Parents VS. Athlete

Date: Fri Jan 20 2:10 PM, 2006

RE: Parents VS. Athlete

Date: Fri Jan 20 2:28 PM, 2006

Thank you happy coach, pyramids mom, and motions mom. I know its difficult having to deal with parents and admire all coaches. Your feedback really helps put things into perspective.

I agree, in most cases parents shouldn’t get involved, to listen/guide their children to discuss concerns with their coaches directly has been my motto as well.

In very few instances, your child may ask your help to intervene and talk to their coaches. The best advice given was by happy coach; if you do decide to meet with the coach include your child in the conversation, for it's about them. Hopefully, this will ensure that it's not necessarily the parent over-reacting and the attention will be shifted to the child to help address their concern.

I know it can get old for coaches, when it comes to this subject and I am sorry you have to deal with it. Other comments noted "communication is key" is great feedback as well. If more coaches can use this as a rule of thumb and be upfront with their athletes more of this can be avoided (well, you would hope!).

All great positive comments, thanks again!

Date: Fri Jan 20 5:37 PM, 2006

Pyramids mom you are so RIGHT. TRUST that your KIDS will tell you if anything bothers them and let THEM try to work it out--they will gain VALUABLE life skills doing this. They are the ones who are doing the hard work ---listening to their coaches and working with all kinds of different personalities on a team for the same goal. You have to TRUST the coach and kids are doing what is good for the TEAM as a WHOLE--and not to just put one child in the spot light. I love how cheergyms really does a great job doing this--making EVERY child feel they are needed. Kids just want to have FUN and feel they are doing a GREAT job personally and that is all that matters.

Date: Fri Jan 20 6:37 PM, 2006

I agree that the child should be the one with the issue - not the parent.

However, often a kid will bottle up the issue. I've experienced more than once where a child withheld the issue for whatever reason, developed a bad attitude, and spread it amongst their teammates. The problem festers, the child begins to hate cheer (or whatever sport they are doing), THEN it spreads to the parent and the parent becomes unhappy, and suddenly you've got a big old issue on your hands caused by something that happened months ago.

In a perfect world, our kids would come to us as coaches with every question or issue...but it just doesn't happen every time, no matter how open or encouraging a coach is.

Date: Sat Jan 21 9:21 AM, 2006

Thank goodness that Cheergyms coaches and directors are trained to listen to and communicate with the kids.

I have have several experiences while my children were growing up where the adults (Teachers, Coaches) did not respect the children enough to listen to them when they tried to talk to them about a problem. In those cases I had to intervene, even though I would have preferred that the child would have the opportunity of a successful experience in making their feelings or needs known, and in the problem solving skills that we all need in life.

I guess my point in saying this is: sometimes it is hard for some children to approach some adults with problems or issues because the adults brush them off or belittle them because they are too busy or don't respect that the children may have a valid point.

BTW, I have NEVER seen this at cheergyms, hopefully that example will spread to other people who work with kids, because the world is not all kid-friendly. And coaches; know that some kids have a hard time articulating their needs, and require much patience, and sometimes even parental intervention. The key for all is mutual respect.

Date: Sat Jan 21 11:28 AM, 2006

In a perfect world everyone is happy. The coach always makes the right decision, the kids love whatever spot they are in and the parents are completely happy.

But alas, we don't live in a perfect world.

I will admit, there are times when I make a change that I'll say to myself, "whoo...Sally Spirit's mom is not going to be happy". But then I move on in hopes that why I made the change will become clear. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't.

I realize that my expectations of the kids are often quite high. And one of the expectations I have is that the kids wholeheartedly trust everything that I do. For the most part they do, but there are times when an athlete can become upset. I understand this, I have the same feelings as an athlete (it aggrevates me at times when I'm playing soccer and I get subbed out).

Now from a personal standpoint although I may not always agree with getting subbed out I don't make a big fuss about it. Although I may think that I can play better tired then others can fresh, its not my call to make. It's tough, but I accept it without incident. However, that's just me and every person is different.

As a coach, I go on the fly. Many of the decisions I make are made on the spot. There are times when I make decisions that I don't give a second thought to it while the athlete it affects thinks of nothing else. I want to make a point here; everytime this has happened it has been resolved in a professional manner. At times the athlete approaches me to get a better understanding and on some rare occasions I'm approached by a parent. Either way, I can't think of a time where it has gone past that. Not to sound egotistical but I usually am right when it comes to the decisions I make. However, I have also gone back on a few of the decisions I made when an athlete or parent has helped me to see outside of the tunnel vision I may have.

Lastly, I just want to point out that generally all parents are great and supportive. I've coached for 10 years and this year alone I work with about 80 kids, which is 80 sets of parents. In the 10 years I've coached I could count on one hand the number of parents that have really been a problem, and this year alone I can safely say that that number is zero.

Are there parents that disagree with some of the things I do? Of course. But I like to believe that in the long run although we may bump heads every now and then the parents have the same goal that I do; we want the kids to become better people through this experience.