What Parents Can Learn About Teen Empathy From An Unlikely Teammate’s Kindness
I was perched on the sticky aluminum bleachers after last month’s rec soccer practice, twisting the cap off a lukewarm blue Gatorade, when my 16-year-old son Javi leaned against the rail next to me and said, “You know Ty? He went over to Luke’s house last night.”
Luke’s Javi’s best friend. He’d just broken up with his girlfriend of a year after finding out she’d been seeing another guy from the neighboring high school. He’d posted a vague, sad story on Instagram and bailed on practice, and half the team had sent generic “so sorry bro” texts. Ty was my least favorite player on the team, so I was surprised to hear his name. I’d spent most of the season side-eyeing him: he yells at refs over bad calls, complains nonstop when he doesn’t get striker, and once chewed out a 14-year-old freshman for missing an open pass in a scrimmage so bad the kid left the field red-eyed. I’d pulled him aside after that, gave him the whole talk about respecting your teammates, and left that conversation thinking he was just a self-absorbed kid who only cared about his own stats.
So I said to Javi, “Ty? Why would Ty go over there? He doesn’t even hang out with Luke.” Javi shrugged, picked at the peeling label on his hydro flask, and told me: Ty saw Luke’s Instagram story, asked what was going on, and as soon as Javi told him, Ty grabbed his car keys off the bench. He stopped at the gas station on the way, grabbed a 12-pack of that sour lemonade Luke drinks, and stopped at GameStop to pick up that used Xbox controller Luke had been complaining about for months—his old one has a drift that messes up every FIFA game. He showed up at Luke’s door, didn’t make a big deal out of anything. Just said “heard your mom’s working late, figured we’d play some ranked.” They played for three hours, and Ty never brought up the ex once until Luke started crying mid-game. When Luke did, Ty just handed him a crumpled fast food napkin from his pocket and said “she had the worst taste in music anyway, next round’s mine.” Didn’t give a big speech, didn’t post about being a good friend, just left when Luke’s mom got home and said text me if you need anything.
A few days later, I had a minute alone with Ty after practice, I pulled him aside, I told him I heard what he did, that it was really cool. He just got all red in the face, shifted his cleats on the grass, and said “It’s no big deal. When I tore my ACL two years ago, I was sitting on the field crying and everybody just stood around waiting for the coach. Luke was the only one who came over and helped me carry all my gear to the car. I remembered.” That was it. He didn’t want a pat on the back, didn’t make it about being a good person, he just remembered a time someone helped him, and showed up.
That stuck with me, because I think as parents and coaches, we do this thing where we box kids in really fast. We see how they act in one high-stress setting—like a competitive soccer game, where they’re amped up and nervous and just trying to do well—and we decide that’s the whole of who they are. I had Ty pinned as a problem kid for three months, and he’d done this kind, thoughtful thing that none of the “nice” kids on the team thought to do. A lot of the other guys sent nice texts, but nobody got in their car and showed up.
What I’ve taken from this, that I’ve started putting into practice at home and with the team, is small enough that any parent or coach can do it. When Javi comes home talking about a kid at school he can’t stand, or a teammate who rubbed him the wrong way, instead of agreeing that the kid’s a jerk, I just ask: “When’s the last time you saw that kid do something nice for someone?” It’s a tiny question, it doesn’t take any extra time, and it forces both of us to stop and look past the one annoying thing we saw. Last week Javi came home complaining about a kid in his bio class who talks the whole time and never does his share of group work, then he paused and said “wait, he brought donuts for the whole class when we had our midterm, because he said everyone was stressed.” That small shift alone changes how you see someone, no big lesson required.
Another thing I’ve started telling kids, when they talk about a friend going through something hard: you don’t have to say the perfect thing. A lot of kids hold back because they’re scared they’ll say the wrong thing, make it worse, or they don’t know how to handle someone crying. Ty showed that you don’t have to do any of that. You can just bring the thing they like, do the thing they like to do, and not make them talk about it if they don’t want to. I tell kids to use one simple line if they’re stuck: “do you want to talk about it, or do you want to just get pizza?” It takes all the pressure off, and it works every time.
It’s not like everything changed with Ty, to be clear. He still yells at refs, he still complains when he has to play defense, and he got a yellow card for arguing two weeks ago. I still have to pull him aside after games and remind him to rein it in. But I don’t have him in that “least favorite teammate” box anymore. I catch myself doing that with other kids too, labeling them fast based on one interaction, and I’ve started stopping myself, asking that question: what am I missing here? Most kids have more to them than we give them credit for, and the kindness that matters most usually isn’t the kind we get to see in a classroom or on a soccer field. It’s the quiet stuff they do when no adults are around, when they don’t expect any credit for it. That’s the kind of empathy we actually want them to learn, right? The unplanned kind that just feels like the right thing to do.
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