I watch a lot of youth sports. It comes with the territory. As I was watching a youth baseball game, I saw a parent coaching his kid from the sideline. He was screaming at the top of his lungs at his kid, telling him to watch the ball and to take his head out of his butt. He used harsher language.
After hearing that and watching the poor kid flail, I was thinking that dad just sucked all the fun out of that poor kid’s sport.
Now if you are a parent with a kid in sports, ask yourself this, and be honest.
Why do you pay for your kid to play for a sport? The obvious answer is parents want their kids to have fun.
After all, that is the reason we sign up our kids to play sports, right? We want them to have a good time and enjoy a healthy outdoor experience.
But unfortunately for many kids, the experience becomes more than something to just enjoy.
Some parents might see all the talent the kid has at four years old and they begin coaching him to be the next Joe Montana. At that age the kid should be having fun and not thinking of making the NFL.
At that point, the sport becomes serious and is no longer fun for the kid, it’s all work.
Then there are always those parents that don’t let their kid play because they think they know more than the coach.
At Little League games these are the loudest parents. They can be seen making gestures at their kids to move their kids on the field regardless of what the coach says. Who are the kids supposed to listen to, their parents, who they spend more time with, or the coach, who gives them playing time? Often parents make it confusing for the kids.
I heard the other day at one game, a parent was telling the kid how to pitch from the stands.
Of course the most god-awful thing is to witness the parents that are above the officials.
At a football game I heard one parent yelling at the top of their lungs how bad the referee was. What does that teach the kid about sportsmanship? Just imagine what the kid was thinking on the sideline.
Then at a soccer game, I heard parents yelling obscenities at the official because they thought he made a bad call. And we wonder why our kids have potty mouths.
Parents often ponder why their kids stop playing sports in high school. I mean, shoot, I would be embarrassed by my parents if they carried on that way. Remember parents, we are supposed to be the role models.
The parents often would tell me their kid lost interest. Well, perhaps they did, or perhaps the parents just wouldn’t leave the kid alone.
Look at it from the kids’ standpoint. Johnny is on the sideline trying to enjoy the game for what it is and his parents are making a spectacle of themselves yelling at Johnny and the referees and even the coaches. How can that be fun for him?
It’s funny, you can talk to parents and they would say that they are the best parents in the world and they let their kid play the game. Ten minutes after talking to them, they begin to transform into something unrecognizable. It’s as if the game makes them undergo some kind of mutation like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The morphing prevents them from being a well-behaved parent.
What kind of parent are you? Are you the beast or do you let your kid have fun?