Sports Parenting

According to CDC data spanning from 1999 to 2019, between 50% and 60% of school-aged children have participated in organized sports in their school district or community. In other words, over the past 20 years or so, millions of our kids have participated in team sports. This is of course mostly great news. The benefits of participating in team sports are endless. From improving physical fitness to building and developing some valuable mental and emotional skills, it’s difficult to overstate the value of this experience for our kids and the lasting impact it can have…if we use it the right way.

Unfortunately over that same time span, there have also been significant changes to our youth sports culture that have made doing just that harder than ever. Youth sports have become a big business. Decisions that were once made with our kids’ well-being and development in mind are now being driven by the almighty dollar, and that’s changed the game in many ways. Kids are specializing in sports at an earlier age. The cost and commitment to play is higher than it’s ever been. And parents’ stress levels have risen as they’ve been required to make a greater investment of time, energy, and money in order for their kids to participate. 

All those factors have made what was once a fun and innocent youth sports experience much more competitive, much more unhealthy, and in some ways much more dangerous to our kids than it once was. For many sports parents, navigating this challenging space isn’t easy. Even with good intentions, all these dynamics can cause them to lose their sense of balance and perspective. Most of us have seen with our own eyes what happens when parents take youth sports too seriously or mix up their priorities. Honestly, many of us have probably been those parents ourselves at times, to some degree or another. One thing is obvious for parents: these days, just showing up and hoping for the best can lead to trouble.

That’s why it’s so important to recognize how to be a good sports parent and what it requires from you. This article will clarify some key differences between positive and negative sports parent behavior, and offer some sports parent resources to support you and your child through this important but challenging athletic experience.

Types of Sports Parents

The truth is, there’s a fine line between being a positive, supportive sports parent and a negative, overbearing one. Anyone who’s been to a youth sporting event can probably picture the overbearing parent - the one who just seems to be a little too invested. 

We’ll get to those parents in a bit. First, what does positive parent behavior in sports look like?

What Does Positive Parent Behavior in Sports Look Like?

What behaviors characterize good sports parenting?

Positive sports parents put their child first. They’re able to put their own investment aside and prioritize that their child is the focus, and that the experience belongs to them. And while they are committed to being supportive and involved, they stop short of pushing too hard, inserting themselves where they don’t belong, and giving in to that negative emotion that comes with the experience. They see that who they were as an athlete is irrelevant to their current responsibility. They are here to support their young athlete’s experience, not to relive or rewrite their own.

Positive sports parents provide both tangible and intangible support. In this context, tangible support includes anything that facilitates their child’s participation - signing them up to play, buying equipment, driving them to/from practice, and so on. Intangible support is the leadership they provide throughout the experience - motivating, encouraging, and working to help their child reach his or her potential. One type of support is not more important than the other - both are key - and both must be evident and balanced appropriately. (In other words, a parent hasn’t simply bought their child some expensive new gear and considered the “support” box checked.)

Positive sports parents model winning behavior. Anyone can recite motivational cliches, but kids learn a lot more from what we do than what we say. Winning sports parenting starts with the clear understanding that there is no more powerful or authentic teaching tool at our disposal than our own powerful example. The truth is, champions breed champions. That means that if we’re serious about helping our kids become their very best, we’ve got to be serious about working to become our very best, too. It’s impossible for us to give our kids the winning qualities and characteristics that we don’t possess ourselves.

Positive sports parents know their role. They accept not only that they have a huge responsibility to be involved, but at the same time know when and where to insert themselves. They recognize the valuable role their child’s coach plays in this experience, and even though they won’t always agree with the decisions the coach decides to make (none of us agree with the coach all the time), they can accept that the coach has their place in this experience, and the parent has theirs. Positive sports parents fight the urge to badmouth the coach or belittle their child’s teammates. If there’s a conflict that needs to be addressed, they are thoughtful enough to handle it the right way.

Positive sports parents work to find the right balance. This point encapsulates all the points we’ve made already, that great sports parenting requires you to recognize that your child will never become their best if you aren’t involved. Your teaching and training, your support and encouragement, your guidance and insight are all necessary. At the same time, great sports parenting requires you to find an appropriate balance that keeps you from being too involved, from overstepping your place in this experience and, whether you intend to or not, from doing more harm than good. Finding the right balance isn’t always easy, but it is so important.

What Does Negative Parental Involvement in Sports Look Like?

Sports journalist Mark Hyman, who wrote a book on the topic of overzealous sports parenting, is speaking the truth when he writes, “Exuberant parents aren’t the problem in youth sports. Overzealous, overly ambitious parents are.”

Sadly, the problem of over-involved parents and the negative impacts of their behavior (more on this in the next section) is so common, it’s spawned new terms to define the different styles of over-involved parenting. “Helicopter” parenting, mentioned above, is the most common. It represents the overbearing extreme that, unfortunately, has become more and more common. 

