Moto Dads

Being dead center in the middle of mini-dad territory with a 13-year-old moving on to supermini, I can say it is a very hard line to walk between parent and coach.  I have been there myself, where the line blurs between "Stand to the apex, then sit forward on the tank with your leg out straight in front of you" and "When you're done eating, take your dishes to the sink and rinse them off." Even though we've gone over each one six thousand times, they still make the same mistakes that have become second nature to us.

It's a process for the child and the parent. As my son has become a better rider, I, too, have become a better parent/coach. I'd be lying if I said I haven't lost my cool in the past, but I've learned to start with encouragement for the things he is doing well on the track before talking about the mistakes that he needs to work on for the next time.  

I hope Ryan, and all other parents, can find the balance that works for their family and makes the sport an enjoyable experience.  

Ryan swears on camera a lot so this isn't surprising to me one bit. It's off putting to me. Work on your vocabulary so you don't have to swear every 5th word.

I really noticed it during moto fite club

Parents push their children into all sorts of activities, it's not just a motocross phenomenon. 

Right or Wrong?
Context and situation matter, so it would be pointless to generalize, unless it's so egregious that no context could justify the act.  I don't think we're having children sacrificed to Molech at Lorettas; Cooksy would let us know if that was happening. 

I'm sure someone out there thinks it's child abuse if a 7 year old doesn't have a smart phone and another person thinks they need to teach their kid a lesson by beating them with a Bible. Most people are probably somewhere in between.  

The only generalization I can conclude is that If racing motocross isn't fun, then you're doing something wrong.

 

How about a link and a time stamp to the footage?

I agree. I think some parents get way too into sports for their kid(s).

I'm very competitive, but I have mellowed out some with my 6 yr old, mostly because he's young. I'm coaching flag football for 6-7 yr olds and it's competitive and interesting to see.

When i play a bad team I try not o run the score up, other coaches keep the same 3 kids in all game and score as much as they can. I've been trying to get everyone fairly equal playing time, but other coaches don't. For 6 and 7 year olds it should be about fun IMO. I've been able to get 8 of my 9 kids to score at least once, I don't think the other teams can say that.

I have playoffs this weekend, and I'm going to change my lineup some, but each kid will still play.

Can't really speak for Villopoto himself but I can imagine he probably experienced a similar situation growing up. He was an elite racer as a kid, and I wouldn't doubt that he was coached in a similar fashion growing up. He is probably just trying to replicate his success as an amateur, with his son. Speaking overall for this generation, the kids have definitely become softer than they once were 15-20 years ago and it takes some people time to realize they might need to switch up their approach when coaching their kid. Some parents might deny that and don't want to have to go with the softer approach with their kids because that's not what they experienced as a kid. Some kids can handle criticism; and some kids need to be coddled. As a coach myself, I try to do my best riding this fine line and identifying those who can handle criticism and identifying those who need more positive reinforcement. I personally do not cuss at the kids I coach because I am not coaching my own children yet and would rather let the parents handle their own approach to that aspect. It's not my job to tell parents how to parent. If someone has a bad performance, I point out what they did wrong, what they can do to improve and then try to point out at least one positive thing that they did. Accountability for technique and/or performance can be handled in different ways. If a parent is too hard on the kid and chews their ass after every bad moto or every bad turn, a lot of times what you will see is that they tend to grow resentment towards that parent at the later years of their childhood and can cause for a bumpy relationship. Sometimes that's not the case, and the child grows up and sees through all the tough times. They might realize the sacrifices made for them and that the parent just wanted the best from them. 

This is something that I have been pondering as my son is starting to get to the age where he wants to ride and I imagine that he will want to race at some point just because we are around the sport so much. I am somewhat in the industry myself, my wife and I both rode/raced so I feel that it is only a matter of time. I have always wondered what kind of dad I will be in the situation and my wife and I have had these exact conversations.

 I do feel like there is a balance of when to be hard and when to lay off. This happens in every single sport. The overall goal for the near future will be fun. In riding or in baseball/soccer. While I believe it is important to take things seriously, you have to realize that these are young kids who are extremely impressionable. In soccer/baseball it is all hey, make sure you are paying attention to what you're doing. When he rides his Stacyc or PW, it is the exact same thing. When the time comes to be on the track, we have to realize that this is a dangerous sport with real life consequences. The way I plan to approach it in the future, make sure you are having fun and as long as you are doing that or putting in the effort required we are all good. When he drifts a little and may do something dangerous for himself or others, the tone of the conversation will change a bit. I think it is important that they realize what they are doing and how the mistakes or lack of focus can have a profound impact. It is not so much when they are really young, but will come into play as they grow up. I have the outlook that I will coach the way I believe he will respond and teach the proper ways. But like I said above, when it comes to doing something dangerous there needs to be a shift. I also believe that even the small wins will deserve to be celebrated. He rode a whole moto and didnt fall, awesome! May not have finished well, but it is a step in the right direction. Pulled a holeshot but fell on the second lap? Great! Proud that you got a good start, lets work on why you fell later in the moto. You guys can understand my point here I believe lol. 

