Recently in local news there was a story about a 8 year girl who was playing with a novice C team as goalie and was pulled off the team but club officials after parents of other team members had complained that she was not good enough and was costing her team too many games. The club gave into parental pressure and removed her from the team " in her best interests" . We are talking here about novice C after all and yet, rather than deal with the parents, the club chose to pull the child.
Parents being too involved in their kids sports and being ultra competitive and focused on results over the development and more importantly enjoyment of their kids in nothing new in youth sports. I have dealt with many a parents who felt their daughter was the next great one and felt she should playing more, or treated differently or couldn't understand why she wasn't yet on the national team. However, parents being to present in their kids sports participation isn't just about playing time or results but can have ramifications that go well beyond the playing surface. One such example from my own coaching career..... in my final year with the provincial program, I was working with the U16s and during our final activity, a residency camp in the states, I noticed that one of our two team captains just seemed off. Her play on the field while still above average wasn't to her usual standards and her body language and attitude was giving off signals that something was wrong. On the bus ride back, I spent time chatting with players one on one when I got to her I shared my perceptions with her. She replied that she was simply a little overwhelmed and tired, both physically and mentally between soccer and her work as a lifeguard. Her club team was due to participate in a tournament in a few days where she would play up to 4 or 5 games in 3 days and she was dreading it. I asked her about taking the tournament off and she quickly said her dad wouldn't let her. I offered to speak to her father and she seemed ok with it. The next day, I called her father and explained my observations and the discussion I had with his daughter ( not mentioning her comment about her dad not letting her skip the tournament) and suggesting that it might benefit for her to scale back her playing a bit this weekend. He quickly replied that he knew his daughter better than I did and that this tournament was "fun" because it was a chance for all the parents to hang out and that the team generally did well at it and she would play. Well, fast forward, in the second game of the tournament early Saturday morning, she went for a challenge and came out with a concussion and broken nose. I can't say for sure that her fatigue was a direct cause of the injury but having worked with her for two years, and seen her dominant athletically and physically, I do think it played into the situation. We are talking about a player who was a top provincial team player, who would go on to play 4 years in the NCAA and yet her father fit it important she play in a club tournament because it was fun for the parents to hang out..... This leads me into my thoughts about parents and their involvement in their kids sports participation. I share this as a long time coach, who has worked at various levels and age groups and who full disclosure is not a parent so I can't share from that perspective. One of your most essential goals in children's lives as athletes is to have them gain ownership of their participation. They need to feel that their sport is their thing. But ownership isn't just something that they can gain on their own. Rather, it is a gift that parents give them that offers so many wonderful benefits to their development as young athletes and, more importantly, as young people. It is also something that can be taken away from them with ease by overzealous parents. Perhaps the greatest obstacle to children gaining that ownership of their sport occurs when parents commandeer the ownership to meet their own needs. From all my years of coaching, there are a variety of red flags that tend to show up when parents start to take too much of a place in their kids sports lives and are clear indicators of parents putting their own needs ahead of those of their children, and perhaps "stealing" the children's athletic life. In the zealousness to see their children find athletic success, parents can be in danger of becoming so involved in their children's efforts that they may not distinguish between their own needs and those of their children. Many involved in youth sports talk about a type of "reverse dependency" in which parents over identify with their child's experience and define their own self-worth based on the success of their children. Sports may actually become more important to them than it is to the kids themselves. This excessive interest on a parent's part, rather than promoting participation, undermines their interest by taking away their ownership of their sport. Children may develop the perception that the sport is no longer theirs because the parents seem more invested in it than they are. In essence, parents seem to merge with their children in their athletic efforts. And when parents do merge with their children, the can assume roles that are outside of their purview as a parent, such as doing all scheduling without their child's input, talking too much about their sport, attending all practices and competitions, and coaching the children (even when they might not really know much about the sport). An early sign is that you take responsibility away from them, such as constantly asking them whether they have maintained their equipment properly or are adequately prepared for an upcoming competition. The clearest and scariest signs that parents might be merging with a child ( again sports wise) is if they enter the "we" zone, meaning they begin talking about their children's sports participation in terms of how "we" did, for example, "We had a great game today" or "We qualified for Junior Nationals." Not being a parent ( but an uncle a few times over ) and having had a somewhat involved parents myself, I can only assume that one of the great joys of being a parent is sharing in the children's achievements. Excitement for their successes and disappointment for their failures are a normal and healthy part of parenting. But sharing in a child's sports participation doesn't mean living through them. Sharing their experiences places the focus on them. The emphasis is on what the experience means to the children, the emotions they are feeling, the lessons they learn, and the benefits they gain from their sport. When children perform well, parents should be thrilled FOR them. When they perform poorly, parents should feel their sadness. With sharing, it is all about your children. When a sports parent lives vicariously through their children, the focus is on themselves, the parents' emotions, what the experience means to them, what they gain from it. When children have good competitions, the parents can feel like they have succeeded. When your children have bad competitions, parents feel that they have failed. A little