There’s a new term floating around, too, known as “snowplow” parenting. Sports Illustrated wrote an in-depth article about the rise of this parenting style. Sports Illustrated defines “snowplow” parenting as being “much more active [than ‘helicopter’ parenting]: It means you are doing something to smooth the way for the child. It’s not just that you’re hypervigilant—it’s that you are actually getting rid of those bumps, which robs kids of the necessary experience of learning and failing.”

The “snowplow” parent has probably started out by “helicoptering” - overstepping their place and micromanaging every part of their child’s experience - but then they go further. Rather than being merely overbearing, driving their child to work harder and harder, “snowplow” parents actively intervene in their child’s experience. 

For one reason or another, the “snowplow” parent works hard to engineer their child’s experience to eliminate any friction or chance of failure. The problem of course is that in doing so, they prevent their child from learning so many of the important lessons and developing so many of the valuable skills that real success requires of them, on the playing field and beyond. In trying to pave the way for their child’s success, the “snowplow” parent is actually hindering their success. This serves as yet another example of how as sports parents, our good intentions don’t always lead to positive, productive decisions, and how without a clear sense of purpose and perspective, we can do more harm than good.

How Are Overbearing Sports Parents Harmful?

Whether you’re a full-fledged “helicopter” or “snowplow” parent, or just have some occasional lapses into over-involved, overemotional, or overbearing, the list of negative effects of parental pressure on sports is worth considering. Here are just a few possible examples:

Overbearing sports parents risk harming their child’s performance. Parents who bark commands from the bleachers are almost always just trying to help. But this kind of overbearing behavior can unintentionally have a negative long-term effect on a young athlete’s performance. If your child is constantly looking into the crowd for you to tell them what to do, validate what they did well, or justify what they did wrong, chances are they aren’t fully engaged in the game. If you've trained them to listen for your voice in the heat of competition, then they’re probably hesitating, questioning, and second-guessing their own voice. And maybe most importantly, if they’re submitting to your decisions, then they aren’t learning to make decisions and play the game for themselves. Even if you think you’re helping their performance in the short-term, you’re harming it in the long-term.

Overbearing sports parents risk harming their child’s relationships. Building and developing relationships with coaches and teammates should be one of the most fun and most important parts of a kid’s athletic experience, but an overbearing sports parent can make that process more difficult by constantly undermining those important people. When a parent chooses to badmouth others on the team, it erodes trust and creates a negative narrative in the mind of their child that can keep those relationships from flourishing. And that’s not to mention the rift this type of parent’s criticism toward their own child might create. That trust that’s so important in a parent-child relationship may be harder to build, too.

Overbearing sports parents risk harming their child’s self-esteem and sense of worth. There is plenty of adversity to face and plenty of challenges to overcome in this sports experience. Those tough moments provide a great opportunity for our kids to build their self-esteem and sense of worth. Using those moments to help our kids conquer their fears can help build their courage, a requirement for success in sports and in life. But robbing our kids of those opportunities by working to plow down every challenge before them does just the opposite. It may help them win some meaningless game today, but it makes them weak and soft in the long run. Additionally, as parents we have to be careful not to give our kids the impression that their value as a person is tied to their athletic performance. 

Overbearing sports parents risk harming their child’s development. Physically, overbearing sports parents can harm their child’s development by pushing them into specializing, over practicing, or stressing their developing bodies too early. Many overbearing sports parents get so caught up in early achievement without ever recognizing the long-term damage their decisions may cause. Those same parents are more likely to miss out on the teaching and training of valuable and important mental and emotional skills in their pursuit of success. When the pursuit of some short-term outcome trumps the commitment to the long-term process of growth and development, sports parents are more prone to make decisions that someday soon, they may look back on and regret.

How Do I Become a Positive Sports Parent?

If you’re wondering, “How can I be a good sports mom?” or “How can I be a good sports dad?”, then you’ve already taken an important first step. You’ve recognized the important role you play in your child’s athletic experience, and that just showing up and hoping for the best isn’t enough.

As sports parents, a game plan is essential. One that helps us find the balance required to be involved where we need to be, but not too involved where we don’t. One that helps us manage the competitive and emotional moments that come with this responsibility. One that helps us model the winning behavior that’s required for us to build and develop kids who are worthy of winning, on the playing field and beyond.

That’s why we created Champions 101. This virtual training program contains engaging lessons and practical tools to help you uncover for yourself how to be a supportive parent in sports. Like any 101 course, it’s focused on the fundamentals - the foundational mindsets, choices, and behaviors that will help you become your best, so you can help your young athlete do the same.

To learn more about Champions 101, head over to our website. You can watch a brief video introducing the virtual training program available for sports parents, and decide if you’re ready to start doing what champions do today.