Many of these parents and coaches are well intentioned, trying to support their child and their team through match situations totally unaware of the damage they may be doing by overly involving themselves before and after but crucially during the game itself.
I say that they are unaware because if they are not the current climate on the sidelines is far worse than I currently fear.
This morning I carried out a little experiment at an Under 8 grassroots football match in the UK. I counted the number of tactical instructions yelled from the sideline by parents and coaches to the children. There were 134 yelled out in 40 minutes of play. I must stress that this did not include positive praise.
Now imagine as adults if we were embarking on a task and during this time we were being yelled new instructions, in this case approximately four a minute. Now imagine on top of that, that some of these instructions were also contradictory. I believe that not only would we struggle to concentrate but we would struggle to make the correct decisions that we were originally carrying out. Just think how this must feel for a child actively involved in a sporting situation?
If parents and coaches are not aware of the damage they are doing by directing play and yelling tactical instructions from the touchline then I hope that this article will give them something to mull over.
Caught up in the excitement and emotion of a game, many parents and coaches feel that they are really helping and supporting their children whilst watching by shouting technical or tactical instruction. Whilst this may on occasions in the short term prove successful there are major long term implications of this for the player.
- It reduces problem solving skills
- It decreases decision making skills
- It reduces creativity in young players
- It reduces the child’s enjoyment
- It increases the pressure on the child
- It increases anxiety in the child
- It prevents children from mastering life skills
- It decreases the ability of the child to cope independently(particularly if the parent and the coach are not around)
Bearing all this in mind it is important that we then generate an understanding of how all of this is linked together with the behaviour that we are displaying. The following infographic from our friends at believeperform.com gives us a very powerful visual image.
My message to parents:
Are you shouting tactical instructions on the sidelines?
If your answer is, “Yes,” then stop. Stop now.
I can already hear you justifying why. I can already hear you rationalising your particular approach. I can hear you because I could be you. I am you. I want to right the wrongs for my child. I want him to score. I want him to feel joy in victory. I want him to avoid the pain of losing. I want him to know I am there, that I love him, that I am his biggest fan.
But, let me ask you:
Do you think it helps?
It does not.
No justifications, no intelligent counter arguments. No nonsense. Screaming and shouting tactical instructions is bad. It is that simple. I did not make it up.
My message to coaches:
The above still applies however there can be a little bit of flexibility if you are trying to assist your team and individuals but it should be a very measured approach.
We have a number of parents who contact us who have been told by organisations what they would like them to do and how to behave but then they have to watch the coach do exactly the opposite. Coaches must be great role models for parents and help create the right environment for the children by leading from the front. Parents will then follow.
With positive support only on the touchlines can we regain control of an environment that is in real danger of spiralling out of control. In its current climate the only people who are suffering in the long term are the people who we love and want to achieve the most; the children.
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Please click on the link below to access the full article.
Negotiating the post game conversation
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The original article and comments can be found at http://thetalentcode.com/2012/10/08/better-parenting-through-silence/
The videos give us plenty of food for thought. Although they are not sports videos the same principles can still be applied to a sporting context.
In the first video, Natalie is trying to learn to ride a bike. Her dad wants to help. Things <cough> don’t go particularly well.
Why? From the first moment of the exchange, the dad is trying to take command of the situation. He keeps saying her name (“Natalie! Look at you! You’re doing it! We’re gonna keep going around the block! Keep going!”). Even when it’s abundantly clear Natalie is having none of it, the dad keeps up.
He’s doing what we’ve all done: trying to nudge, persuade, cajole a kid past the difficulty using language and emotion. He’s trying to create success by narrating success. Meltdown ensues.
Contrast that approach with this video of a father and a four-year-old kid taking on another biking challenge. Here, the interaction is completely different. The kid is in the position of control, not the parent. You can see it from the first moment, where the father doesn’t tell the kid what’s going to happen — instead, he asks a question.
DAD: Oh, I’m first?
KID: You’re first.
DAD: Okay.
Instead of narrating the process, this dad is almost entirely silent, except for the occasional praise for the effort (“Good work, pal!”). The messages are implied, not spoken — follow me… this is fun… I’m right here.
