Parenting Like You are Tony Romo
When I talk to my kids I want them to hear Tony Romo; but sometimes I sound like Troy Aikman.
Daniel,
I finally finished The Americans, and then read your post about the final episode, and felt much the same myself, though I kinda saw it coming.1
Your observations about parenting are all spot on; the constant worry about these vulnerable little humans, the inevitability of their departure, the helplessness in the face of that departure, and how all this love and concern can all just go unnoticed. (I would add that maybe it should go unnoticed much of the time, because why weigh them down with it?)
My own parental worries tend to revolve around how I interact with my kids, and how I can be a bit of a grump and a scold. To be fair, this is sometimes my job, but wouldn’t it be better if I could be more positive and happy, and less irritable and annoyed much of the time?
To give me something to aspire towards I have adopted Tony Romo as my role model. Maybe this sounds a little strange, but Romo has just the right tone of voice and attitude that I would like to adopt when speaking to my kids: friendly, easygoing, and enthusiastic. And if I am going to be watching football anyway, I might as well use some of that time to work on my parenting.
Tony Romo has garnered a lot of attention, but he is mostly praised for his ability to analyze the game. Yes, he is great at breaking down plays and predicting what is going to happen and that is all very cool. But he doesn’t get enough credit for just being nice and happy and engaged. Listening to Tony Romo is like talking to your friend about something you are both interested in. This is by design; Romo created his announcing style by pretending to tell a story to his friends and family:2
“very quickly I found out there’s a certain tone, there’s a certain empathic nature to it… Did you see this? Did you see what happened here? I gotta keep your attention. So the only way to do it was like, this is what I do at dinner. I’m gonna tell a story and make it good. So I feel like I’m at dinner, trying to tell a story and keep your attention.”
And that sounds perfectly right to me. If you want to adopt a friendly tone of voice, then just imagine that you are having a friendly dinner with a bunch of people you love, and there you go.
But if it is so easy to capture this tone of voice, why haven’t more announcers chosen to use it? I think the problem is that many announcers do not put a high enough value on cheerfulness. The worst culprit is Troy Aikman. Never was there a more glum and depressing announcer. Listening to Aikman call a football game is a tiresome misery, and it is best to turn off the volume whenever he is announcing.
Here is a perfect summary of Aikman from a recent John Madden memorial:3
“There are still some broadcasters who do something like what Madden did… But there are far more color commentators, in football but also in baseball and basketball, who understand their jobs as sour and theatrical tasks dedicated to explaining why you, the viewer, are or should be disappointed by what you’re watching. They play the coach, or the ex-player, in ways that are fundamentally negative: performing exasperation, mining every moment for the failure that made it possible, and so working backward from every outcome to explain why it should not have happened, or been permitted to happen, or would not have happened in their day. This is not just the opposite of what Madden did. It is also much less fun.”
I don’t mean to pick on Aikman - numerous announcers are guilty of being too negative, as am I. When parenting, I am too often concerned with maintaining the proper state of things, rather than maintaining a happier state of relationships, which is, of course, completely backward.
When I have remembered to use the nicer tone of voice, my parenting has improved dramatically (jumping from a passer rating of 80 to 120, easily). It also works with the spouse. I am starting to believe that maybe my father was right when he frequently remarked: “Its not what you say, but how you say it.” Perhaps I would have learned this lesson sooner, if my dad had led me to it kindly, rather than bludgeoning me with it.
Cheers,
Casey
Spoilers Ahead - I had been expecting the Jennings family to split up - in fact I was certain that was how the show would end. My guess was that one parent and child would end up back in the motherland, while the other pair would land in the witness protection program - and if the showrunners wanted to be cruel they would mismatch the parent/child teams such that perhaps Philip and Henry go to Russia, while Elizabeth and Paige stayed in America. Then it looked like 3 of them would escape. The writers did a little pump fake, suggesting that Philip would stay behind as well, but I didn’t bite - that seemed weird and wrong. Instead I just felt that Paige was going to stay behind because what the hell would she do in Russia? I was still jarred by that final goodbye scene - what a punch to the gut.