RV has spoken before about how he was parented/coached as a kid in the past and I believe what you see in the video is a product of that. Truthfully, some kids may need that. He obviously responded to it very well and had a great career even if he burned out at the end. No one can ever take that away. 

It’s a bummer especially with RV.  I do not want to disrespect the man but from what little I’ve read and heard about his relationship with his dad due to how he treated him, you’d hope he’d have a vastly different approach.

Winning motorcycle races is cool, but being a kid and knowing you’ve got a parent who loves and accepts you is entirely necessary and deserved.

I am 68 and was coached by my dad in baseball. Not once did my dad use profanity around me. He was in construction his entire life and that is common vocabulary on the jobs site. I personally believe children, all children, deserve that respect. At some point it changes but at young ages, it seems more of a determent than a benefit.

So I actually just went and watched the segment that was initially mentioned and I do not see anything wrong with what RV said. While he may have used curse words, I think that is just who he is. Similar to what I said above, the parts that he was hard on his kids about were things that the kid himself was disappointed in and the other was something dangerous that he did that I do believe needed to be a harder lesson. It was a "if you sit down off the face of that jump again you are done riding for the day. If you do that you are eventually going to crash so f*%&#^% hard." Or something like that. IMO, valid. 

For whatever its worth, I grew up chasing the dream alongside the Villopoto's, Alessi's etc. & I want to be really clear...Despite Ryans harsh demeanor on video, he is many shades less aggressive than how he was brought up.

My Dad & I were actually just talking about this exact topic the other night & how deep into moto we were that what would be considered abuse other places was damn near normalized at the track to the point that yelling/screaming didn't even get people to turn their heads.

I have congratulated a dad on their 11-year-old child's 2nd place at an amateur national in an extremely competitive class only to have them say "he rode like a pussy" with anger in his eyes.

I have seen the cops get called because a dad kicked their 12-year-old square in the chest out of the back of a raised box van.

I watched a dad physically throw his 10-year-old into the trailer by his chest protector, slam the door behind them & the mom stood in front of the door telling everyone "It's fine they're just talking"....

Looking back now as a dad of 3, I cannot even fathom doing 1/4 of the stuff we saw growing up racing across the country....Different times? Sure. OK? Never. Normalized in our sport? Sadly, yes.

My dad was hard on me when I wasn't trying. As a kid I didn't understand but once I became an adult and realized the sacrifices that were made for me to be able to line up each week, sometimes twice a weekend many hours from home, i understood. The whole family would ride 4 deep in a single cab pickup to the races and sweat their asses off all day at a dusty race track and then drive home in time to get 4 hours of sleep before heading to work on a Monday. We raced like this for many years. I would get yelled at if I wasn't at least matching the effort given by the rest of the family who could be doing 1000 other things with their time and money but chose spend their weekend at the races. My daughter doesn't race but does other sports and activities and find myself getting angry when I see her not putting forth the amount of effort that I know she is capable of.

This.  I grew up racing in the early 2000s and after taking a break and coming back, I realize just how normal physical abuse seemed back then.  I’m not talking dad being mad.  I’m talking smacking their kid in the face for not hitting a triple on a greasy track. 

You should go to an AAU stick and ball event. It’s so much worse than moto. Parents heckling kids, fights, ejections, etc. Moto isn’t so bad lol

https://www.vurbmoto.com/the-story-of-the-world-mini-grand-prix-by-camworkx/

Unfortunately when my daughter was a competitive swimmer at a fairly high level I was the idiot dad.  The worst part is I didn’t know it at the time. Most of the problems stemmed from me being competitive with the other parents and simply making it not fun for her. Thankfully I finally saw what I had become and literally broke down crying and apologizing to her. After that she actually got better. She was happy, no pressure, and enjoyed the sport again. And I enjoyed watching. With my son he’s been riding since he was 4 and is pushing for Loretta’s this year. The only pressure he has is whatever he puts on himself. I’m constantly talking to him positively and making sure he’s having fun and not taking it too seriously. It’s why we all started in the first place. Have fun watching your kids compete, and be there for em without being that obnoxious idiot living through them. You don’t get a do over. 

