What NOT to do: Parents Edition
Anyone who has ever played sports, team or individual, can probably tell you a story about someone's parents going overboard during a game/match/event. The video above, if you can make it through it, is an example of all that can be wrong with the parents of young athletes. It’s an old video, but we can learn so much from it and unfortunately, it is one of MANY just like it. There shouldn’t even be one.
The problem has gotten so bad, that throughout the United States, youth soccer leagues have instituted a “silent soccer” day during the year where parents aren’t allowed to cheer, coach or yell anything from the sidelines. We can go back and forth on the effectiveness of this strategy, but my focus lies in the fact that something like this is even needed in the first place. It wasn’t instituted because parents were positively cheering from the sidelines, acting respectfully towards the other team or singing the refs praises; no, it was instituted because parents' behavior has been proven to have negative impacts on the development of the athletes on the field and overall athletic experience.
Think back on your own experience. Think back on things parents have yelled from the sidelines at your team or things your parents have yelled at you personally. Did those moments make you feel good? For a lot of kids, the answer to that question is a resounding no. For those kids (as well as others on the team or in that environment), we are learning that it can do one or more of the following:
Impact their social-emotional growth.
Cause them to lose interest in playing sports.
Mimic the behavior of their parents on the field.
Stop playing sports altogether.
Stunt the growth of the player as an athlete.
Develop a win or nothing mentality.
Create an environment where sports are less fun.
There is a lot of research surrounding best practices for positive youth development. Some of the things we know, with certainty, is that the brains of youth develop in ways that require intentionality in the development process. We can’t, as coaches and parents, ignore creating positive emotional space in the same way we focus on creative positive physical spaces for our athletes. The reason this is especially important is that the period from adolescence until the mid-’20s is an especially important time for brain development. That development is guided by principles that are well known scientifically, but not as well understood in the athletic space; meaning that the behavior of parents and coaches can have consequences that might not be understood by adults who react, think, and respond differently because their brains are in a different part of the development cycle. Youth, especially adolescent youth, tend to react and think with more emotions. That isn’t a generalization or an observation about youth, it’s physiological.
In the video we watched above, there are so many negative youth development practices in one three minute video; all with the young athletes looking on and observing the behavior of parents who are, perhaps, unwittingly creating an unsafe space for athlete development. Some things that stuck out to me, besides the obvious.
The individual filming the game and subsequent altercation saying “hey, 2nd place ain't bad”.
The first reaction of the opposing coach/parent is anger.
The filming parents saying “are you wanting to do something about it” to the angry coach/parent.
The filming parent(s) saying “tell your team to practice”.
Both sides swearing, blaming each other, and feigning innocence.
Players on both teams looking on during the entire scene, with little adult supervision.
These are just six things that stood out that all can be pointed to as negative youth development practices and are disheartening to observe. As adults, it’s so important that we help model the type of behaviors and values that we would like to see in our youth and we have to be ultra aware of what we are doing in all situations and we simply can’t allow for situations like in the video to ever occur.