What is with parents of youth competitive sports, caring so much about whether the children win or lose, and not about the fun of the game?
Some parents are so strict when it comes to competitive sport, they actually make their children feel like they will never meet their parent’s standards, which can cause a child to not want to play the sport anymore as they see the way they play as a disappoint their parents. Parents, who encourage children to become more competitive, do not realize that sometimes they are portraying anger and frustration toward the sport, the other team, or even toward their own child. Children absorb this negativity from their parents and then will take it out on the opposing team. Some parents actually encourage kids to fight, play unfairly and injure other children. This is disgusting. Stop encouraging violence and start promoting the fun and love of the sport!
Parents need to wake up and smell the coffee. Competitive sport should be more about the children having fun, at a challenging level, rather than the outcome of the game. This is the wake up call, let children have fun, do not make it about only winning, because the sport looses all its fun when it is only about winning. I played competitive hockey from the age of 5 till 14 and at one point I even played on both a boy’s competitive team and a girl’s competitive team. I must say that over the years I have seen many fights break out on the ice, but what I did not expect was how much fighting I saw in the stands, even to the point where the police were called several times. Parents are swearing, yelling, arguing, and fighting with parents on opposite teams. This is a great example to set for youngsters, since children never imitate what their parents do. How can the children have fun, when they are worried about getting injured?
Parents at some points go way above and beyond any moral values. Picture a 45 year old man, grabbing a 12 year old boy throwing him up against a wall, wrestling for a while, punches being thrown, and even some bloodshed. The boy did perform an illegal hit from behind to the man’s son, during a hockey game, just before the incident occurred. I was shocked at this mans behaviour. Being a spectator to this type of violence and other incidences like this really took away the fun of the game for me. When I speak to other former competitive hockey players, they have similar reasons for not continuing on in competitive hockey and switched to either house league or even simply shinny hockey.
Parents must also wake up to the fact that the odds are against their child making it to the professionals, so why not encourage team work, having fun, and being physically active as opposed to making the game all about winning. Even if parents see the potential in their child to make it to the “big leagues”, making the game about having fun to a child, will probably encourage them to continue playing. Kids who have the skill can sometimes loose the love of the game, as it is simply not fun anymore. Most youth would refer to this statement: “there is just too much politics in competitive sport”.
Let’s put the love of the game back into competitive sport and take out the “winning is everything” attitude!
This is a clip from a south park episode in which the entire episode deals with the issues of parents caring more about the outcome of the game, than if the children are actually enjoying themselves.
