We continue to look at avoidable mistakes each of the stakeholder groups in sports will make as sports begin again. This time by looking at challenges this season- and beyond- will pose specifically to and for parents.
As tough as it is to be a coach, being a parent is a far tougher status. Coaches get the benefit of working through an objective lens. Parents, not so much, at least as far as objectivity is concerned. Parents have to work against time to provide enough life skills, character development, and resilience to make their kids successful adults. Add into this equation, that these same kids have had their lives disrupted and interrupted more over the past year than at any time at least since the end of World War II.
Also, I write this article on potential parental missteps, as I am finishing off a review of a parental complaint against a coach, ostensibly over the coach “cutting” that player from their team. Perhaps the most important advice I can offer to parents is to be circumspect and balanced as they judge the different aspects of their child’s sports experience and focus on inputs- that their child is receiving- skilled coaching, that they are treated with respect wherever they fall on the team’s talent spectrum, that the coach is emphasizing sportsmanship, responsibility, effort, and fun- rather than outcomes- time drops, placings, wins, and playing time.
1. Trying to Make Up for Lost Time
This is going to be the singular thread that is going to run through this next year. After 15 months of “not normal,” the return to some version of normalcy will come with extraordinary pressure, and things will be far different than where they were when we suspended or slowed down in March of last year. The lost year will heighten pressure on some athletes seeking to be noticed or gain an edge for national, regional, and college scholarship opportunities. There will also be older and more experienced athletes in the que ahead of rising ones, caught there by the same stoppage. If ever there were a time to practice patience as a parent, it’s this one. The truth is you may not know the athlete your child will be for some time after she returns to competition and many things may have changed over that time. Remember, patience is a virtue.
2. Judging the Coach on the Wrong Bases
Unlike the athlete and coach lists of avoidable mistakes, the parental list is much more interwoven with subtle delineations and shifts rather than jumping from broad area of concern to broad area of concern. While you are exercising patience in evaluating your child’s return to competition, how can you be sure they are getting the right coaching? Too often we judge coaches on the wrong bases. We look for success with other athletes. We look to wins and losses. Given the extraordinary number of variables in a post-covid world, competence, attention, and respect are far better and more accurate bases on which to judge your child’s coach.
Breaking this down a bit more, to evaluate competence, do the team’s practices include time for teaching and skill development, and not just competition, does the head coach spend time correcting technical issues, and working with assistants on skill refinement for all athletes. Do the coaches engage with every kid on the team or do they lavish coaching on more talented team members and when a coach gives feedback, is it meaningful feedback. Finally, do all the coaches treat all the team members with respect and as an individual. If your child is getting all of this they have a pretty solid coach, team, and environment.
3. Shielding Your Child from Difficult or Bad News
The last year has shown us the value of resilience in all things. Sport also teaches and helps us develop resilience. Sport provides perhaps the best forum for practicing resilience and understanding its power under controlled conditions. But no parent can or should shield their child from difficult or bad news. There will be times that our child won’t start, might not play, have to be disciplined, or ultimately cut from a team.
The reason why we value sport is that experiencing and enduring each of these challenging things at a young age, helps us come back from the more serious setbacks that life throws at us pretty much the whole length of our journey on earth. We all want the best for our children, but shielding them from adversity, from difficult or bad news, by not teaching them the value of coming back, or moving on, is depriving them of critical lessons and important life skills.
4. Crying Wolf
This mistake picks up on judging the coach on the wrong criteria discussed in #2 above and trying to shield your child from difficult news discussed in #3 above, and quadruples down on both of them. Crying wolf is when a parent aggrieved over a coaching decision or a talent judgment alleges misconduct against the coach. Disappointing or bad news is never easy to hear.
It may be harder for you to hear as a parent, than it is for your son or daughter. And perhaps the news was not delivered as well as it could have been- see coaching mistake #2 misusing power- that talks about delivering the worst news with sensitivity. But is crucial to remember that this is only a single judgment on your child in the context of this team, this competition, this circumstance and the expression of a judgment seldom adds up to coaching misconduct. There are lessons to take from a cut, or a failure, or a loss, but by crying wolf about coaching misconduct when none is present, we deprive our kids the benefit of these lessons and it can have a chilling effect on the coaching profession.
5. Not Listening to Your Child About a Bad Situation
If you are thinking- “first, you tell me to not listen to my kids, now you are telling me to listen to my kid?” Which is it? If crying wolf is assuming misconduct where no evidence of it exists, then it is also important to balance that against hearing your child when they honestly report what could be abusive treatment. As a victim of childhood sexual abuse, in a sports setting, I was lucky that my parents believed me and acted to protect me. Not every kid is so fortunate. So, what I am saying here, is that abuse does exist in the world and despite our desire to teach resilience, be circumspect, we do at times need to trust our better judgment and our kids, when actions don’t add up. Every sport in the U.S. Olympic movement has adopted the Code of the U.S. Center for SafeSport and the Center has exclusive jurisdiction to evaluate abusive conduct with youth in and around athletics. Familiarize yourself with the SafeSport Code and know how to make a report.
Five Mistakes Parents Will Make This Summer as Sports Begin Again
Written by Robert Boland in Articles on