This silence creates something vital, because it allows the kid to narrate the process, which he does beautifully: “I can do it just the same as the other guys now… Yeah, oh yeah, buddy.” We see it most vividly at 4:10, in the moment just after the kid wipes out. The dad doesn’t come to the rescue; he’s present, but he doesn’t say a word, except to ask if the kid is ready to go.
To sum up:
- 1) Seek to put the kid in the position of control.
- 2) Speak minimally and avoid commands; instead, ask questions that lead to action.
- 3) When they encounter a problem, avoid rushing to the rescue. Create opportunities for resilience.
The larger point is, kids are smart. You can’t con them. To take on challenges they need to be in control. They need to be given the room and motivation to encounter the challenge honestly, and a parent’s role is to help create the conditions where that can happen — then to step back.
]]>Following years and years of scientific research examining which parental strategies are most likely to help children thrive when it comes to their sporting endeavours, we are now have more ideas about how parents can optimise their involvement in their children’s sport.
The full article can be found at the link below.
http://blog.innerdrive.co.uk/sport-psychology-parents
A recent survey found that 45% of children said that bad parental behaviour made them not want to take part in sport. The car journey home after a match is just one situation where a misspoken word can be magnified resulting in hours of stress, tears and frustration.
But parenting a youth athlete is much more than just what to say post-competition. Psychologist Dr Chris Harwood and Dr Camilla Knight have researched sporting parent expertise, what youth athletes want from their parents and optimising parental impact. They were kind enough to chat to us about their work and we have summarised the top 8 tips that we think all parents should know to better help and support their children.
SPORT PSYCHOLOGY FOR PARENTS
Develop goals with your children for their sport. Central to this is to have regular and consistent communication about what they want to achieve and what you hope they will achieve. The more congruent that these aims are the better. Setting goals is notoriously difficult, with them sometimes becoming an anchor dragging you down instead of a platform to build off. For more tips on how to master this, check out our blog, ‘How To Do Goal Setting Right’.
Create a supportive environment in which your child feels that you understand them and their sporting involvement. Parents can play a key role in reducing the fear of failure their child feels, with ‘Shame and Embarrassment’ being the number one worry that youth athletes think will follow a failure.
Talk to your child about what they would like you to do at training and competitions. After all, this is about them and not you. When it comes to youth sport, many parents fall in to the trap of talking more then they listen.
Be there to support and guide your child, but limit conversation about outcomes and expectations. Research from educational psychology has demonstrated that having high expectations can help improve performances, but only if they are accurate and accompanied with high levels of support. How parents communicate and react after a setback has been found to be a significant predictor of their child’s mindset.
Dr Knight’s research has shown that children want their parents to be involved in a supporting manner, rather than give technical or tactical advice. Furthermore, they appreciate when parents provide ‘common sense’ advice (i.e. on effort, attitude and practical aspects) rather than performance related advice.
Develop positive relationships with your child’s coach. The more that you can work with them and not against them, the better. Coaching is a tough gig – the more supportive and positive the relationship between parents and coaches then the more everyone benefits.
Socialize with other parents and create wider support network for you and your child. Being a parent whose children are heavily involved in sport can be a lonely place. By actively creating a wider support network for both you and your child, it makes the experience a more enjoyable. As 17th Century poet John Donne remarked, “no man is an island”.
Recognise what you find challenging about your child’s sport and develop strategies to manage to emotions. Dr Harwood and Dr Knight have found that parent’s ability to manage the emotional demands of competition will impact upon the child’s personal enjoyment and quality of experience. This emotional control allows parents to provide better support and feedback to their children.
Model healthy attitudes towards sport and physical activity. How a parent views the importance of education has been found to be a strong predictor of their child’s grades. Likewise, within sport, parents are often the primary source for how their young children view their participation.
All too often an emphasis is on becoming ‘elite’. This leads to over-coaching, excess pressure and focusing too early on just one sport in attempt to clock up as many hours as possible. The paradox here is that research suggests that if young children focus on just one sport (instead of sampling and enjoying many) they are actually less likely to reach the highest levels.
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