Positive Parenting In Youth Sports

It's a funny thing about youth sports. I can't think of any organized youth league or organization that doesn't offer a Positive Coaching program, with a manual and training sessions offering guidelines and conditions for anyone volunteering to coach youngsters. They all invariably also offer practice drills and guidance for better performance for the kids. But few, if any, spend the necessary time and effort or provide the tools to help parents do a good job with their youngsters. This is ironic since most of the problems in youth sports involve over-zealous parents, absentee parents or children unprepared to handle organized competition.

Even those programs that do offer some type of Positive Sports Parenting program, seem to be in their infancy. A couple of years ago a youth sports league in Jupiter Florida instituted a program requiring parents to attend a Parent Sportsmanship workshop as a requirement for signing up their youngster to play sports in their league. The movement has caught on. The National Alliance for Youth Sports reports a significant increase in leagues across the country reporting that they have been working on developing guidelines for positive parent participation in their youngster's sports programs.

Media reports of out-of-control parents at youth sports games continue to make headlines. For years, leagues have scrambled to deal with each isolated incident as it occurred rather than offer a league wide parent program. The argument in the past has been that there weren't enough episodes to warrant a total parent education program. However, the National Alliance for Youth Sports reports a significant increase of parent altercations in youth sports over the past few years. AYSO, Little League, National Junior Basketball, Pop Warner, Parks and Recreation Departments, etc. are all coming forth with materials for a parent education program.

The question is this: are the local leagues using the materials offered by the national organizations? If not, are they developing their own materials? It's time for local youth sports leagues to take the leadership role and offer a Positive Parenting program.

In working through this problem with Dr. Darrell Burnett, ( www.djburnett.com) a clinical psychologist and certified sports psychologist specializing in youth sports, it became obvious that there needed to be a "Parent Packet", one which would include three elements: 1) Parent Education, 2) Behavioral Expectations, and 3) Consequences. The first part of the packet should be educational, showing parents the value of youth sports for sports sake, regardless of win-loss records, individual statistics, etc.

They need to know that youth sports can help build self esteem, self confidence, appropriate social skills, team work, etc. Parents need to be educated and shown that, if they just let the kids play, without putting pressure on the kids, without emphasizing "winning" as the only acceptable outcome, good things can happen. They need to understand that youth sports give kids a sense of belonging, a key to self esteem. They need to know that youth sports teach a kid it's all right to make a mistake, and to learn from mistakes.

Many parents are preoccupied with the "brass ring" of possible scholarships or even a professional athletic career. Their overreactions at sports events are often connected with their conviction that a 'scout' may be in the stands. It would be helpful to give them some sobering statistics about chances for scholarships and professional contracts, not to discourage them from hoping, but to help them assess the reality of a scholarship or professional contract. It my help temper some of their overreactions at youth sports.

The second part of the Parent Packet should be a list of specific positive behaviors expected of parents at sporting events, along with a list of specific negative behaviors that will not be tolerated. Effective parents understand the importance of spelling things out. When they discuss rules of the house with their children, they spell out their expectations with regard to cleaning the room, making the bed, doing homework, etc., as well as spelling out the negative behaviors that will not be tolerated (temper tantrums, offensive language, door slamming, etc.)

In a similar fashion, league officials, in their concern for parental behaviors in youth sports, would do well to spell out the expected positive behaviors of sportsmanship (i.e., winning without gloating, losing without excuses, showing respect for players, coaches, officials, and other parents, etc.)

Similarly, league officials need to spell out misconduct or lack of sportsmanship (i.e., confusing players by yelling out instructions from the sidelines or stands, publicly verbally challenging coaching decisions, berating officials, taunting opponents, using threatening gestures, offensive language, etc.).

The third, and essential part of a Parent Packet, should be a list of consequences for negative behaviors. Consequences are the key to understanding motivation. If you want to understand why anyone does or doesn't do something, look to the consequences. That is, if a person experiences a positive, pleasant consequence after doing something, that person is likely to repeat it. If however, a person experiences a negative, unpleasant consequence, that person is less likely to repeat the behavior.

The key word is experience. If the goal of league officials is to decrease negative unsportsmanlike conduct by parents, then there have to be consequences that will be experienced by parents as negative and unpleasant. Lectures or warnings may fall on deaf ears. Some leagues choose to ban parents from games, or, if behaviors continue, to ban them from the league. The National Alliance of Youth Sports ( www.nays.org ) lists a continuum of consequences for behaviors which could prove valuable to leagues looking to create and enforce positive conduct at games.

If local leagues take the leadership and offer a Parent Packet as part of the program, with the components of Education, Behavioral Expectations, and Consequences, it will go a long way towards curbing parental misconduct, and it will send a message to the kids. The message is this: the local league officials are leaders, believing that youth sports are all about kids, and they will do everything they can to help keep the attention on the kids. Moreover, they will help parents develop their role of offering positive support, and they will curtail parents from negative, unsportsmanlike behaviors