"This time I expect you to WIN!"

Yes, it was said with a certain emphasis.
It was another hot day yesterday. I had to go and post the phone bill back to the telecom company. It doesn't even begin to make sense - but we won't go there. Perhaps it is the heat. 
But, on the way to the letter box, I have to pass an entrance to some local tennis courts.  I often see children there doing "after school" tennis lessons. 
It's a serious business. They aren't there for the fun of it. Parents and grandparents bring them. They stay to watch. These are the budding McEnroes and Murrays and whomever of the future.
It was  very hot again yesterday. It was 36'C when I set out and it would have been hotter than that on the courts. 
As I was passing a mother had just got three children out of the car and I heard her say,  "I don't care if it is hot. This time I expect you to win."
I wanted to interfere. I wanted to go over to the courts and order every child off the courts. It was too hot for children to be playing tennis. It was utter madness. Telling your children you expect them to win on top of that just made it far worse. 
Telling your children you expect them to win at any time is wrong. I have no problem with, "I know you will do the best you can" on appropriate occasions but "expect you to win" and in that heat is so far from unacceptable that I went as far as slowing and staring at her. She didn't even notice. Perhaps it is just as well. I was just someone passing on the street.  But, her children did not look happy.
I wonder whether she will read the report of an inquest in this morning's paper. A young boy died at football practice. He shouldn't have been playing football at all. He had a heart condition. He needed surgery. He should have been taking things quietly. There's a desire to blame the doctors he saw. That's understandable but there would also have been pressure on him to play sport. His parents might well have been sensible and tried to prevent it if they had realised what the consequences would be but there would still have been pressure on him in other ways. He could easily have been out there and collapsed in the heat. 
I remember one of the boys I once taught. He was keen on sports of all sorts but one day he came to me complaining of a pain in his side. The teacher in charge of the football team had the sense to realise that if this boy didn't feel up to playing then he wasn't up to playing - whatever the team might feel.  It was just as well too. The boy's mother took him to the doctor and he had his appendix out the following day. If he had remained on the football field and tried to play and received a hit he might well have been in serious trouble. 
I can remember the other teacher saying to me, "I'm so glad I sent him back in to see you."
And I thought of the mother as well while I was reading the report. What would she feel like if one of her children collapsed in the heat on the courts?