Little League Mothers Get in Game : Workshop Scheduled by Surgeon and Child Psychologist

When overzealous Little League fathers and coaches unwittingly push young players too hard, Little League mothers should recognize the signs and interrupt the process before injury occurs.

That advice is based on what a prominent orthopedic surgeon who specializes in sports medicine and a child psychologist say is all too often the way injuries happen. The pair of experts plan to participate Saturday in a seminar--perhaps the first of its kind to try to give mothers of Little League baseball players specific information on sports medicine and sports psychology.

Reasoning Influences

From that base, organizers hope, Little League mothers can learn to work more effectively as cooling and reasoning influences in the sometimes emotionally overwrought activities of their children and spouses. The seminar also may benefit a large but often ignored population: Little League mothers who happen to be raising their children alone but have difficulty coping with their children’s athletic activities.

The workshop, titled “How to Be a Great Little League Mom,” will begin at 9 a.m. and continue until noon. It is being sponsored by Centinela Hospital and its affiliated National Athletic Health Institute, whose sports injury clinic director, Dr. Lewis A. Yocum, is the orthopedist for the California Angels baseball team. Yocum has also served as a consultant to the professional Rams, Dodgers, Kings and Lakers.

The seminar will be at the hospital’s auditorium at 555 E. Hardy St., Inglewood. Reservations, which are required, can be obtained by calling 678-6244.

While feminists may object that the very premise of the seminar lets men off the hook, excuses their behavior as hopelessly unavoidable and leaves it to women to straighten things out by themselves, sponsors say that is not their purpose. The session springs, they say, from an awareness of the unfortunate social reality that men have not dealt very well with sports as they relate to children. And single-parent households give women little choice in the matter, anyway.

“One of the things we’re trying to do is promote an awareness that it’s OK for a mother to ask questions,” Yocum said in an interview. “All too often, fathers (even if they are present in the household) are too caught up in it. Often, they feel they know all the answers and so they’re less receptive to a lot of information. They want their son(s) to excel and, by and large, even though girls are playing Little League, it is still a male sport.

“The fathers are a less flexible group because it’s hard to tell a guy who’s 42, and has been playing baseball since he was 6, anything about the game. We’re trying to talk about common sense things for which Mom may have a little more empathy and understanding.”

A lot of what Yocum and psychologist Alan Yellin plan to cover in the Saturday session could easily come under the heading: “good parenting.” Balancing of a youngster’s competitive drives--or lack of them--and the child’s physical and mental health are essential, both men agreed.

Sentence in Brochure

Sitting in on the interview with Yellin and Yocum, Tom Boyle, regional director for the Little League (which has 900 league operations in California, and involves 800,000 children nationwide) took issue with a sentence in a promotional brochure for Saturday’s program that proclaims the session will “address the (problem) of how to help your child lose.”

After all, Boyle argued, there is nothing necessarily wrong with winning--if the victory is pursued ethically and with a sense of proportion.

Yellin saw the issue another way. Mothers, he said, can encourage their children not just to warm up physically for a game, but show them how to warm up--and “warm down”--psychologically. That should be, he said, a process in which a child can grasp the importance of both victory and defeat.

“The warming up and warming down should be, in a sense, preparing the child for both losing and winning and taking the emphasis from both to an emphasis on improving. That’s what is important. With young Little Leaguers, this is often their first experience with a group and the sense of a team. I think it’s important to help kids become both good winners and good losers.

“I think we need to treat that very carefully so the emphasis is on neither winning nor losing. Little League can often be a microcosm of life. There will be losses and there will be wins. The real purpose is teaching the child how to handle both well.”

Other Suggestions

Yellin had some other suggestions of how mothers can help their Little League children:

--If the child truly wants to play Little League ball, and the family decides he or she should do so, then the commitment must be taken seriously. “Children often are asked not to go to a game or practice because they need to go to Grandma’s house,” Yellin said. “That can be devastating to the child who really feels he doesn’t want to let the team down.”

--Parents have to understand that the most important aspect of Little League, or any other organized sports participation, has more to do with learning social interaction skills than becoming an outstanding athlete. “It’s crucial that parents help their child to become a well-liked team member,” he said. “Often, the star athlete is not the best-liked person on the team. He may be a hog.”