I always tease my kids by saying, "shut up or I'll give you something to cry about!" (They aren't crying, nor would I ever say this and mean it.)

Verbal or physical abuse has no place in child rearing, whether it's for a sport or not. 

This is what impressive to me with Chad. The reeds are pretty open with the moto journey on their channel and you can tell he's incredibly pissed off sometimes but he always delivers his feedback with a restrained firmness, and definitely no bad language. And you see the payoff in how his kids respond

My son and I race on a local ama district level. He's usually in the top third of his class. We do it for fun. I made him cry once when he was little and that will never happen again. A lot of dads need to remember that this is for fun and 99.9% of kids aren't going pro. 

Big props on coming to the realization and also making it right with your kid. Reflecting back on ones own behavior and actually coming to the conclusion that you are the problem is a difficult, but honorable thing to do. Doubling down to salvage pride seems to be the more common method, unfortunately. 

100% - The now shut down VMC track in southern CA had this "triple" across the front section that was insane to hit on a big bike, let alone a mini....Of course, 1 kid on a supermini hit it and cleared by all of 0.0001 inches. 5 minutes later another kids dad was SCREAMING in his sons face that he wasn't willing to do what it took to win because he didn't want to try said triple & that he was pathetic. I thought nothing of it.

Having an 11-year-old myself, the idea of looking at her and saying "YOURE PATHETIC if you don't hit that 120ft triple in the wind" is beyond comprehension to me......Occasionally at work some of my associates will ask stories about racing & ill drop a mini-dad story. The look of horror on their faces tell me just how screwed up those times were.

This is what I wanted to bring up. Villopoto's parents pushed him insanely hard and as a result he pretty much cut them off once he became a professional. Sure, you could say it worked. He made it, won a bunch of championships and made a ton of money. The difference is, his parents put all of their net worth into racing and that was realistically his only path out of Poulsbo. Ryan's kids are growing up in a giant house in Laguna Beach with a multimillionaire as a father. Racing isn't their only way to make a living. They have the resources to choose whatever career path they want, and that's a luxury Ryan didn't have. You'd hope he'd look at racing as a way for them to have fun, build character and be competitive in a healthy way. I agree that a lot of kids nowadays are pretty soft but hopefully we can all agree that physical punishment or screaming at a 6 year old until they're in tears over a freaking dirt bike race is crossing the line. That is no way for a parent to behave to a child and will never foster a healthy bond

I do not see anything wrong with what RV did in the video. 

All three of my kids have raced and I have expected a lot from them. It is for fun, but if we are going to do it, I expect 110%. Same with everything in life.

As far as RV goes and most other mini Dads:  Like Father Like Son

I was at a local track a couple of years ago when my son was on minis. There was this little girl on a PW50 riding on the kids track. Her Dad was yelling at her when she rode by. This was an open ride day. She fell over right by where I was standing, I helped her get up and noticed her throttle hand was taped to the grip! She was crying, I helped her up and she took off scared like she was going to get beat if she didn't get going. Sad to see someone do something like that to their kid! Unbelievable! 

 Another time I was at a race parked next to a family with a little kid on a 50. There was a good size double right by the fence where we parked. The dad was ranting about how his son has to hit the double. You could tell the kid just started riding. They didnt have a clue..The kid goes out in first practice, first lap and tries to jump the double and crashes his brains out. They haul him off and take him to the hospital. Its bad enough to cuss your kid, the other thing is to force them to do something they aren't capable of. Just pin it! . 

Get on your own bike and race . Fixes 95 percent of it instantly. 

And I mean a 125 2 stroke since your

Kid is on a two stroke mini as well. 

Good to stop and realize just how insanely hard this shit is.

I just watched the clip of RV. He is upset that his kid sat down on a jump. He basically says he is not racing anymore if he sits down over jumps. Look, if RV is always swearing, the kid does not see it how someone's kid would from a father who never swears. To me, it seemed like a dad who was very concerned about his kid's well being. I have a 4 year and a 1 year old boy, the older one rides. I am a "gentle parent". I would probably react very similarly to RV if my kid was doing that. He even started out saying the riding was good. I don't swear much around my kid, so I wouldn't swear, but the message would be pretty similar. He comes in a bit too hot for my taste, but hey, better than the kid ending up with a serious injury. It's a hard balance to strike, but I do not think RV was way out of line there. 

I don't think he expected anything but for the kid to hit the jumps standing up because it's the only safe way to do it.