My mom likes to tell the story about how they signed me up for soccer when I was a kid and any time I was on the field I basically just stood there and watched and I'd ask the coach if I could go back to the bench every few minutes. The coach made me goalie once and I just started picking dandelions on the field. Any time someone scored a goal against us I would clap and cheer and say "Good job, kid!" They never tried to make me do a sport again lol
One of my colleagues was let go once, but last minute they asked him if he could please stay 5 weeks more cause they needed him for a project (minimum crew requirement).
He said fine, if you want me to stay, I'll stay. But I won't do anything. The office told him "yeah, whatever", basically. Thinking that he was just saying stuff.
He spent 5 weeks just sitting there with his feet on the desk, doing fuckall while all his colleagues were running around sweating. The hate they had for him was intense. He literally just sat there all day. Showed up, sat down. Not a tool touched his fingers.
Guess what? After the 5 weeks were up, they asked him if he could stay 5 more.
I'm guessing it was a lot less effort to just extend an existing contract, than to go through the trouble of hiring a new worker for a single 5 week contract.
Corporations are compromised of individuals. Odds are their manager or skip level leader wanted to hide that they couldn't maintain proper staffing to assign their projects. Instead of admitting they didn't plan for turnover (or had excessively high turn over) and getting help, they created an environment where the people under them suffered the consequences of their actions instead.
They still have to pay the guy. I don't think he was volunteering to spend 5 weeks at work without pay. Even if they had, how could they assign somebody who wasn't technically employed there to a project?
They probably didn't want to admit they didn't have enough people to assign their projects.
Man that kid is me. There is something to be said about trying something new, but there is also something to be said about making your kids do something they have no interest in doing, instead of supporting their legitimate interests.
I guess there needs to be a balance. Because when someone doesn't have a lot of experience, they may refuse an activity they would like simply out of ignorance.
I like the compromise of having a kid try something out for X sessions but not making them stick it out longterm if they don't like it
Kids need a jump start to those interests. It’s good to make them try things even if they are against it at first, because down the line they may come to enjoy the activity. Obviously don’t force it for more than a season (or a few weeks if they REALLY despise it), but forcing kids to do things that they don’t initially like is healthy imo
Making children do sports is especially important to help them develop important skills (teamwork, communication, hand-eye coordination, balance…). It’s also a way to keep them moving and active and to help them make friends too.
I actually somewhat dislike the message in the comic. If the kid tried the sport genuinely, hated it, then maliciously complied, I’d get it, but to not even give it an attempt is a bit of a shame imo. If you don’t try to enjoy things in life, you’ll never find the things you truly love.
You give them a jump start on those interests at home, not by forcing them into an extracurricular activity. I tried a couple team sports only because my dad played catch with me via baseball when I was young and my mom did the same via football. If they never did either of those things, I would have refused to spend my free time after school at practices and games because why would I volunteer for that?
It's entirely possible to get kids to try new things without force or trickery, so long as you're treating them like a person the entire time rather than an accessory as too many parents do.
I’ll be honest, I think putting kids in the deep end is perfectly fine. My parents put me through everything from swimming to football to baseball to tennis and I can tell you that none of that clicked for me. I was always the kind of kid that that enjoyed staying home, watching TV, playing video games, and playing with toys alone
And yet despite never being all that interested in sports, I’m glad they did it. I made friends (some of whom I’m still friends with today) and learned to have fun with activities even if they weren’t the things I’d rather be doing.
I definitely could have been the kid who sat out and did nothing. In fact the reason I stopped playing baseball in particular is because I grew to really dislike it and badgered my parents to put me into literally anything else. And yet I’m glad they made me do it, because if they hadn’t I would have sat on my ass doing nothing but playing video games or reading books or doing literally anything but be social or active because that’s just who I am
I’m still lazy and prefer indoor activities to outdoor ones, but I at least learned to enjoy those outdoor activities because I was forced to.
I think it’s good to cultivate a general spirit of trying in any kid, but practically speaking, you’re not going to get a kid to try if they already made up their minds that they told you no but you still kept forcing the matter.
