on motor ways. They have money heaped on them by social welfare institutions and they go and spend it on consumer goods, which the right-thinking regard as sordid. But they have never had to see their kids die before they could buy a car and, hence, have never felt the need to send them off for inexpensive holidays on those coaches which, as if by chance, always have fatal accidents. The immorality of those who eat their children in hard cash merely corre sponds to the immorality of the social institution which recompenses their death. Everything in this vicious circle is abject: chance, which kills the poorest children, social charity which turns their deaths into a source of income, the parents who benefit from it to enjoy a short spell of wealth and decent society which stigma tizes them, for rumour does not condemn them at all for their indiscreet behaviour but for not handling the money rationally by putting it in the bank, for example, but instead spending it unscrupulously, thus verifying that they were indeed the victims of a divine justice. The whole of the social is there in its logical abjection. It is the poor who die and it is they who deserved to. It is this mediocre truth, this mediocre fatality which we know as 'the social'. Which amounts to saying that it only exists for its victims. Wretched in its essence, it only affects the wretched. It is itself a disinherited concept and it can only serve to render destitution complete. Nietzsche is right: the social is a concept, a value made by slaves for their own use, beneath the scornful gaze of their masters who have never believed in it. This can be clearly seen in all the so-called social reforms which inescapably turn against the intended beneficiaries. The reforms strike those whom they should save. This is not a perverse effect. Nature herself conforms to this willingly and catastrophes have a preference for the poor. Has a catastrophe ever been seen which directly strikes the rich - apart perhaps from the burial of Pompeii and the sinking of the Titanic ?

Before dinner on the last night, while the guys were on the deck drinking whiskey and talking about Elon Musk, Liz and I went on a walk and she told me about a dream she’d been fixating on, a dream about what happens after mothers die. “We are all in this place. All the mothers who had to leave early.” (I would repeat her unforgettable phrasing—had to leave early—to Edward as we went to sleep that night.) “It’s huge, big as an airplane hangar, and there are all these seats, rows and rows, set up on a glass floor, so all the moms can look down and watch their kids live out their futures.” How dominant the ache to know what becomes of our children. “There’s one rule: you can watch as much and as long as you want, but you can only intervene once.” I nodded, tears forming. “So I sat down. And I watched. I watched them out back by the pool, swimming with Andy, napping on a towel. I watched them on the jungle gym, walking Lambchop, reading their Lemony Snicket books. I watched Margo taking a wrong turn or forgetting her homework. I watched Dru ignoring his coach. I watched Gwennie logging her feelings in a journal. And every time I went to intervene, to warn one of the kids about something or just pick them up to hold them, a more experienced mother leaned across and stopped me. Not now. He’ll figure it out. She’ll come around. And it went on and on like that and in the end,” she said, smiling with wet eyes, “I never needed to use my interventions.” Her dream was that she had, in her too-short lifetime, endowed her children with everything they’d require to negotiate the successive obstacle courses of adolescence, young adulthood, and grown-up life. “I mean, they had heartaches and regret and fights and broken bones,” she said, stopping to rest. “They made tons of mistakes, but they didn’t need me. I never had to say anything or stop anything. I never said one word.” She put her arm through mine and we started moving again, back toward the house, touching from our shoulders to our elbows, crunching the gravel with our steps, the mingled voices of our children coming from the door we left open.

