26 Stop Living VICARIOUSLY Through Your Kids (You're Creating a Failure Complex)

Are you living your missed dreams through your children?

In this essential episode, Coach Rodo confronts parents who live "vicariously" through their kids' sports careers, especially as the high school basketball season begins. Rodo argues that this behavior is not just about love; it’s about a parent’s own need for success, which often leads to poor coaching advice and emotional pressure.

The consequence? Rodo explains how this parental drive can make a child feel like a **failure**—not to society, but to their parents—because they didn't fulfill the parent's unachieved dreams.

Learn to step back, become the narrator, not the main character, and stop dimming your child's success. Your job is to help them avoid *missteps*, not to force them into *your* footsteps.

#LivingVicariously #SportsParents #ParentingMistakes #CoachRodo #WinningRegardless #YouthSports #AthleteFailure #ParentingAdvice #HighSchoolSports #Mindset

(01:25) - What is Living Vicariously? Why parents project their unfulfilled dreams.
(02:20) - Love vs. Self-Love: When a child’s success becomes the parent’s success.
(03:00) - The Rodo Standard: "I f***ing hope so!" (Why your kid should be better than you).
(04:05) - Your Dream, Not Theirs: The danger of parents calling the coach about playing time.
(05:15) - The Failure Complex: How parents create a feeling of lifelong failure in their kids.
(06:20) - Wrong Advice: Telling a kid to run the play *your* way from the sidelines.
(08:35) - College Recruitment: Why parent behavior is often the #3 reason a kid isn't recruited.
(10:00) - Be the Narrator: How to truly help your child without being the "dimmer."
(11:05) - It’s Their Turn: Why your glory days are over.

Transcript

0:00

That's why it's called living vicariously through your children. I failed because this isn't what my father or my mother pushed me to do. This isn't what they wanted me to do. So I'm a failure to them. That's what you create in their mind when you live through them. Welcome to another episode of Coach Rodo's podcast, Winning Regardless. uh I wanna do this one on, we as parents living vicariously through our children. With high school basketball season starting, there's a lot of great, great basketball players, athletes, football, let's just go through any sport. And most of the times it's because they had a parent or somebody in their family that was good and everybody in the neighborhood would say something like, he could have went pro or da da da da da da. And so what ends up happening if we have as we have kids with hearing that about ourselves, we believe that our kid is on that projection. And so what we tend to do is we tend to live vicariously through them. oh You know, I was just talking to my producer about it. You know how parents follow their kids everywhere. Coach, be a coach on everything. And you know a lot of times we give wrong advice and wrong, you know, uh coaching. uh intelligence. oh Some might say it's out of love, and it is out of love. It's because we love our kids so much, but some of it is because we love ourselves so much. And we believe that this is my ultimate success. He gets success or she gets success. That's my success and not the child's success. That's living vicariously through your child. As a parent, you should always want the best for your child. You should always want your kid to do better. I loved when people would talk about my boys. They would say, like my oldest son, Alex, Alex is smarter than you. My youngest son, Devin, Devin is a better basketball player than you. The thing that I would say is I f*cking hope so. Because I hope that I was not the bar setter. for my children. I hope that just like we hope the world gets better, my children get better and that's better than me. When we live through our kids, we want their successes to be our successes, but we want their successes to be the successes that we want them to have. The ones that we didn't have when we were kids. And so therefore, We push things on them that they necessarily might not have done or might not have wanted to do. oh You know, when you're upset as a parent, you might email the coach or, you know, you might try to call the coach. Why ain't my son playing? That's you doing that. That's you wanting to live through your child or through your son or daughter. That's not them going up to the coach on their own and figuring it out. That's you pushing them along because it's your dream. can't do that. You know, it it hurts the kid way more than you would ever know because you setting them up for failure. And the thing about it is it's not failure in society. They might go on and have a great job. They might go on and have a beautiful wife, beautiful husband, beautiful children, house, all of that, but they will always feel like a failure because they didn't make it the way that you want it. That's why it's called living vicariously through your children. I failed because this isn't what my father or my mother pushed me to do. This isn't what they wanted me to do. So I'm a failure to them. That's what you create in their mind when you live through them. And you know the parents that do it's the parents that's walking up and down a sideline yelling at the coaches and yelling at the kids at the same, their kid at the same time telling the kid, hey, hey, hit them with the spin this way and then hit this, I don't care what they told you, hit them this way, I know what I'm talking about because I've done it. Well, it's not about you doing it no more. So again, you're trying to live through your child. You know, if you tell them stuff like, don't touch that stove because it's hot, because I've done it. That's the type of stuff that you should be telling your child. Not when you've turned your child over to someone else to coach. don't join every coaching staff that your kid plays sport in. Because then you can really tell how vicariously you live through your child when the only thing that you talk to them about is the sport that you and him are participating in with each other, or you and her are participating in with each other. You don't even talk about school stuff no more. You don't even talk about what your grades anymore. You don't even talk about, Let's go somewhere that has absolutely nothing about to do with sports. Let's go downtown Chicago. Let's just go walk around. Let's go to Navy Pier. You don't even talk about that stuff no more. Why? Because now you're coaching your son something that you've always wanted to do and you're on the staff. And as a parent, this is what I used to be when I was that age and I want him to be that and I'm going to make him or her be that. I'm gonna turn them into what I want to turn them into. And then you tend to do that as they get older and older and older. And before you know it, high school sports take over. And if some are fortunate enough, they go to college. And when you get to college, coaches don't want to hear that sh*t. They don't care if your parent played or what your parent taught you. Hell, you probably won't even get recruited if that's the case. Because parents are usually the number two or three So first to go grades, second to go girls, and then to go your parents of not being recruited. That's in my opinion, because that's what I've seen people not get recruited off of. We gotta let the kids be the kids. uh You've already played your sports. You're living your life now. Don't try to relive your life through the eyes of your child, through the physical ability of your child, through the advantages of your child. The advantages come from you understanding at a young age, the missteps you may have made, that you can help that's how you live through them, through the missteps you may have made and you help them not have those missteps. But the way that some of us do it is a little bit, it's not in that manner. It's a do it my way because this is how. I say do it. And apparently it didn't work for you because, excuse me, you still trying to push it on your child as if you knew. Take that as a hint. Like, hopefully you'll hear this podcast if you one of those moms of them dads and say, damn, well, I didn't make it. So maybe I need to step back and You know, let them live. Because again, our glory days is over with. Let them bask in their own glory without you trying to take some of their sunlight. Don't be the dimmer. And that's what we do as parents. We become the dimmer without even realizing it. And again, now your child gets grown, didn't excel at what you pushed them so hard to excel at, what you wanted them to be and they're not that. And now in their eyes. They believe in your eyes, they're failures. So again, with all sports, but especially with this being, you know, high school basketball, which is the one that I see the most coming up, parents, let's try and let our kids live. We're already living, we've already lived. It's their turn, no. No living through them. No telling the stories like they're yours. Let them tell their own story and let them make their own story and you just be right there to narrate it. Thank you for listening to Coach Rodo's Winning Regardless podcast. You can have a good day. Just that quick.