Parent Conduct in Youth Sports
🌟Weekly Inspiration🌟
July Parenting Series on Youth Sports #5- Final Thoughts
I want to end this parenting series with some final thoughts around what is helpful/supportive parental behavior in youth sports. Summertime is the perfect time to take inventory of yourself so you are ready for the fall sports season 💡. The hours sitting in a quiet office doing therapy with adolescents and young adults over the years—and hearing their complaints about their parents—have informed my parenting each and every week.
Anecdotally and supported by research, here are a few considerations that seem to be MORE helpful to kids:
* Be a quiet and consistent source of encouragement for your child. Most kids do not want to hear your voice on the sideline. Experiment with saying nothing. Clapping for the whole team is a more helpful way to show support. More helpful to not scream and curse the opposing team from the sidelines.
* Praise often equals pressure. It sets your child up to seek your praise, which takes away from their own intrinsic motivation to enjoy and do well. If they don’t perform well, it is disappointing to them and then they fear disappointing you as well. (Consider less praising in general—about grades, sports, etc. Praise actually undermines their feelings of enjoyment, motivation, and success—look it up if you don’t believe me!)
* After the game, consider “Water or Gatorade?” or “I enjoyed watching you play” or “I hope you had fun.” Full stop. Only discuss their play if the child initiates it and then keep it positive and curious.
* Practice with them in the yard if they want to. Avoid criticism. Enjoy the moment of togetherness.
* Allow coaches to coach. Trust their process. Help your children learn to respect authority. Avoid reaching out to coaches if at all possible. Encourage your kid to advocate for themselves if they need to, even from a young age.
* Resist paying for goals or performance. Encourage unselfish behavior on the field, good sportsmanship or sportswomanship with opposing teams, and being a great teammate. When there are real-time examples of poor behavior by kids or adults, have that be a learning lesson for discussion at the dinner table.
* Let your kids carry their own bags, make their own water, and build responsibility for their equipment.
* It’s ok to miss sometimes OR take the least intense path OR opt out when it’s not serving your child any longer. Resist parental peer pressure and FOMO. There is a lifetime of opportunities in front of them…sometimes doing less provides space for them to explore something else that is interesting to them.
* Encourage handwritten thank you notes to coaches at the end of the season.
* This should be ALL about the kids ❤️. Not about you at all. You had your chance. Let them be.
* Remember that youth sports should be about fun, physical exercise, mentoring, camaraderie, learning something new, and encouraging a love of exercise and movement to last a lifetime. Keep the big picture in mind. Let the rest of the pressure and stress fall away-it simply shouldn’t matter.
Ask Yourself:
How do I feel about these considerations? What might be hardest for me?
How involved were your parents in your own experience with sports? What was helpful? What was not?
Would it be worth asking your child what you could work on? What works best for them?
What would it feel like for you to parent them out of love and not fear, as it relates to sports? Just accepting and enjoying them…
Any changes that you would like to make in your sideline behavior, the amount of money that you spend on youth sports, or the amount of time you spend on tournaments/travel for sports?
Do you need to be more protective of your child’s childhood in terms of their overcommitments or injury?
Do you need to de-emphasize their sports identity and emphasize other cool parts of who they are?