Gentry
"Peninsula FYI"
February, 2004 |
It's Just A Game Christine VanDeVelde
takes a look at kids’ sports and the role of parents as amateur coaches
and fans
It's February. Time for hearts and flowers, bouquets and… brickbats at
your neighborhood ball park. Ah, yes, it's time for soccer tournaments,
baseball tryouts, swim meets, and basketball games – all opportunities for
parents to misbehave on a scale that ranges from the impolite to the
felonious.
Here are a few cases that made it onto the police blotter: Following a
disagreement over an umpire's call during a T-ball game for
five-year-olds, at least a dozen men ran onto the field to fight it out. A
twelve-year-old used a racial epithet against an opponent in a youth
football game that led to a brawl resulting in four arrests. A mother was
charged with assault and battery after attacking an eleven-year-old
because he was rooting against her son's baseball team.
A 2001 survey conducted by Sports Illustrated for Kids found that 70% of
children quit organized sports by the age of 13 because they're not having
fun. Why? The win-at-all-cost mentality of their parents. When a 2002
Parenting magazine poll asked who was the most competitive in youth
sports, 79% said it's the parents –coaches scored 17% and kids just 4%.
Jim Thompson, founder and Executive Director of Positive Coaching
Alliance, which began at Stanford University in 1998, said his
organization started out training coaches to teach positive life lessons
through youth sports, believing the relationship between the coach and the
child was most important. But today, at least half of their time is spent
helping organizations control parents' behavior.
You've seen them on the sidelines and in the stands -- parents who live
and die with every goal, every round, every at bat. Totally wrapped up in
their children's performance, they see every game as a steppingstone to
Stanford or a way to make up for their own childhood failures. They
bad-mouth the competition, gossip about their childrens' teammates and
second-guess the coaches. Hellooo… this is not the 7th game of the NBA
Finals.
Our front row seat at the spectacle of parental over-involvement came when
the mother of another competitor in an equestrian event sidled up to our
daughter as she was about to ride into the ring and tried to psych her out
by saying, "It's too bad that last round was such a disaster." Should kids
say that kind of thing to each other? Maybe… Competitors probably should
be prepared to deal with the mind games that can go on in organized sport.
But should parents engage in psychological warfare against kids who
compete with their kids? No way.
Don't get me wrong, competition is not unhealthy. Victory is definitely
better than defeat. It's how parents deal with the competition that is the
problem. In our case, when I approached this parent about her behavior and
her daughter's bullying, I was told that was simply the way the world
works. Well, it's not… and if it is, it shouldn't be. Parents need to stop
rationalizing that bullying, trash-talking, and cheating are just
different ways to compete. There is a difference between being hungry to
win and being nasty. And remember -- the children are watching and they
mimic adult behavior. The child who learns to bully and cheat on the field
will do it in the classroom and later in the board room or office suite.
Youth sports are a great arena for life lessons. One of the most important
is focusing on mastery rather than winning. The game is about being the
best you can be – and if you are really good, you'll win. Positive
Coaching's Jim Thompson, who has had the opportunity to talk with the
greatest coaches of the day, says that, over and over again, these men and
women say winning is a byproduct. The goal is to play the best you can and
winning will take care of itself.
And, by the way, the real outcome is your child's success as a student, a
citizen, a friend, a parent, a person. What you should want is a child
who's a winner at life. |
