Depends where you live. In America? Yes you’re a jerk because you are questioning the American “dream”. Anywhere else? As long as you explain why and support your kid in whatever choice he/she makes you’re fine.

I’m impressed that a pro footballer found Lemmy. Welcome!

Maybe if he had someone coach him decently while he was growing up

Get one of your professional contacts to honestly evaluate him.

You can’t objectively evaluate him since he’s your kid, and any advice he hears from you will be subject to scrutiny since you’re his parent.

If you’re right then your message will be more believable from a third party, and if you’re wrong then they will hopefully catch that.

Either way, you are right to try to set him up for success; that’s your job as his parent.

He has to learn for himself. You learn from mistakes. My mom told me I’m too smart to drive trucks. Guess what I do 20 years later?

Since you are a professional who has happened to make it with some level of success, you know firsthand that there are a lot of excellent people who didn’t manage it for one reason or another. (And it’s not always because of lack of talent, they might have just gotten the wrong injury). How did they manage things when they finally came to terms with the fact they wouldn’t make a living doing that? What did they have to fall back on? Are they coaching? Teaching? Selling real estate or insurance?

There is nothing wrong with him chasing his dream, but make sure he has an alternative planned. Make him talk to some of those people, and find his own path. Don’t focus on whether or not he has the talent to make it, but on the fact that even people with all the talent sometimes don’t make it, through no fault of their own. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

You need to have a sit down with him. He’s 16 so he should be able to be take in whatever you’ll say. Don’t degrade him, don’t talk down to him or anything.

But tell him that he has a future ahead of him, whatever it is but futures also have different pathways to choose from. The wrong futures are the kind of futures where no matter how much devotion, ambition and time spent it is to drive towards a particular future, it isn’t that path. And that’s okay because the world isn’t over for him yet. The only thing your son is going to regret the most, is not trying more things while he has the youth and the time to do so.

That is key, is to try many things and see what really sticks.

I wouldn’t say “jerk”, but maybe a little insensitive to supporting his dreams. The hard part about being a parent is that your kid needs to fail sometimes, and your protesting to the failing will only create a divide between you two. Offering advice once is totally fine, but continuing will make the situation worse. He will likely fail pursuing his dream, and reality will hit him hard afterwards, but that’s ok. Just make sure he has your support, and he knows you love him.

It doesn’t matter that you’ve learned this life lesson already. He hasn’t. Sometimes, you have to learn the hard way for it to stick.

Did you go straight into being a pro footballer? Or did you have back up plans? Like “if this doesn’t work out, I’ll be an electrician” or something?

I’ve never had super lofty goals, but my parents always supported me in what I wanted to do. They never tried to steer me, but they did ask pertinent questions about what I was planning at various points. Probably to hint at bad idea.
I feel like I could have asked them for money/support at any point for any of my projects/ideas/whatevers, and - after making sure I was serious - would have helped out however they could.
I have a very unique career at this point, and I am only in this position because of the eclectic experience I have. And it is completely unrelated to my dreams as a kid or what I studied at university.

Ultimately, he is growing up. He’s going to have to make mistakes.
I’d say you have to be prepared to support him as much as you can in his dream of being a pro footballer.
Maybe he won’t be a pro footballer, but he might get a satisfying career out of being football-adjacent. Medic, science, coaching.
Or maybe he will try it for 5 years and eventually realise it’s not gonna happen, and be an electrician.
Or maybe he will struggle for 2 years, realise he needs to double down, and make the cut a year later.

I had a friend when I was growing up that dreamed of being an RAF pilot. Everything he did was around that.
Due to some unfortunate life circumstances, that dream was ripped away in the space of a week. Completely out of anyone’s control, but he could no longer qualify as an RAF pilot.
He was heartbroken. He’s now an engineer/mechanic in the RAF and loves tinkering with cars.

He shouldn’t find another dream.
But he should be aware that dreams don’t always come about. And if this dream doesn’t, would he be happy in an adjacent career? Or something else entirely?
Help him research the backup plan.

Same scenario with my son years back. He loved basketball and his skinny, 5ft 8" body was not going to propell him to NBA stardom. My wife accused me of crushing my son’s spirits. I never discouraged him from the sport and went to every high school and travel ball ($$$) game where he mostly sat on the bench. He’s in his 30s now and planning a family, so the dreams are different. I don’t think I did any lasting damage.

