Chill, Mom and Dad

According to kids, even well meaning, supportive parents manage to get it wrong on the sidelines.

Although most kids recognize their parents want the best for them, they still wish Mom and Dad would just chill out. We interviewed several youth athletes and some of their parents about when their supportive parents root too hard for them, and how it makes them feel.

The notorious dad

The day after a football game, Woodlawn High sophomore Jared Lusk braces himself. Friends and teammates tease him at school about the things his father has shouted at the refs from the sidelines. Although his father can be amusing, Lusk wishes he would tone it down a bit. “It’s embarrassing,” he says.

In Mom’s shadow

Emily Rush knows her mom swam competitively when she was younger and can tell her a few things about swimming.

But so can her coach. Isn’t that why he’s paid, she wonders?

At a meet, Emily will be waiting between events with friends when her mom will bust in and want to talk shop.

“She’ll want to make sure my technique is right. She’ll say stuff like, ‘Don’t breath every stroke on fly;’ ‘do a two-hand touch’”—stuff Rush already knows and would rather hear from her coach.

“And after my event, I wish she’d quit telling me what I did wrong or didn’t do and just say, ‘Nice swim.’”

The coach’s son

When Al Woodruff first started playing baseball at Parkview Baptist for his dad, Coach M.L. Woodruff, the car ride home sounded a lot like the post-game locker room.

“He’d say something I did wrong. I’d snap back, and we’d end up getting in a fight,” Al, now 22, recalls.

Dad came up with the idea and stuck to it: no post-game coaching, no negatives; he’d be “Dad” only, allowed to say, “Great hit, good job.”

Once all positives were exhausted, they’d have to shift conversation to other topics, like Major League Baseball, Al says.

‘Just believe me’

Taylor Spicer feels like her mom always wants something more out of her. “I always do my best,” but sometimes things happen, she insists.

“If I hurt my leg and need to sit out, she’ll say, ‘You can get out there and play.’ She says she knows my potential and I’m not playing up to it.”

Taylor doesn’t mind her mom encouraging her to get back in if she’s come out hurt. But if she says she can’t, “I want her to believe me,” Spicer says.

You got a Problem?

In his book 101 Ways to Be a Terrific Sports Parent, Joel Fish lists eight common signs a sports parent has gone overboard. If you fit even one of the following characteristics, you are probably emotionally over-invested in your child’s sporting activities, says Fish.

• Find yourself talking more about your child’s sport than your child.

• Are highly critical of your child’s coach.

• Talk to your child more like a coach than a parent (i.e., always giving advice, instruction and critiques).

• Constantly tell your child to practice more.

• Seem more emotionally invested in the sport than your child (i.e., you get more upset than he or she does about a lost game or performance mistake).

• Get a great deal of status and prestige from your child’s athletic accomplishments.

• Believe that if your child just tried harder, he or she could be successful at sports.

• Aren’t hearing what your child is telling you (i.e., “Mom, I don’t like when you stand behind me and tell me what to do,” or “Dad, it makes me nervous when you come to my games.”)