Local Teen Adopted Finds Adoptive Family Within 24 Hours of 18th Birthday The final chapter of a family tragedy was written yesterday at the county courthouse when Cynthia and Tom Lemry signed formal adoption papers, gaining custody of Sarah Byrnes less than 24 hours before her 18th birthday. Local readers will remember Ms. Byrnes as the youngster whose face and hands were purposely burned on a hot wood stove by her father 15 years ago. The incident came to light this past February after Virgil Byrnes assaulted another teenager, 18-year-old Eric Calhoune, with a hunting knife. “Better late than never,” said Cynthia Lemry, a local high school teacher and swimming coach, in a statement to the press. “If someone had stepped up for this young lady a long time ago, years of heartache could have been avoided. She’s a remarkable human being, and we’re honored to have her in our family.” “I guess they’re just in the nick of time to pay my college tuition,” the new Sarah Lemry said with a smile. Also attending the ceremony were Eric Calhoune, the victim of Virgil Byrnes’s attack; Sandy Calhoune, the boy’s mother and a frequent columnist for this newspaper; Carver Milddleton, who served time on an assault charge against Virgil Byrnes in a related incident; the Reverend John Ellerby, controversial Episcopalian minister whose support of female clergy and full homosexual rights has frequently focused a spotlight on him in his 15-year stay at St. Mark’s; and his son, Steve Ellerby, who describes himself as “a controversial Episcopalian preacher’s kid.” Sarah Lemry confirmed that following the burning 15 years ago, her father refused her opportunities for reconstructive surgery, saying her condition would teach her to “be tough.” She refused comment on further torturous physical abuse allegations, for which, among other charges, Byrnes has been found guilty in superior court and sentenced to more than 20 years in the state penitentiary at Walla Walla. When asked if she would now seek the reconstructive surgery she was so long denied, Sarah Lemry again smiled and said, “I don’t know. It’d be a shame to change just when I’m getting used to it.

EVEN BEFORE HE GOT ELECTROCUTED, Jason was having a rotten day. He woke in the backseat of a school bus, not sure where he was, holding hands with a girl he didn’t know. That wasn’t necessarily the rotten part. The girl was cute, but he couldn’t figure out who she was or what he was doing there. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, trying to think. A few dozen kids sprawled in the seats in front of him, listening to iPods, talking, or sleeping. They all looked around his age…fifteen? Sixteen? Okay, that was scary. He didn’t know his own age. The bus rumbled along a bumpy road. Out the windows, desert rolled by under a bright blue sky. Jason was pretty sure he didn’t live in the desert. He tried to think back…the last thing he remembered… The girl squeezed his hand. “Jason, you okay?” She wore faded jeans, hiking boots, and a fleece snowboarding jacket. Her chocolate brown hair was cut choppy and uneven, with thin strands braided down the sides. She wore no makeup like she was trying not to draw attention to herself, but it didn’t work. She was seriously pretty. Her eyes seemed to change color like a kaleidoscope—brown, blue, and green. Jason let go of her hand. “Um, I don’t—” In the front of the bus, a teacher shouted, “All right, cupcakes, listen up!” The guy was obviously a coach. His baseball cap was pulled low over his hair, so you could just see his beady eyes. He had a wispy goatee and a sour face, like he’d eaten something moldy. His buff arms and chest pushed against a bright orange polo shirt. His nylon workout pants and Nikes were spotless white. A whistle hung from his neck, and a megaphone was clipped to his belt. He would’ve looked pretty scary if he hadn’t been five feet zero. When he stood up in the aisle, one of the students called, “Stand up, Coach Hedge!” “I heard that!” The coach scanned the bus for the offender. Then his eyes fixed on Jason, and his scowl deepened. A jolt went down Jason’s spine. He was sure the coach knew he didn’t belong there. He was going to call Jason out, demand to know what he was doing on the bus—and Jason wouldn’t have a clue what to say. But Coach Hedge looked away and cleared his throat. “We’ll arrive in five minutes! Stay with your partner. Don’t lose your worksheet. And if any of you precious little cupcakes causes any trouble on this trip, I will personally send you back to campus the hard way.

