Sports Players or Sports Parents?
Who’s more into it, Parents? Or the Kids?
Imagine, it is the semifinals of the regional tournament for soccer and college coaches are watching your every move. The final whistle blows and the game is tied, that calls for over time. Your coach tells you how everything you have worked for the whole year is on the line now, and to play your heart out for twenty more minutes because they could be our last minutes as a team for the year. As you get out on the field, nervous already, all you can hear are the obnoxious over-competitive parents, screaming from the sidelines. “COME ON GIRLS! YOU CALL THIS SOCCER?!?!? PUT THE BALL IN THE BACK OF THE NET AND FINISH THIS ALREADY!!”. Then, all of a sudden, the other team scores and your team’s shot at being first in the region has slipped through your fingertips. Instead of placing first in the region, your team has finished third in the region and first in the state of Massachusetts. Most parents would think that placing third in the region is amazing, but there is a small selection of parents that believe that their children are number one and only number one, and when they fail, they must be punished. Although some pressure on your teen in sports is good, too much stress and intensity can push them over the edge and cause them to stop enjoying their favorite sport.
Most teens like to participate in sports on their high school team, and a select few play on a club team as well. Some parents are so obsessed with their child becoming such a success in their favorite sport, that they punish them when they lose or give them unconstructive criticism that only deteriorates their self-esteem. One of my former teammates on my competitive club soccer team lives with one of the toughest soccer moms in New England. My former club teammate, Madison MaCaulife once told me “Once I got home from the fields, my mom told me to go upstairs and get my running clothes. She made me go on a five mile run after my three day weekend that consisted of playing five soccer games, all because we lost in the semifinals”.
This is an example of how parents have taken situations too far and made their teen feel bad and lower their self-esteem. Parents should not punish their children when they lose, because that can lead to overuse injuries. To prevent the deterioration of self-esteem and the beginning of injuries, parents should try to not use running and harsh criticism as a punishment if a teen loses a big game. Instead, the parents should enforce the positives of the situation for example, “You have made it so far! I am so proud of you! You’ll get it next time!”.
When teens join the competitive club teams, they usually tend to have three to four practices a week, not including games. With the practices being close to two hours each, a teen could be exercising anywhere from 6 to 10 hours a week, for club sports only. On top of club sports, many teens play a high school sport, adding on another practice every weekday for another two hours. Some teens might go from their high school practice straight to their club practice. This constant pattern of running or exercising can and eventually will wear the teen down, and eventually can cause injury. Most teens who play sports that are extremely intense and competitive will get hurt at some time in their career. But, whether the injury is an acute injury or an overuse injury is a different example of how parents push their kids too hard. Overuse injuries are more common in teens that have played competitive sports for years. In the long run, overuse injuries tend to have more of a long term effect on a teen’s growing body. Examples of overuse injuries include runner’s knee, jumper’s knee, shin splints, tendinitis, and stress fractures. According to Layola Human Studies, teens who play 13 or more hours of sports a week are at a 70% higher risk of obtaining an overuse injury than teens who do not. By making their teens attend all of their practices each week, parents are setting their teens up for possible long term injuries that could leave them with stress fractures at the least, to knee replacements at the age of 35 being the worst. Instead of forcing their child to attend every single club practice after coming from high school practice, parents should allow their teen on or two nights off from a club practice a month. This way, teens can rest their bodies and catch up on their social life.
Some parents think they are helping their athlete improve by telling them how they did in a game, but this could be bad if the input is extremely different from when the team wins to when the team loses. By telling their teens how good they played, it encourages them to work harder to maintain a winning streak. But, some parents discuss the game in a severely negative way and that can cause the teen to feel frustrated or poorly about the way they played that game. There was a survey taken by hundreds of college athletes all across the country and the first question that was asked was “What is your worst memory with playing youth and high school sports?”. Almost all of the athletes replied “The car ride home with my parents”. The two men who conducted the survey, Bruce Brown and Rob Miller, ran this survey for three decades and each year, more and more athletes answer that question with the same response. Brown and Miller have become public speakers who speak to crazy sports parents about how to handle themselves in a more appropriate manner. One resolution that Brown suggests is that in the beginning of the season, the parent makes a list of things that they think their child should strive for. The teen will also make a list and then the lists will be compared. All (if any) similar things would be put on a new, compromised list, created by both the teen and parent. If you and your teen have complete opposite ideas on your lists, this could be a sign that the parent is setting expectations too high for the teen. Examples of high standards would be:
- Win every game
- Qualify for nationals
- Score 15 goals in an 8 week season
- Earn scholarships to play in college
The teen’s list might look more laid back like:·
- Win the majority of our games
- Spend time with friends
- Get close with teammates
- Qualify for states
· Score 7 goals throughout the seaonThe compromised list should be more intense than the teen’s list but not as intense as the parent’s. If the list were as intense as the parent’s there is a likely chance that the teen would become frustrated or bored with the sport and quit, considering 75% of teens quit sports at age 14 because that is when it begins to get too intense.
In order to keep their teens healthy and keep their heads in the game that they love, parents must become a bit more lax with their intensity to be the best. One way that parents could be more relaxed is reinforcing positive feedback instead of punishing their teens for what they did wrong in the big game or even a small practice. This would improve the teen’s self-esteem greatly and help the teen in the long run. Another example that parents should use is to be less strict about their teen’s schedule. It is okay and actually recommended by many studies that teens should miss one to three practices a season just to give their bodies a break. Also, by letting their teen skip practice, the teen is allowed to catch up on his or her social life that they may have missed because they are always at a practice. All of these suggestions could improve the confidence and health of a teen who plays competitive sports, and could make teens have a better attitude towards their sport instead of the negative view of the sport that they had while their parent was being overbearing and insanely intense.
No comments:
Post a Comment