Positive Parenting: Sports Edition
The 2019 State of Play survey from the Aspen Institute teaches us that the average child spends less than three years playing a sport and quits by age 11. The survey connected with parents of youth athletes, finding that the primary reason that kids are quitting sports is because they simply aren’t having fun anymore; which we know is the primary reason that kids play sports.
The cost of sports is also a major factor in these findings and much needs to be done to change how we organize and implement youth sports in the United States, but that is a multi-layered and diverse challenge that requires a lot of attention (and we will give it lots of attention in this blog). Fun, on the other hand, is something we can quickly have an impact on as coaches, parents, and sporting community. There are things that we are doing on a regular basis that directly impact the fun that our youth have while playing sports. Some of these things are:
Putting pressure on kids to be elite.
Focus only on competition and winning.
Modeling behavior that is negative.
Creating a negative team culture.
Lack of positive reinforcement.
Injustice and inequality.
Not allowing youth to have a say in program design and culture.
We focus a lot on coaches and what they can do, but parents play an incredibly important role in the enjoyment that youth have in the particular sports(s) they participate in. Oftentimes, parents may not even realize the impact they have; especially when it’s negative. I’ve witnessed so many examples of negative parental behavior at practices and games of a wide variety of sports and its amazing how much youth pick up and engage in that behavior and the impact it has, both short-term and long-term. Some of the main examples of common behavior are:
Focusing on mistakes.
Yelling at refs for perceived missed calls.
Talking trash to other parents.
Yelling at the coach re: playing time, tactics, etc…
Non-verbal reactions.
Critical critique of play/game/activity.
We know that these things have an impact on the kids' enjoyment, yet they can be difficult for parents to avoid doing. Some of it is the competitiveness of the parents themselves, the thought of the parents that the kids share the same views as they do, the incorrect assumption that all kids play to win, and the fact that parents are prone to emotional responses to things involving their kids. The problem, though, is that kids will often model the behavior of those they look up too; including professional athletes, mentors, coaches, and especially parents. So, if parents are talking trash or yelling at the ref, guess what the kids are going to think is ok?
We, as parents and coaches, need to place a strong emphasis on creating a positive environment for our youth and model the type of behavior and values that we deem most important. I think it’s important to understand that their is not one single way to create this environment. It’s not 2 + 2 = 4. Each parent is different, each coach is different, each youth is different.