Both C.K. and Bieber are extremely gifted performers. Both climbed to the top of their industry, and in fact, both ultimately used the Internet to get big. But somehow Bieber “made it” in one-fifteenth of the time. How did he climb so much faster than the guy Rolling Stone calls the funniest man in America—and what does this have to do with Jimmy Fallon? The answer begins with a story from Homer’s Odyssey. When the Greek adventurer Odysseus embarked for war with Troy, he entrusted his son, Telemachus, to the care of a wise old friend named Mentor. Mentor raised and coached Telemachus in his father’s absence. But it was really the goddess Athena disguised as Mentor who counseled the young man through various important situations. Through Athena’s training and wisdom, Telemachus soon became a great hero. “Mentor” helped Telemachus shorten his ladder of success. The simple answer to the Bieber question is that the young singer shot to the top of pop with the help of two music industry mentors. And not just any run-of-the-mill coach, but R& B giant Usher Raymond and rising-star manager Scooter Braun. They reached from the top of the ladder where they were and pulled Bieber up, where his talent could be recognized by a wide audience. They helped him polish his performing skills, and in four years Bieber had sold 15 million records and been named by Forbes as the third most powerful celebrity in the world. Without Raymond’s and Braun’s mentorship, Biebs would probably still be playing acoustic guitar back home in Canada. He’d be hustling on his own just like Louis C.K., begging for attention amid a throng of hopeful entertainers. Mentorship is the secret of many of the highest-profile achievers throughout history. Socrates mentored young Plato, who in turn mentored Aristotle. Aristotle mentored a boy named Alexander, who went on to conquer the known world as Alexander the Great. From The Karate Kid to Star Wars to The Matrix, adventure stories often adhere to a template in which a protagonist forsakes humble beginnings and embarks on a great quest. Before the quest heats up, however, he or she receives training from a master: Obi Wan Kenobi. Mr. Miyagi. Mickey Goldmill. Haymitch. Morpheus. Quickly, the hero is ready to face overwhelming challenges. Much more quickly than if he’d gone to light-saber school. The mentor story is so common because it seems to work—especially when the mentor is not just a teacher, but someone who’s traveled the road herself. “A master can help you accelerate things,” explains Jack Canfield, author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series and career coach behind the bestseller The Success Principles. He says that, like C.K., we can spend thousands of hours practicing until we master a skill, or we can convince a world-class practitioner to guide our practice and cut the time to mastery significantly.

I awake with a start, shaking the cobwebs of sleep from my mind. It’s pitch-dark out, the wind howling. It takes a couple seconds to get my bearings, to realize I’m in my parents’ bed, Ryder beside me, on his side, facing me. Our hands are still joined, though our fingers are slack now. “Hey, you,” he says sleepily. “That one was loud, huh?” “What was?” “Thunder. Rattled the windows pretty bad.” “What time is it?” “Middle of the night, I’d say.” I could check my phone, but that would require sitting up and letting go of his hand. Right now, I don’t want to do that. I’m too comfortable. “Have you gotten any sleep at all?” I ask him, my mouth dry and cottony. “I think I drifted off for a little bit. Till…you know…the thunder started up again.” “Oh. Sorry.” “It should calm down some when the eye moves through.” “If there’s still an eye by the time it gets here. The center of circulation usually starts breaking up once it goes inland.” Yeah, all those hours watching the Weather Channel occasionally come in handy. He gives my hand a gentle squeeze. “Wow, maybe you should consider studying meteorology. You know, if the whole film-school thing doesn’t work out for you.” “I could double major,” I shoot back. “I bet you could.” “What are you going to study?” I ask, curious now. “I mean, besides football. You’ve got to major in something, don’t you?” He doesn’t answer right away. I wonder what’s going through his head--why he’s hesitating. “Astrophysics,” he says at last. “Yeah, right.” I roll my eyes. “Fine, if you don’t want to tell me…” “I’m serious. Astrophysics for undergrad. And then maybe…astronomy.” “What, you mean in graduate school?” He just nods. “You’re serious? You’re going to major in something that tough? I mean, most football players major in something like phys ed or underwater basket weaving, don’t they?” “Greg McElroy majored in business marketing,” he says with a shrug, ignoring my jab. “Yeah, but…astrophysics? What’s the point, if you’re just going to play pro football after you graduate anyway?” “Who says I want to play pro football?” he asks, releasing my hand. “Are you kidding me?” I sit up, staring at him in disbelief. He’s the best quarterback in the state of Mississippi. I mean, football is what he does…It’s his life. Why wouldn’t he play pro ball? He rolls over onto his back, staring at the ceiling, his arms folded behind his head. “Right, I’m just some dumb jock.” “Oh, please. Everyone knows you’re the smartest kid in our class. You always have been. I’d give anything for it to come as easily to me as it does to you.” He sits up abruptly, facing me. “You think it’s easy for me? I work my ass off. You have no idea what I’m working toward. Or what I’m up against,” he adds, shaking his head. “Probably not,” I concede. “Anyway, if anyone can major in astrophysics and play SEC ball at the same time, you can. But you might want to lose the attitude.” He drops his head into his hands. “I’m sorry, Jem. It’s just…everyone has all these expectations. My parents, the football coach--” “You think I don’t get that? Trust me. I get it better than just about anyone.” He lets out a sigh. “I guess our families have pretty much planned out our lives for us, haven’t they?” “They think they have, that’s for sure,” I say.