break to share once again share a little experience, this past fall, with the coaching change with my former team a parent posted on Facebook about how "they" were loving the new coach who had new tactics and focus. Fact was that his daughter had started off playing more and being more involved in the game plan that she had in 3 years with me as coach and now "they" were happy with a new coach. As if the change had impacted the parent's life also. I can only imagine how tough being a kid is these days. Children have so many responsibilities including school, family, social life, and their sports participation. These challenges alone are sufficient to burden children in the instant gratification, instant social media, viral reaching age of information availability. Then if and when parents become overly invested in their children's sport, it may also place on them the additional responsibility of having to make the parent feel validated and happy. If a parent does not gain sufficient meaning and satisfaction from your own life and look to their kids' sport involvement as the primary source of ego-gratification, parents' self-esteem becomes dependent on how their children perform in their sport. Imagine the burden. Every time children compete, a parent's happiness may lay squarely on their shoulders. If they succeed, parents can feel fulfilled and if they do poorly, parents might feel a sense of despair. Imagine the pressure children might feel when they walk onto the field, rink, or court knowing a parent's is on the line and it is entirely on their shoulders! The first red flag that might signal that parents are placing too much responsibility for happiness on their children's shoulders relates to the strength of a parents emotions compared to their kid's. When parents are more nervous before competitions than the children are, more excited when they succeed, and more disappointed when they don't perform up to expectations, it is a clear indication that something is wrong. I have often coached athletes where I was convinced that they didn't particularly or no longer enjoyed playing soccer but seemed to continue for the fear of disappointing their parent(s). Sports are seductive. Fame ( with this being relative ) and fortune ( ok for the most part this is a stretch) resulting from athletic success appear to be waiting for children if only they have the talent and determination to reach that level. They could be the next Olympic champion or multi-million dollar "bonus baby." This dream can cause some to lose perspective on sports' intrinsic value of fun, life lessons, and life-long health. If parents buy into this unrealistic perspective and direct their energy based on this illusion, they could be setting children up for failure and ultimately both the child and the parent for disappointment. When anyone is seduced by the same naive perspective which might lead to the perspective that anything less that total success and it's all focus on all sports and the exclusion of anything else, parents are inflicting potentially long-term and irreparable harm to children's personal development. The odds of your children becoming great athletes are also infinitesimally small. I'm not saying that children shouldn't dream big (if they don't aim for the sky, they won't even get to the top of the mountain), but that shouldn't be the focus for sports parents. And definitely no one should expect a financial return on an investment from the children's athletic lives. In a parent's zealousness to encourage children's athletic development, there is a danger of pushing them harder and harder, even when they may not be prepared for the increased demands. For example, children might get registered to attend training camps all summer when they would benefit more from a few weeks of camps along with fun and activities unrelated to the sport. Parents today seem to be anxiously concerned with early learning and as such if a child has a slow start, parents' anxiety to prove he or she is OK may lead them to push her to do things before they are ready. An environment full of pressure is likely to become a strained, joyless one and this leads to the eventuality that they might have trouble coping with the demands of our complicated society. By placing children in practice and competitive situations in which they are over matched, it may be inadvertently inhibiting, rather than facilitating, their interest, achievement, and enjoyment in their sport. The essential question: Why would anyone put children in situations in which they are over matched? One reason may be that a parent has overstated their children's capabilities. They may not have a realistic understanding of their athletic abilities. They may use peer comparisons in judgments. A parent's own ego, disappointment with their own athletic shortcomings and they to fulfill their own achievement needs can cause parents to over match your children. Because of the parents' emotional investment in their sport, they may have difficulty admitting that they are anything but the most talented athlete out there. Wanting to "fast-forward" development is another reason for over matching children. In our society where achievement is so highly revered and rewarded, some may feel pressure to give children every advantage by putting them on what is believed is the fast track to success. This urgency shows itself in the need to get children involved with personal trainers, private coaches, and too much competition at too early an age. Parents may also feel the need to keep up with the perceived success of others not to mention feedback given by the parents of other kids. Unfortunately, too many fail to realize that development can't be rushed; the necessary time and effort has to be put in and children have to be allowed to develop at their own pace. I and many of peers I have had discussion and we tend to believe that pushing children too quickly up the development ladder will actually slow their progress. It's important to embrace the initial romance stage of development by emphasizing play, fun, and exploration. During this stage, children can learn fundamental skills and develop a love for the achievement activity. Rushing children through their development can interfere with the emergence of these areas and leave them with inadequate motivation and skills to be successful later in their development in their sport and as members of society. I don't question parents intentions towards their child sports' involvement and the reality is that it is a minority who really take their involvement in their kids' sports to the extremes exampled above, however like many things it is often the very vocal minority who impact the majority. Think back to the example I started today's post with... some parents complained and another child was removed from the team. Food for thought.
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AuthorAfter many years of coaching at various levels and with different teams, I thought I would share some of my experiences and thoughts about coaching. Archives
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