But, would I do it the same way again? It’s nuanced to be sure. We want our children to be prepared for their futures and excel, not wash out. What I would do is look for ways to help him discover, on his own, where his real talent lies and comes to the realization himself.l and be there to soften the blow to that dream. Then, if his passion is still football, help him discover all the different career options are available, on and off the field, that can keep him close to his passion.

I hope this helps. If you’re asking, you’re likely a better dad that many out there.

Oh, and his mother is a c#$t and I divorced her shitty ass. ;)

Let him try to aim for it… As long as he doesn’t neglect his education and other opportunities them there’s no harm in giving him some years to figure this out himself the hard way.

Eh, yeah, a bit of a jerk.

It’s not the facts that matter, it’s how you deliver them. If you don’t focus on what the kid doesn’t have, and focus on what they’d have to do to make it, you’d get the same thing done.

If you add in that they’re expected, while still under your responsibility, to also work towards a secondary goal that’s within reach without needing a ton of luck on top of talent, you set them up to both work on their dream and have a realistic fallback plan.

Doesn’t really matter what it is, when the kid’s dream is one that they can’t make it purely by working at it, it’s our job to prepare them for the possibility of success, no matter how unlikely, as well as presenting reality.

I partially raised a nephew years ago. He wanted to be a musician or a pro skater. Talented in both (more as a musician), but both of those fields take more than ability to make work. Even skating, which isn’t mostly about who you know and what contacts you can make, you gotta bust your ass every single day practicing like a pro does, and start competing. I explained all that, showed him how to find information for himself, and said he still had to make school his first priority until he was an adult.

Well, turns out he didn’t actually like competing, so skating went to the wayside a year or so later.

He started focusing more on music, and started doing small shows here and there, and liked it. But he did hit that wall where you have to not just hustle, but have the right contacts, or make them. So he switched gears like a lot of creative sorts do and got a job he thought might be interesting in the short term while he worked at music as a secondary.

He ended up enjoying that job enough that he decided to do music more as a hobby. Still does. He still skates too, and he’s almost in his thirties now. He’s also starting his own business in the industry he liked, and went to school to get a basic business degree per my advice.

You don’t have to ride their ass, or insist that they abandon a dream. You just have to give them the best advice you can, and let them do their thing as long as they’re meeting core necessities along the way.

It’s even perfectly fine to tell them that there’s limits to what you’ll do and provide while they chase a dream; support doesn’t mean you have to let them stay in the basement with no actual source of self support on a practical level. It just means that you give them the room to get there if they can while also navigating regular life.

Hell, it’s perfectly fine to be blunt about their chances of making it at whatever. Telling your kid that he’d have to reach a level of skill that would take more work than realistically possible is fine. Telling him that he’s got an incredibly long and impractical road ahead of him if he decides to try is fine. And it’s definitely fine to say that he’s got to do it on his own merits, without any nepotism or favors involved. You can even give an honest evaluation of his skills and athleticism, though you gotta be gentle with that.

What never works is telling than that they can’t, that it’s utterly out of the question and you’ll never have their back. That’s a recipe for a kid you never get to see as an adult.

Shit, man, who says you’re even right? Get some outside opinions on the kid’s skills if you’re going to play the heavy and be sure you’re right.

When you punish a person for dreaming their dreams don’t expect them to thank or forgive you.

You should support your kid, even if you’re not convinced of his chances of making it. Anything else is just going to permanently damage your relationship. The best you can do is make sure he has a plan B. If he’s good in school he’s well on his way to that, so not much to worry about.

I don’t think you’re a jerk. Your son is 16, more than old enough to handle it. The fact of the matter is that, in professional sports, most young boys are scouted by the time they’re his age; if it hasn’t happened yet, it probably won’t.

He needs to start planning for a more realistic future, but he’s allowed to think you’re being too hard on him. You don’t have to be responsible for his mistakes if he chooses to make them, you already did your job by telling him to think more realistically.

Do you think he might be good enough for a foreign league if he works his ass off? Not every basketball player is good enough for the NBA, but a lot are good enough to play in China or Europe, for example. Maybe, if this career is what he really wants, it would help your relationship if you gave him some pointers about playing in a league he might be more competitive in.

That said, you could also try to see if he might enjoy sports medicine or some other adjacent career, like training. Surely you know what might be a good fit for him outside of being a player, considering your experience. Giving him other options that still allow him to be close to the sport might be a nice way to show him that you still think he can be involved in professional sports in some capacity.