It was marijuana that drew the line between us and them, that bright generational line between the cool and the uncool. My timidity about pot, as I first encountered it in Hawaii, vanished when, a few months later, during my first year of high school, it hit Woodland Hills. We scored our first joints from a friend of Pete's. The quality of the dope was terrible -- Mexican rag weed, people called it -- but the quality of the high was so wondrous, so nerve-end-opening, so cerebral compared to wine's effects, that I don't think we ever cracked another Purex jug. The laughs were harder and finer. And music that had been merely good, the rock and roll soundtrack of our lives, turned into rapture and prophecy. Jimi Hendrix, Dylan, the Doors, Cream, late Beatles, Janis Joplin, the Stones, Paul Butterfield -- the music they were making, with its impact and beauty amplified a hundredfold by dope, became a sacramental rite, simply inexplicable to noninitiates. And the ceremonial aspects of smoking pot -- scoring from the million-strong network of small-time dealers, cleaning "lids," rolling joints, sneaking off to places (hilltops, beaches, empty fields) where it seemed safe to smoke, in tight little outlaw groups of three or four, and then giggling and grooving together -- all of this took on a strong tribal color. There was the "counterculture" out in the greater world, with all its affinities and inspirations, but there were also, more immediately, the realignments in our personal lives. Kids, including girls, who were "straight" became strangers. What the hell was a debutante, anyway? As for adults -- it became increasingly difficult not to buy that awful Yippie line about not trusting anyone over thirty. How could parents, teachers, coaches, possibly understand the ineluctable weirdness of every moment, fully perceived? None of them had been out on Highway 61.

If softball leagues treated players as delicately as teachers do students, there’d be a rule about not striking out. After three strikes, they’d bring out a tee, or maybe the coach would go up there, take the bat out of the kid’s hands, and hit it for him. We’d tell ourselves we were protecting their fragile psyches, when in reality we’d be sending a clear message: You can’t do it, so I’ll do it for you.

Gregg Edell 41 year old father of 3 crazy kids, day job in finance for 18 years, amateur kids lacrosse coach and fledgling workout enthusiast. Currently in New Jersey by way of Dartmouth, always from Maryland.

Consequently the Harney High athletic department decided to focus on another sport, basketball. The first order of business was to build a gymnasium with a basketball court and some portable bleachers. The second order of business was to send a cautious delegation of coaches and teachers into the black neighborhood to recruit some good basketball players. A few old crackers in Harney huffed and swore about having to watch a bunch of skinny spooks tear up and down the court, and about how it wasn't fair to the good Christian white kids, but then it was pointed out that the good Christian white kids were mostly slow and fat and couldn't make a lay-up from a trampoline.

