Civility From a Different Angle

• Imagine if your son or daughter were to be playing soccer for California South.
  
• Imagine if your son our daughter were playing soccer for another league in EPA.
  
• Imagine if your son or daughter were playing for another club.
  
• Imagine if your son or daughter were playing for another team.

One way to consider whether or not we are providing the proper environment for our children is to examine the type of child an environment produces. How does the time your child spends with his coach affect them? What does exposure to the atmosphere in your club produce? What does the general tone in your league teach your son or daughter? How do the mission and goals of EPA affect your son or daughter?

There are old sociological concepts that if you want to know about a society, look at the people it produces. So, if we want to know about our coaches, clubs, and leagues, we need to look at the type of young men and women they are producing.

It is very easy to get caught up in "the heat of the moment", whether that moment is a single play in a game, an entire game, a season or, sometimes (regretfully) our son or daughter's entire youth soccer experience. So, let's pause for a moment and consider what is being produced. How is your son or daughter being shaped? What types of behaviors are they learning? What types of morals and values are they taking away from the environment we have placed them in?

Mission statements, parent hand-outs, trophy cases and records are all certainly tangible icons of an organization but, these overt indicators may paint a picture incongruent with the lessons being learned. The "real" environment may be producing a very different young man or women than we think.

Consider for a moment one of the advertisements used by the drug counsel. The commercial shows a father walking into his teenage son's room with a cigar box filled with drug paraphernalia. As the father approaches the son, who is lying on his bed, the father asks, "where did you pick this up from", the son responds, "I got it from watching you". The point is what did this family produce? One can infer that the father did not intend his son to become a drug user but that is what that family produced.

In the moment it is often hard to know what is happening. It is hard to know how our son or daughter may be getting shaped by their experience so, look at those who have already been through the program. Consider how that program shaped those who came before you. Would your son or daughter be the same person had they played for another coach, or another team, or program? Is that organization providing the atmosphere, lessons and models that are likely to produce the young man or women you want your son or daughter player to become?

Is your son or daughter's coach, team, club, league etc… producing a civil adult prepared to contribute to society? What are we contributing?

NOTE: EPA continues to publish scenarios on the home page as food for thought with regards to different moments we have or may experience. The goal is for us all to contribute to the production of strong, ethical, responsible contributors to society. We welcome your feedback. -EPA Civility Program, civility@epysa.org.