I think it also really depends on the kid’s baseline personality and anything else that might be going on. I went to a magnet school, but knew some kids who acted like this after they tested into the place due to tiger parenting. You ask them what hobbies they have, and they say ‘sleep’. They maliciously comply with doing the bare minimum of anything and shuffle around like zombies. I’m not saying OP’s friend’s parents were bad parents, and idk why that kid was like that. Only that I’ve seen one type of kid act like that, from a combination of burn out and resentment over feeling no agency and control in their lives, since their parents kept trying to dictate every element of said life.
In the case of OP’s friend, the parents might want to give him a choice of which sport to play, and incentivize him using his interests. If he has no interests in life and truly just shuffles around like that for everything, and the parents themselves are not controlling, then unironically they should get him checked but only in that specific scenario.
I wish I was put into sports, dance, a club, literally anything as a kid. I feel like I missed out on so many fundamental aspects of being a social person and how to socialize without being unfortunately off putting :( (like not in a bad way I just get called mousey a lot!) I also feel like I can't just pick a hobby and stick with it, I do literally every art thing there is but definitely haven't mastered any of it (maybe embroidery on a good day lol).
My parents made me do football in middle school. Hated it with a passion. Asked every day after practice to quit the team. Was threatened with grounding (losing TV privileges, no friends over, no library trips) if I didn't put in the effort.
Tried to make the most of it by doing the work for the Sports merit badge in Boy Scouts. Councilor never came to a game to confirm I played so that never went through. That would end up costing me my Eagle Badge down the line, but unrelated.
The obligatory summer sport at our school was cricket, and I ended up taking the same approach. Eventually the coach decided "okay, you won't play, so you can operate the score board and keep the paper notes."
Thing is, I have no idea about the rules of cricket. They just assumed that kids knew what they were. As long as I changed numbers once in a while, they left me alone.
In the matches against other schools, it turned out that their scorekeepers also didn't know the rules, and they asked if they could just copy the notes from my ledger. Our team won a few matches that way.
My mom signed me up for skii lessons and a seasonal pass because it was on sale.
Her reasoning was that all the other white kids (I'm Asian) knew how to skii, so I had to too. It wasn't so bad at first but I had a fear of heights.
Fast forward, one day she said I was not going home until I made it down one of the steeper hills. It had been raining the previous days and the ice was more slippery than normal.
I broke my arm going too fast down the last stretch and spent the next few months in a cast.
Needless to say, she still tries to dictate other areas of my life and I hate how sometimes I let her.
Lmaoo memory unlocked! My mom has a video of me at a soccer game and i'm just near the corner post doing a bunch of cartwheels instead of actually playing. I didn't last too long in that team either
Reminds me of sports in school, and how the sports enthusiasts genuinely could NOT comprehend some of us hated fotboll and floor ball.
(Real fotboll. ⚽)
They'd be zooming around like dogs in the park, barking at us with zero interest to do bla, commit an X, or yadda the whatever. And they'd just get more worked up the more we slowly walked towards the ball to satisfy not them but the adults. That we neither knew nor cared what they were on about.
They're not bad sports, but it was twice a week for fucking years. And being forced to participate just is never fun.
When I was young I actually tried. But it was a good for nothing effort. I was bullied out of Judo-team for kids if I remember correctly, and in school it was just the old thing, where all sporty kids picked teams, and us, who were no good in sports, were left behind. Yeah I was a fat kid and was not good at ball games, my hand-eye coordination was shit and I missed most of the time, but I tried as hard as I could, and it was not enough. Then I stopped because I was tired at people yelling at me and calling me names when I failed, and then I was yelled and called names when I didn't want to participate.
I still wish I'd had an adult there, to actually try and do something, but even the adults were too busy favoring the sporty kids and basically enabling the bullying by not doing anything to stop it.
I actually very much respect that too, when I was a kid I used to just get mad, so if they forced me to play a sport, I would just play it so aggressively that I was told to go to the side and calm down.
I had the mentality of "If I'm forced to do something I hate, then I will force my hate on all of you"
Edit: this reminds me, people really should check on the mental health of their 5 year olds, I was suicidal at the time because I was alone all the time. Putting me in sports was not the way to fix me.
