Confession of an obsessive, over-the-top sports parent


It started off innocently because it almost always does. Rarely do parents go into it thinking they will ride their kids like a horse, scream loud enough to splinter crystal and obsess as if they were hypnotized by their child’s every movement.

“They needed to run around and blow off steam,” Larsen said of her two sons, Chris and Jacob. “My boys had a lot of energy. They were bouncing off walls and it wasn’t a big apartment in Sebastopol. It was self-preservation really.”

So when Chris was 7 and Jacob 6, Larsen enrolled them in a judo class. Three times a week, 5 bucks a month, all that moving around, nirvana had been reached. The kids were having fun. Mom was mellow and that’s the way it stayed. For a couple years. And then things changed, subtly, as she now reflects on it.

“I became so attached to my kids’ results,” said Larsen, now living in Santa Rosa with her husband of 24 years, Richard. “It became a religion to me after a while. I was addicted.”

It surprises to her to this day that she responded that way. She never competed in sports, although she did meet Richard in badminton class when they both went to Analy High.

“I couldn’t handle the pressure, that’s why I didn’t play,” said Michelle, 43. “I didn’t want to lose.”

So it was easier to ride your kids than yourself?

Larsen paused and almost stuttered her response: “That’s right.”

The most nagging, irritating and wish-I-could-take-it-back memory for Larsen was The Video. When Jacob was in first grade at Parkside in Sebastopol, he was asked to bring to school a show-and-tell story. Larsen knew exactly what story. It was a video of her filming Jacob competing in a judo tournament.

Shown on a classroom television, there was Jacob on the mat. That was easy to see. What was even easier to hear, however, was Larsen screaming at her son as he was competing.

“Get UP! Get UP! Why aren’t you moving? Why are you doing this? Why aren’t you doing that? Come on! Come ON!” That’s how Larsen remembers it. She also remembers the look on the face of Jacob’s teacher.

“She looked back at me in absolute horror,” Larsen said. “She was embarrassed. And this was in front of the entire class and Jacob had to sit through it.”

And mom?

“Oh, I thought then, I got a little involved there and then I just let it go,” she said Larsen, a warehouse manager for a greeting card company. “It gave me validation as a mom. I thought that part of being a good mom was taking it to the next level. These are my kids. They are good. They should win all the time. I wanted to be recognized as a parent whose kids have good judo. If they won, it meant I was a successful parent. If they lost, it meant I was a failure.

“I realize now it wasn’t about them. It was about me.”

Does she wish she could erase that video, erase that moment?

“All the time,” Larsen said. “I look at it now and I am horrified. All you can hear is me screaming at Jake.”

At that sentence, Larsen sank a bit into her seat at a Santa Rosa restaurant.

This tough for her, looking at the past like this, as it would be for anyone, self-inspection being the most mature and yet most difficult of all adult activities.

“Chris was at a Healdsburg skate park,” Larsen said. “Thirteen at the time. I have never been on a skateboard. Never wanted to. And yet I am yelling at him to bend his knees and so many other things. Well, there was a man at the park and he finally asked me to stop screaming. ‘Can’t you just leave your son alone?’ he said to me. Eventually he got up and left, he couldn’t take it.”

At 15 Chris quit judo. It became a tipping point in her life. Larsen was shocked.

“I was disappointed for him because he was so good,” she said.

About 18 months later, after much soul-searching, Larsen came to the conclusion she had driven her son out of the sport.

“I burnt him out,” she said.

It was then, when Chris was a senior at Maria Carrillo and Jacob a junior, that she apologized to her two sons.

She said she told her son, “Chris, I am really sorry. I wish I would have done it differently.”

Tears welled up in her eyes during that last sentence.

How do Chris, now 22, and Jacob, 21, feel about their mom’s attention to them as kids?

Both said they didn’t feel as persecuted as she remembers it.

“Oh, I do wish she could have done it (apology) a little sooner,” Jacob said.

“I think she felt that apology was something she really needed to do,” said Chris, who wrestled his junior and senior years at Carrillo. “It was good for her.”

Chris said he quit judo not because of his mom but because of the politics involved in the sport.

“They wanted to help you as long as you won,” Chris said.

When told of her sons’ comments, Larsen admitted she is her own worst critic.

“On the other hand, I know what I said. I heard my voice on that video. I remember that look of horror on Jacob’s teacher, being told by that guy to leave my son alone. I know what my voice was like when they were competing and I remember what I said to them after they competed.

“My sons, they thought I was the example of how a parent should treat their athletic children. If a parent wasn’t screaming at their kids, they thought those parents didn’t care. They didn’t know any different. I was their example.

“I remember all that stuff even if they don’t. Kids see things differently than adults, to the point that if it wasn’t that bad, then my kids are protecting themselves as much as they are protecting me. I pushed them harder than what was good for them. I was a control freak. My husband is a lovely man but around our house, what momma wants, momma gets. Jacob, having to sit through that stuff, of a screaming, hysterical mom ...” She went quiet for a moment.

What Larsen ended up getting, as she sees it, is burning out one son from the pressure she applied while hardening the other son into a competitor.

Chris doesn’t play sports. He works for UPS. Jacob, on the other hand, is ranked first nationally by the U.S. Judo Federation in the 90-kilo class. Living in Boulder, Colo., training at the U.S. Olympic Center in Colorado Springs, Jacob has his sights on making the 2012 U.S. Olympic team.

“I have two sides of the coin of pressure,” Larsen said.

Why, considering her kids are now adults, is she coming forth with her story? It’s not as if the telling of it came with grins and chuckles.

During the three hours in which she spoke of her experience, Larsen worked hard through some sentences, some thoughts, some words carrying a heavy weight. The pain was clearly there.

The memories all too fresh, however distant.

“It’s like when you go to an optometrist,” she said. “The doctor puts the lens in front of your eyes and asks, ‘Is this clearer ... or is this clearer? How about this ... or this?’ It’s getting clearer. But it’s a process. It’s taking time. It’s taking time to forgive myself.”

That’s why she is coming forth, to make a difference.

“I have a karmic debt to repay,” she said. “If there is just one parent out there who reads this and says to themselves, ‘Oh, I can relate to that. Maybe it’s time to rethink how I am treating my kids in sports,’ then this will have been worth it. It’s learning that excellence is not perfection. Jacob wrestled two years at Maria Carrillo and his wrestling coach, Tim Bruce, taught me about ‘personal best’. I never knew what that was.

“We should let our kids be kids. We should listen to our kids, and it’s not just their words. It’s noticing their body language. It’s noticing if they procrastinate getting ready for a season or a game. Their lips may be saying yes but their body language may be saying no. Give your kid a chance to choose without it being a bad thing. A lot of kids will kill themselves for their parents’ approval.

“Take them just as they are. Right now. That they are enough. Right now. As they are.”

Easy to say. Easy to understand. Not so easy to do.

“What’s that saying?” she asked. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions?”

And with that Michelle Larsen sighed her last sigh.

For more on North Bay high school sports go to Bob Padecky’s blog at padecky@pressdemocrat.com. You can reach Staff Columnist Bob Padecky at 521-5490 or bob.padecky@pressdemocrat.com.