The 8 Basic Headers Work Family & Kids Spouse Health & Fitness Home Money Recreation & Hobbies Prospects for the Future Work The Boss Time Management Compensation Level of interest Co-workers Chances of promotion My Job Description Subordinates Family Relationship with spouse Relationship with children Relationship with extended family Home, chores and responsibilities Recreation & hobbies Money, expenses and allowances Lifestyle and standard of living Future planes and arrangements Spouse Communication type and intensity Level of independence Sharing each other's passions Division of roles and responsibilities Our time together Our planes for our future Decision making Love & Passion Health & Fitness General health Level of fitness Healthy lifestyle Stress factors Self awareness Self improvement Level of expense on health & fitness Planning and preparing for the rest of my life Home Comfort Suitability for needs Location Community and municipal services Proximity and quality of support/activity centers (i.e. school. Medical aid etc) Rent/Mortgage Repair / renovation Emotional atmosphere Money Income from work Passive income Savings and pension funds Monthly expenses Special expenses Ability to take advantage of opportunities / fulfill dreams Financial security / resilience Financial IQ / Understanding / Independent decision making Social, Recreation & Hobbies Free time Friends and social activity Level & quality of social ties Level of spending on S, R&H Culture events (i.e. theater, fairs etc) Space & accessories required Development over time Number of interests Prospect for the future Type of occupation Ratio of work to free time Promotion & Business development (for entrepreneurs) Health & Fitness Relationships Family and Home Financial security Fulfillment of vision / dreams  Creating Lenses with Excel If you wish to use Excel radar diagrams to simulate lenses, follow these steps: Open a new Excel spreadsheet.

School in itself is a microcosm of society. These kids bring a lot of baggage with them, and as teachers with 30 plus kids in your classroom you have to take the time to get to know them, and not just see them as people you have to teach. And if they want to learn they will learn, and if they don’t want too then too bad. But you have to see them as your surrogate children. Charles Chuck Mackey, former vice principal and coach of R. M. Bailey Pacers…

Steve knew just how and when to find them. We headed out early the next morning, before there was wind. The temperature was exactly right at eighty-six degrees Fahrenheit. Steve got a faraway look in his eye, as though he was concentrating or communicating. Then he headed off. Ten minutes later, we were on the trail of a fierce snake. “Would you like to tail one?” Steve asked. “Are you kidding?” I said. “I don’t know how to catch a fierce snake.” Steve had already “tailed” one of the snakes. Gently grabbing the end of its tail, he could hold it at arm’s length and examine it. During this procedure, snakes would often defecate, and we could get some clue about what they’d been eating. Steve would tail a snake, put it in a bag, release it, and keep what remained. “You grab the next one,” Steve said. He spotted a four- or five-foot-long fierce snake. It glistened in the sun like glass, brilliantly shiny and sleek. “It’s warming up now,” Steve said as we approached. “You’re going to have to be quick.” Yes, Terri, I said to myself, please be quick so as not to get struck by the most venomous snake on earth. If you get bitten out here, you’re in a load of trouble. We crept up behind the fierce snake. I got close enough to grab it, but the snake suddenly and violently swung its head around, directly at me, poised and ready to strike. I backed off abruptly. Time and again I approached the snake just as I’d seen Steve do it: Walk up behind the snake as it started to slither away, and grab it by the tail. I knew what to do, but I couldn’t do it. Every time I reached down, the snake would swing around and I would jump a mile. We wandered farther and farther on the trail of the snake. I could see our truck way in the distance. I sweated profusely. I kept thinking the same thought. If I get bitten by this snake, I’m dead. Then I would try to push that thought away. Stop thinking, just grab the snake. Steve wouldn’t ask you to do something that you couldn’t do. But the whole process was becoming ridiculous. “What am I doing wrong?” I wailed. “You are too bloody scared,” Steve said. “Oh,” I said. Then I reached down and picked up the snake. It was magic. Once I had the nice, soft, supple body in my hands, it was as though the snake and I had a connection. Its skin was warm to my touch from sitting in the sun. I suddenly understood exactly how to hold on so it wouldn’t get away, and yet not squeeze it so tightly that it would get angry. The snake naturally kept trying to move off. I let the front part of its body stay on the ground and held the tail up. I felt such triumph--not that I had dominated the snake, but that it had let me pick it up. Steve held out the catch bag, and I carefully dropped the snake in. He tied a knot in the bag. We looked at each other and grinned. Then we both whooped and hollered and jumped in the air. He hugged and kissed me. “I’m proud of you, Terri,” he said. Once again I marveled at Steve’s instincts. He knew that this particular snake would be okay for me to pick up. He never hesitated, he never yelled at me or coached me--until I asked for help. Then he simply told me what to do.