--Parents should learn what to reward--and it isn’t most often winning. “Reward the effort,” Yellin said. “Deemphasize winning and reemphasize improvement,” he said. “Children may be upset over a loss. The best thing is not to put those feelings down, but to reflect on them and go from there.”

Sports medicine may be unfamiliar turf for some mothers. Many families, Yocum and Yellin agreed, have basic structural problems that are exacerbated by the tensions that can surface as a result of Little League participation, even though the causes are far more deep-seated. Yellin said mothers should, in addition to learning more about the physical limits of their children in competitive sports, try to make sure that the whole family plans the ways it will respond before the baseball season begins.

For instance, Yocum and Yellin said, many arm injuries could be prevented if parents agreed at the beginning of the season not to pressure a player to go back out for extra pitching work immediately after a bad game. Even if a mother tries to intervene on the spot, the disagreement between the parents might be more psychologically damaging to the child than the hurt elbow itself.

Parents’ Egos

“I guess what often happens is that parents’ egos get in the way of the child,” Yellin said. “They see the child as if he or she were themselves. In terms of what the mother can do, she needs to use all the nurturing (skills) she has at her disposal.

“Sometimes, she must intervene and make the point that it’s not important that the boy throws the ball, but that the priority needs to be his overall health. She needs to know what she’s talking about when she does that.

“But the unfortunate situation is where the parents are at odds. It creates additional pressure on the child because he knows he has split the parents. That has a kind of devastating impact.”

Both parents should learn to recognize sometimes subtle signs that a young athlete has been injured. Often, young athletes will not admit to being in pain and will deliberately conceal their discomfort.

A single mother, then, may be called upon to recognize subtle yet involved sports medicine problems. A mother who did not participate in team sports as a girl and has had little interest in them as an adult may not realize the significance of certain symptoms, said Yocum. For instance, if she went to practice and noticed that her son was suddenly throwing far less forcefully than normal, or if she watched him around the house and noticed that he was, for no apparent reason, reaching for familiar objects with his non-dominant hand, she might not know that it could be a tip-off that either his elbow or shoulder was bothering him.

That, in turn, could be a warning that either of two injuries common to Little League participants who have pressed themselves or been pressured by adults too hard. One of the injuries is so common it is even called “Little League elbow.” Other warning signs are noticeable swelling or redness around a joint or areas where the skin seems unusually hard.

Starting to Limp

“The boy (or girl) might start to limp a little bit when he gets tired,” said Yocum. “The mother needs to recognize that that could be a symptom of a pulled hamstring. The most important thing is to know your youngster. That is the important thing about mothers. They are usually attuned to the child.”

If the child won’t admit to the injury and the father seems indifferent to what the mother has noticed, the mother has to be prepared to discuss the problem knowledgeably with the coach.

But what these dynamics really amount to, Yellin conceded, is strong basic parenting and family relations. “Ultimately, the parent does need to be responsible for what the child does, in this or anything else. Sometimes, that does mean setting limits that the child may not always like.”

An opposite--though just as important--concern, Yellin said, can be the child who really has no interest in playing competitive Little League baseball. In many cases, he said, the child simply should not be forced to do so--even though that recognition may be especially difficult for some fathers to grasp.

Yocum said that at weekly sports medicine clinics run by his organization on Saturday mornings the year around, he often encounters young patients who have no physical problems. He said he has learned to take the young athlete aside and, out of the parents’ hearing, explain he can find nothing wrong and ask if the youngster has other concerns. Often, Yocum said, the child will say something like, “You know, I really don’t want to play baseball.”

“He’ll say, ‘My dad wants me out there doing it, but I’m not interested,’ ” Yocum said. “A lot of times in that situation, I’ve played the heavy, but there has to be communication between the parents and the child.”

It isn’t just fathers who are to blame, either, he said. “We see an awful lot of mothers who are just as caught up in the thrill of victory,” Yocum said. “They are not hearing what the kids are really saying to them.”

Inside, Outside Boy

Yellin recalled one youngster who told him, “I’m an inside boy and my parents want an outside boy.”

“He wanted to be inside playing with the computer,” Yellin recalled.

Often, Yocum and Yellin agreed, parents can see warning signs in their children--including tension and nervousness, shaking during a game, regular vomiting in response to competitive pressure and excessive crying and temper tantrums before a game.

Said Yellin: “We need to accept sometimes how our children are not all competitors and good athletes.”