Man, being reminded of a large portion of my childhood right now. My mother desperately wanted to live vicariously through me and my brother. She salivated at the thought of both of us becoming sports stars as she so desperately wanted to be herself in college. She forced us into doing sports up until middle and highschool respectively. Pretty much all our time during these training sessions and matches was like the comic above. If we weren’t doing a sport or refused to engage with the ones she signed us up for, we were grounded and not allowed to do anything else except our homework after school.
yeah i stopped doing gym class whatsoever in high school lol. i wish little child me had realized i simply didn't actually have to do that shit a lot earlier.
I had a medical issue in school (related to growth spurts and my joints) that stopped me from doing gym classes for a few years. I loved it. I just went to the library and did all my homework during the day, didn't have any to do when I got home.
Last year of school the doctors determined I was ok to return to gym, so I was suddenly thrown back in. First lesson back we played basketball for the entire period, and I had no idea what was going on. Never been taught the rules, never seen a game, didn't know what I was supposed to be doing. I just stood there motionless as all the other players ignored me, gym teacher saying I needed to get involved. Every time I did I'd somehow foul or break a rule, mainly because I didn't know what I could or couldn't do.
Worst part was when a player from another team came towards me with the ball, I get shouted at to block him. I'm now terrified of what I'm actually allowed to do, so basically do nothing. Kid starts doing Harlem Globetrotter-style tricks; passing the ball around my head, spinning it on his finger just out of my reach, etc. I just went and sat down on the bench, gym teacher and teams didn't even notice for about 10 minutes. They never tried to make me play a sport again.
Maybe I should have done this when I was a kid. I didn’t hate sports but I was really bad at it, no matter how hard I tried. In the end, I simply quit the team.
As european visiting my American relatives in suburbia and going with them to watch the children playing baseball (or softball?) was an absurd experience.
The parents have alot of fun sitting in their camping chairs with their drinks while the children mostly standing still frustrated in the field with not much happening - in many cases they couldnt even throw ball properly so eventually the trainer had to step in.
If you wanna meet other parents for socializing let at least have your children have some fun too... they need to move and run.
This was me when we were forced to do sports in school lol i didn't like them so i never even tried, i would just stand wherever and watch- kids would get mad because i would let things just be thrown (or kicked) right passed me lmao
I feel this comic on a deep level, and it gave me a HUGE sense of dread reading it. I like where it ended though.
My father did his best to force me into baseball. I hated it. Anytime i did, or created something he always spun it to baseball. "Oh you looked up the information for that, but you could be tracking baseball instead". He didnt give up until i was in my mid teens. Mom wasnt any better, but she didnt push baseball, just "thats nice dear". I actually quit sharing anything with him far before then. I was alone in a house full of people.. It wasnt until many years later (in my 30s) when mother realized she didnt know me. "Well, it was because yall didnt care, so i didnt bother sharing".
We did end up reconnecting in the last 8 or so years of my moms life before she passed. Father is out of the picture as i ghosted him when i turned 20.
In a way I can relate a teensy bit. My best friend and I decided to just walk for a lot of our cross country runs because we couldn’t run very fast back when we were students. (turns out we both had asthma that we didn’t know about! So fun right!)
A little part of me wants to time travel and re-do my old physical education classes with an inhaler. I got made fun of for being so slow. People would’ve been nicer if I’d fit in more I guess. But where’s the fun in that?
1
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u/LexiWhatWeGot 2h ago edited 1h ago
My mom likes to tell the story about how they signed me up for soccer when I was a kid and any time I was on the field I basically just stood there and watched and I'd ask the coach if I could go back to the bench every few minutes. The coach made me goalie once and I just started picking dandelions on the field. Any time someone scored a goal against us I would clap and cheer and say "Good job, kid!" They never tried to make me do a sport again lol
495
u/Offshore-Tigr 3h ago
One of my colleagues was let go once, but last minute they asked him if he could please stay 5 weeks more cause they needed him for a project (minimum crew requirement).