Well,” he was clearly thinking out loud, “probably someone who wants to be at practice. I love gym rats, but not just the kind who want to play one-on-one all day. I like the kids who come early and do extra drills. And watch film even when they don't have to.” He paused before adding, “And who kind of hate to lose.” “Sore losers?” Ben shook his head. “No, not at all. I mean, the kind who come to practice wanting to work as hard as they can to avoid losing. Coaching them is easy.

The best coaches have a growth mindset and know how to motivate, communicate, and inspire their athletes to achieve more than they ever would on their own. They instill a love of the game, a passion for achievement, and model the character and values that they preach to their athletes. They know when a kid needs a hug and when he needs a metaphoric kick in the rear. All high performers can point to various coaches as major contributors in their ultimate success, and most lifelong athletes can point to a coach who taught them to love sport and to be active for life.

Winning coaches demand a quest for excellence rather than short-term successes. But excellence requires patience, and many parents and coaches don’t have the patience to achieve excellence.

It has been proven time and again that a 5:1 ratio of positive to negative comments provides children with the best education and motivation to be successful. The coach that is constantly pointing out the negative, and never providing praise when it has been earned, is dangerous for your child and will lead to their emotional breakdown.

It was clear: if you were wealthy, you were safe. I’d seen how the summer kids seemed braver than me, reckless, and now I knew why. They could dive off anything, because underneath them was an invisible net of parents, doctors, coaches, teachers, money. If they fell, they had Cape Cod Concierge. If we had been rich, Mack would be alive.

That’s one of Traylor’s big mantras right there,” said Kerry Lane. “Do not sit in the coaches’ office. Be with the kids. They need to know that we see them as more than just players on the field.

With laser focus and Herculean stamina, one can hover along a plane of what looks to the outside world like maximum functioning and appear remarkably accomplished. The fear of sinking into the quicksand of grief and terror fuels the velocity. Wake up, plan the day, make lists, check off when you have done something on your list, plan a trip, plan dinner, book the trip, buy stuff for the dinner you have planned, make the dinner, think about breakfast while you are eating dinner, book clients, see more clients, exercise, a lot, volunteer at your kids’ schools, coach their teams, play on your own team. There is no end to the creativity of velocitizing. It is the anti-meditation.

To the patriachists who insist wives submitting to husbands in all things is great for women because in exchange husbands are to love their wives as Jesus loves and sacrificed himself for the church, you're wrong. “I work and put food on the table” isn’t sacrifice. It’s life as an adult. “I put in time as a coach after a hard day’s work” isn’t sacrifice. It’s life as an adult. “I volunteer at church on top of going to work and coaching kids” isn’t sacrifice. It’s life as an adult. If you’re claiming wives submitting to husbands is great for women because husbands are called to sacrifice themselves, tell me what you’ve done. What sacrifices? Where? How frequent? If you’re a patriarchist but not sacrificing like this, then don’t bring up submission. Ever.

Every coach and teacher is going to have some kids that don’t buy into the message.” Big Jim said. “It’s sad, but it’s part of the job. You can’t let the bad apples spoil the bunch.

Your importance is dwarfed by their friends. Romantic interests. Cool professors and great coaches. A spouse, someday, and kids of their own, and you . . . you got left behind at a certain exit on the highway of their life, and all you can do is look down the road after them and remember when you were so needed, so loved, so sure of your place in the world, because you were Mommy, and that was everything.