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Over the past year, I have had the opportunity to conduct 11 parent-training workshops, working with parents who have a strong desire to “do the right thing” when it comes to guiding their children through the world of sport.
While interacting with them, the issue that has strongly impacted me is the huge frustration and helplessness that most of them seem to experience. It’s more than likely that parents reading this page experience these feelings, too, as they witness their children encounter the challenges, disappointments, and physical and psychological pain that come with playing games and sports.
The natural inclination of every parent is to protect her child. Thus, when you witness an official making a bad call, or a coach cutting down your child’s play time, or an opposing player physically or verbally attacking your child, you instinctively want to step in to ‘handle it’. But when you intervene, you are likely to be labeled a bad sports parent. With all the media attention directed at sports parents these days, the last thing any parent wants is to be featured on the five o’clock news!
Of course, sitting back and doing nothing won’t make you feel good, either. So what must a respon-sible parent do in such a situation? The first thing is to understand that wanting to rush on to the field and push the kid who just pushed your kid, is a perfectly normal sentiment. Experiencing this sentiment doesn’t make you a bad person. It’s a perfectly natural response. In fact you should worry if you don’t experience this rush of emotion.
Yet it’s important to understand that how you feel and how you choose to react to such situations, are distinctly separate issues. Sentiment is neither good nor bad; it just is. Behaviour, on the other hand results in action which is open to judgement. In such situations the best course is to acknowledge your feelings and choose to act in a way that will make a positive impact on your child. And the best course of action that will have the greatest positive effect is to let your child handle the situation.
This is a parent’s hardest job: to step back and let children make mistakes, experience frustration, and even get hurt (within reason). Because if you don’t let a child resolve the problem of reduced play time with the coach, what will she do when she’s 27 and her boss passes her over for a promotion? If your children assume that every time they face a challenge or setback, mom or dad will step in, what message does it send them about their own competence? By step-ping in parents may offer reassurance and appease their fear for the moment, but such protectiveness will have the negative impact of pushing the child towards diffidence in the future. Rather than helping by stepping in, parents prevent their children from taking independent decisions and learning through experience — bad and good.
Engaging in sport teaches children numerous life skills. As parents we need to understand that by letting children face on-field and in-arena challenges, we prepare them to confront the greater and larger hardships of life.
Therefore being a judicious sports parent is a challenging task. If we can overcome the instinctive response to correct a child’s mistakes or help out with difficulties, we put ourselves in a better position to be good guides and a source of positive support to children. For instance if we notice a child exhibiting disinterest in her favourite sport, as sensible sports parents we need to patiently reason with her, to help her identify the cause of the sudden lack of interest. If the main cause is difficulty/fear in expressing her feelings to the coach, instead of stepping in, we need to encourage her to discuss the issue(s) with the coach and communicate her sentiments or difficulty to him.
Being a supportive sports parent is not just about taking children to the playground, but also about how and what they can learn by engaging in sports and games. Guidelines for parents include:
• Being a positive influence on the child through parental demeanour and behaviour
• Being a guide and helping children sort out the problems and difficulties which confront them on their own
• Resisting the natural temptation to step in and take control of their on-field or locker room problems
One of the greatest benefits of engaging in games and sports activity is the life skills children learn which will help them become successful in life. Your job as a parent isn’t to conduct the experiment; you’re there to make sure no one blows up the lab.
Restraint is not easy. No one ever said it would be. For caring parents the natural urge is to intervene, and take your child’s problems and difficulties on your own shoulders. But this natural impulse should be resisted. The end result will be worth the pains you’ve taken to be a good sports parent.
(Dr. George Selleck is a California-based sports psychologist and advisor to Sportz Village, Bangalore. E-mail: drselleck@earthlink.net)