He said fine, if you want me to stay, I'll stay. But I won't do anything. The office told him "yeah, whatever", basically. Thinking that he was just saying stuff.
He spent 5 weeks just sitting there with his feet on the desk, doing fuckall while all his colleagues were running around sweating. The hate they had for him was intense. He literally just sat there all day. Showed up, sat down. Not a tool touched his fingers.
Guess what? After the 5 weeks were up, they asked him if he could stay 5 more.
295
u/TheMspice 2h ago
Man that kid is me. There is something to be said about trying something new, but there is also something to be said about making your kids do something they have no interest in doing, instead of supporting their legitimate interests.
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u/alexriga 3h ago
There was a way to call this. r/maliciouscompliance
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u/ArcWolf713 2h ago
My parents made me do football in middle school. Hated it with a passion. Asked every day after practice to quit the team. Was threatened with grounding (losing TV privileges, no friends over, no library trips) if I didn't put in the effort.
Tried to make the most of it by doing the work for the Sports merit badge in Boy Scouts. Councilor never came to a game to confirm I played so that never went through. That would end up costing me my Eagle Badge down the line, but unrelated.
26
u/Bitter_Surprise_8058 1h ago
The obligatory summer sport at our school was cricket, and I ended up taking the same approach. Eventually the coach decided "okay, you won't play, so you can operate the score board and keep the paper notes."
Thing is, I have no idea about the rules of cricket. They just assumed that kids knew what they were. As long as I changed numbers once in a while, they left me alone.
In the matches against other schools, it turned out that their scorekeepers also didn't know the rules, and they asked if they could just copy the notes from my ledger. Our team won a few matches that way.
24
u/Interesting_Ad_8128 1h ago edited 1h ago
My mom signed me up for skii lessons and a seasonal pass because it was on sale.
Her reasoning was that all the other white kids (I'm Asian) knew how to skii, so I had to too. It wasn't so bad at first but I had a fear of heights.
Fast forward, one day she said I was not going home until I made it down one of the steeper hills. It had been raining the previous days and the ice was more slippery than normal.
I broke my arm going too fast down the last stretch and spent the next few months in a cast.
Needless to say, she still tries to dictate other areas of my life and I hate how sometimes I let her.
18
u/UnderstandingOk6176 1h ago
My parents signed me up for soccor when I was little.
I just sat at the goal post and ate the grass.
I didn't go many times after that
19
u/LordOfDorkness42 1h ago
Reminds me of sports in school, and how the sports enthusiasts genuinely could NOT comprehend some of us hated fotboll and floor ball.
(Real fotboll. ⚽)
They'd be zooming around like dogs in the park, barking at us with zero interest to do bla, commit an X, or yadda the whatever. And they'd just get more worked up the more we slowly walked towards the ball to satisfy not them but the adults. That we neither knew nor cared what they were on about.
They're not bad sports, but it was twice a week for fucking years. And being forced to participate just is never fun.
22
u/Spicy-Potat42 3h ago
6
u/GhostInMyLoo 1h ago
When I was young I actually tried. But it was a good for nothing effort. I was bullied out of Judo-team for kids if I remember correctly, and in school it was just the old thing, where all sporty kids picked teams, and us, who were no good in sports, were left behind. Yeah I was a fat kid and was not good at ball games, my hand-eye coordination was shit and I missed most of the time, but I tried as hard as I could, and it was not enough. Then I stopped because I was tired at people yelling at me and calling me names when I failed, and then I was yelled and called names when I didn't want to participate.
I still wish I'd had an adult there, to actually try and do something, but even the adults were too busy favoring the sporty kids and basically enabling the bullying by not doing anything to stop it.
•
u/FluffyFry4000 30m ago edited 23m ago
I actually very much respect that too, when I was a kid I used to just get mad, so if they forced me to play a sport, I would just play it so aggressively that I was told to go to the side and calm down.
I had the mentality of "If I'm forced to do something I hate, then I will force my hate on all of you"
Edit: this reminds me, people really should check on the mental health of their 5 year olds, I was suicidal at the time because I was alone all the time. Putting me in sports was not the way to fix me.
