I have a 16-year-old son. I’m in my early 30s (had him very young) and a professional footballer. My son also dreams of becoming a successful footballer (he’s been playing since he was 6), but he’s just… not great. He’s good, but not great - and in this extremely competitive industry you need to be at least great in order to even stand a chance. So I told him, as someone who’s been doing this for a very, very long time & is active in this sphere, that he should find another, more attainable dream. He took it as me not believing in him, but I’m just objective and realistic.
I don’t think you’re a jerk, but I think you’ve handled this badly and you’re using ‘objective and realistic’ to justify it, but that’s just code for not believing in him. Were you great at 16? Or were you merely good enough to get signed and thus benefit from decades of training and coaching that improved you? Do you not believe he will also improve? That’s literally what not believing in him means.
It’s one thing to inject some realism, to manage expectations, to encourage him to have a fallback, etc, and quite another to effectively say ‘You’re shit at this so you should just go get a job’ or whatever.