Somebody Has to Be the Realist

Somebody has to be the realist. I volunteered.

In our house the arrangement is well established, and neither of us agreed to it out loud. One of us tells the kids they could go pro. And I say things like "well, let's see how the season goes," and "you know how few people actually make it," and "let's get through this year first."

I have always thought of that as the responsible half of the job.

I've started to wonder whether it's just the same move again, wearing a better coat.

The Same Reflex

Last time I wrote about catching myself deflecting a compliment on my daughter's behalf. Somebody said she was good, and I said she'd had a lot of coaching.

This is that. It doesn't look like it, because "being realistic" doesn't sound like subtraction. It sounds like parenting.

But the shape is identical. Somebody hands my kid something enormous — usually themselves — and I take it off them and set it down somewhere it can't do any damage.

So Let's Do the Math

What does it actually cost to let a nine-year-old believe he is going to play professionally?

Materially: nothing. It is free. It requires no equipment, no entry fee and no hotel. It takes about four seconds at dinner.

The cost I'm afraid of isn't now, it's later. Somewhere in the back of my head is the idea that if I manage the expectation down in small instalments across ten years, the fall will be shorter when it comes. I am pre-paying his disappointment for him, a little at a time.

Except I don't believe that's how it works. I have never met anybody who arrived at a hard ending and felt grateful they'd been talked out of hoping.

You cannot hedge a dream. You can only spend the joy early.

The disappointment arrives at full price either way — and I will have spent the ten years in between as the one who didn't believe him.

The Argument Against Me

There is a real thing on the other side and I don't want to pretend otherwise.

There is a version of this that damages a kid. The one who won't do the homework because he's going pro. The one who refuses a second sport. The one who has staked an entire identity on an outcome with a rounding-error probability, so that when it ends there is nobody underneath.

That is a genuine risk, and managing it is an adult's job.

But here is the distinction I keep missing in the moment:

The dream costs nothing. The plan needs adults.

He can announce at dinner that he's going to the majors and still be made to do his homework. Those two things have never once been in conflict. I have been treating a nine-year-old's fantasy as though it were a business proposal requiring my sign-off, when the only thing being asked of me was to be pleased.

The Invoice I Hadn't Counted

And here is the price I actually missed, which is the one that worries me.

If I am always the one who brings it back to reality, then eventually they learn who to tell.

They will take the enormous thing to the parent who lights up, and they will bring me the logistics. That is a perfectly functional arrangement. It will feel fine for years.

And then one day the enormous thing will be a real one — a job, a person, a decision that can't be undone — and the habit will already be set, and I will find out about it after it has been decided.

I priced the dream in disappointment. The actual invoice was addressed to me.

Why It's Allowed

There's one more thing, and it took me a while to see it.

I spend a lot of time here arguing that girls should be allowed to want things out loud. That the reflex to shrink an ambition down to a comfortable size is learned, and that we are the ones who teach it.

A kid saying "I'm going pro" is not a forecast. It is not a claim about probability, and it does not require fact-checking.

It's a sentence that means: I am allowed to want something enormous.

And every time I answer it with "well, let's see," I am doing the exact thing I have spent a year telling other people not to do.

What I'm Trying

I am not going to start telling them they'll make it. I don't think lying is the answer, and I'm not built for it anyway.

But I've been working on a different first sentence.

Not "let's see how the season goes."

"What would that be like?"

It costs nothing. It promises nothing. It is not a forecast and it is not a lie.

And it keeps me on the list of people they tell.