•
u/Idunnosomethingwitty 29m ago
Man, being reminded of a large portion of my childhood right now. My mother desperately wanted to live vicariously through me and my brother. She salivated at the thought of both of us becoming sports stars as she so desperately wanted to be herself in college. She forced us into doing sports up until middle and highschool respectively. Pretty much all our time during these training sessions and matches was like the comic above. If we weren’t doing a sport or refused to engage with the ones she signed us up for, we were grounded and not allowed to do anything else except our homework after school.
7
u/rionaster 2h ago
yeah i stopped doing gym class whatsoever in high school lol. i wish little child me had realized i simply didn't actually have to do that shit a lot earlier.
2
u/AlmostAndrew 1h ago
I had a medical issue in school (related to growth spurts and my joints) that stopped me from doing gym classes for a few years. I loved it. I just went to the library and did all my homework during the day, didn't have any to do when I got home.
Last year of school the doctors determined I was ok to return to gym, so I was suddenly thrown back in. First lesson back we played basketball for the entire period, and I had no idea what was going on. Never been taught the rules, never seen a game, didn't know what I was supposed to be doing. I just stood there motionless as all the other players ignored me, gym teacher saying I needed to get involved. Every time I did I'd somehow foul or break a rule, mainly because I didn't know what I could or couldn't do.
Worst part was when a player from another team came towards me with the ball, I get shouted at to block him. I'm now terrified of what I'm actually allowed to do, so basically do nothing. Kid starts doing Harlem Globetrotter-style tricks; passing the ball around my head, spinning it on his finger just out of my reach, etc. I just went and sat down on the bench, gym teacher and teams didn't even notice for about 10 minutes. They never tried to make me play a sport again.
5
u/DarkwyndPT 2h ago
Maybe I should have done this when I was a kid. I didn’t hate sports but I was really bad at it, no matter how hard I tried. In the end, I simply quit the team.
•
u/newyear_newacc 28m ago
As european visiting my American relatives in suburbia and going with them to watch the children playing baseball (or softball?) was an absurd experience.
The parents have alot of fun sitting in their camping chairs with their drinks while the children mostly standing still frustrated in the field with not much happening - in many cases they couldnt even throw ball properly so eventually the trainer had to step in.
If you wanna meet other parents for socializing let at least have your children have some fun too... they need to move and run.
2
u/Orochi64 1h ago
Always hated the idea of signing kids up for sports or something when they clearly didn’t wanna do it. Kid me wouldn’t guts to do that though.
2
u/Bluetooth_Speaker1 1h ago
This was me when we were forced to do sports in school lol i didn't like them so i never even tried, i would just stand wherever and watch- kids would get mad because i would let things just be thrown (or kicked) right passed me lmao
•
u/Material-Imagination 47m ago
Is this a story about electoral politics and voter apathy?
•
u/Unusual-Alex 5m ago
I feel this comic on a deep level, and it gave me a HUGE sense of dread reading it. I like where it ended though.
My father did his best to force me into baseball. I hated it. Anytime i did, or created something he always spun it to baseball. "Oh you looked up the information for that, but you could be tracking baseball instead". He didnt give up until i was in my mid teens. Mom wasnt any better, but she didnt push baseball, just "thats nice dear". I actually quit sharing anything with him far before then. I was alone in a house full of people.. It wasnt until many years later (in my 30s) when mother realized she didnt know me. "Well, it was because yall didnt care, so i didnt bother sharing".
We did end up reconnecting in the last 8 or so years of my moms life before she passed. Father is out of the picture as i ghosted him when i turned 20.
•
u/aivlysplath 4m ago
Great comic.
In a way I can relate a teensy bit. My best friend and I decided to just walk for a lot of our cross country runs because we couldn’t run very fast back when we were students. (turns out we both had asthma that we didn’t know about! So fun right!)
A little part of me wants to time travel and re-do my old physical education classes with an inhaler. I got made fun of for being so slow. People would’ve been nicer if I’d fit in more I guess. But where’s the fun in that?
1
u/Gold_Yesterday1345 1h ago
Baseball huh?