Youth Sports - Teaching Kids Lasting Values

Excerpted from
Raising a Team Player: Teaching Kids Lasting Values on the Field, on the Court and on the Bench
By Harry Sheehy, Danny Peary

Youth sports seems to be facing an overwhelming national crisis of conscience. What can parents do to make a difference?

It is overwhelming. For a problem this large, the natural tendency is to look for a large solution. Unfortunately, I don't think that there's an easy systematic answer. If we want youth sports to be a pure, exciting, fun, educational experience, then we must make it that way in our own households and our own lives. It requires a change of heart and a change of perspective on a very individual level.

Youth sports programs put not only players but also parents in competitive situations. Our reactions to those situations stem from our reasons for getting involved in the program. It's those reasons, not the program, that need to be reevaluated. If all parents were involved in youth sports to make sure that their children had fun while learning strong values, would we have fathers killing each other when a hockey practice for ten-year-olds gets out of hand?

If we want our children to learn to handle themselves in situations of stress, then first and foremost we must learn to handle ourselves. Youth sports offers us an ideal opportunity to model for our children the values that we believe are important. To get to that point, we need follow only four simple rules.

1. Take an active, participatory interest in your child's sports experience.

2. Support your child's coach.

3. Make realistic appraisals of your motivation for enrolling your child in youth sports, your child's motivation for playing, and your child's skill level.

4. Develop the healthy perspective you want your child to have. Live and speak the values that you want to instill in your child.

Do you think parents and coaches in a youth league should be accountable to an oversight board?

Oversight boards look good in books, but they can be hard to institute, and in some cases they don't make much of a difference. The problem is membership. The value of a board is tied to the philosophies of the people who are on it. Sitting on an oversight board for a youth athletic program is a big responsibility, and the people who are most likely to do it are those who have a real interest in its decisions - parents. And how many parents can be neutral or objective in decisions regarding their kids?

I'm not saying that we shouldn't have oversight boards, because for many youth sports programs they can do a lot of good, but we must openly acknowledge and guard against their potential shortcomings. It can help if the program drafts a constitution that outlines the rules by which an oversight board makes its decisions, as well as standards of conduct for coaches, players, and fans. The more specific a program can be about what is and isn't acceptable from its participants, the more useful its oversight board can be.

If a kid loses his temper during a game and his coach doesn't discipline him, what can his parents do?

It's natural for kids to feel disappointed or frustrated when the game isn't going their way, but if those emotions lead to an inappropriate comment to the referee, an altercation - physical or verbal - with the opposition, lack of support for teammates, or other displays of temper and poor sportsmanship, then discipline is necessary. One of the most important lessons of sports is how to control your emotions in a stressful situation, and if kids are allowed to have temper tantrums, they're not learning that lesson.

If your kid loses his temper during a game and his coach does not discipline him, talk to the coach. Tell him that the pressure of the game seems to be spotlighting an issue that you're working on with your kid - controlling his temper. Ask the coach to pull your kid from the game whenever he loses his temper. The coach should explain calmly to your child that negative outbursts are not acceptable and that he will have to sit on the bench until he's cooled off. The coach should also remind your kid that when he learns to control his temper, he'll be a better player and a better teammate.

At home, talk with your kid about setting two important goals: keeping his emotions under control and being a good supporter of his teammates. If your kid comes home upset because the coach pulled him from a game, don't give in to the urge to comfort him. Tell your child that you think the coach was right to pull him from the game, and repeat the lesson that the coach should have offered: Controlling your temper is an important part of being a good team player.

If a kid loses his temper during games and his coach does discipline him, should the parents still get involved? Or should they leave the discipline to the coach?

If a coach's discipline seems appropriate, parents don't need to get involved; they should simply support the coach's actions. The only time parents should get involved is when the punishment doesn't fit the crime. Let's say that a young basketball player is called for a foul, and she angrily questions the call. (Whether or not the call is correct is beside the point; young athletes should never be allowed to be rude to the referee.) In this sort of situation, the coach might call the player over to the sideline and tell her that making angry gestures toward a referee is not an acceptable behavior, and if she does it again, she will be pulled from the game.

That seems like an appropriate response from a coach. But now let's say that the player instead screams at the referee. If all the coach does is call her over to the sideline, or if the coach pulls her from the game but puts her back in ten seconds later, the coach isn't sending a strong enough message to her players about what is and isn't acceptable behavior on the court. In this situation, parents might consider speaking to the coach about instituting a firmer policy of discipline for their child.

It can be hard to come to this decision. Parents usually have a war of values going on inside them. They want their kid to play as much as possible, but they also want her to learn the right way to play. Parents who can step back from the game and think only about the values they want their kid to learn from sports are both wise and rare.