Being a sports parent can be a tough gig. If that’s you, take a moment to give yourself some credit. Simply making your child’s sport possible means you’re already doing a great job.
Why do I say that? Because you’re reading this. Because you already give huge amounts of time to your child’s sport, pay for kit and training, wash mountain after mountain of laundry, and build your whole schedule around getting them where they need to be. That deserves real credit, and it isn’t always given.
That doesn’t mean there’s no room to grow. There’s no such thing as a perfect sports parent. Even with all the information in the world, normal human emotions will sometimes push us towards behaviour that isn’t quite what our child needs.
Over the years, plenty of organisations and coaches have tried to put sports parents into neat boxes. They’ve lectured us on how to behave and expected us to know as much about the sporting journey as they do, without putting in place the strategies that would make the club–coach–parent relationship easier to navigate.
The good news is that a growing number of major sporting organisations around the world now recognise this, and we’re proud to be working with more of them across different sports and countries. Real progress is being made. There will be bumps along the way, but we’re heading in the right direction.
Parents keep getting labelled: pushy, supportive, vicarious and everything in between. The truth is that sports parenting is far too complicated to reduce to a label, and thankfully, more people are starting to see that.
So it’s worth looking at some of the behaviours that make up great sports parenting, and a few we’d all do well to keep to a minimum.
Great sports parenting tends to include:
- Making sure your child isn’t defined by their sporting ability
- Giving love and support unconditionally, whatever the result
- Turning up to matches and training, but keeping a sensible distance from the action
- Helping your child take responsibility rather than look for someone to blame
- Focusing on effort and process as the route to results
- Thinking about long-term development, not the next scoreline
- Keeping home a safe place to switch off, not a shrine to their sport
- Encouraging your child to work out solutions for themselves
- Being supportive and encouraging without going over the top
Behaviours worth minimising:
- Comparing your child with other players, or yourself with other parents
- Looking for someone to blame when things don’t go to plan
- Getting too close to the action, or too wrapped up in training and matches
- Living through your child, or treating their sporting ability as a verdict on your parenting
- Losing perspective and getting stressed over things that aren’t a big deal
- Going too high when they win, or too low when they lose
- Saving praise and positive feedback for the wins
- Telling everyone how talented your child is
Honestly, these lists could go on much longer. Most of us swing between many of these behaviours at different times. They aren’t mutually exclusive, and nearly every parent will show most of them at some point, mildly or otherwise.
If that sounds like you, all any of us can really do is aim for progress. Perfection is probably out of reach for every sports parent, and that’s fine. What matters is that we keep working towards a home and sporting environment where our children can truly flourish.
