Parental involvement in competitive youth sport

Further to my article on psychological momentum in team contexts (http://www.istadia.com/blog/mustafasarkar/316),  I have written another article that looks at parents' behaviors in competitive sport settings. With coaches constantly interacting with children's parents in youth settings, this article should help coaches reflect on various important issues to help parents' become more aware of their involvement in sport. Please do let me know your thoughts on the content of the article and/or how the article is written. Your comments will be much appreciated. 

Kind regards

Mustafa 

“Keep going son” is a phrase that is shouted many times when parents want to support their children on the side of a football pitch. Nowadays, parents are highly involved and visible in youth football. With sports such as football providing a public arena for parents to provide immediate and specific feedback to their children, it is important for coaches to understand parents’ involvement in competitive youth sport settings. Parents can influence their children both positive and negatively in these contexts and the ways in which parents engage in youth sport settings may have important implications for their children’s experiences. However, while there have been many investigations that have examined parental influence on children’s enjoyment and motivation in sport, few researchers have looked at parents’ actual behaviors in competitive sport settings. 

In order to tackle this problem, a group of sport psychologists from the University of Alberta in Canada recruited 16 people from four families to participate in a study. Each family had two children who cited football as their main/favorite sport. To examine parents’ involvement in competitive youth sport settings, the group of sport psychologists carried out one to one interviews with each parent and each child separately. They also completed 120 hours of observation at indoor football centers where the participants competitively played the indoor version of youth football during the winter months. This article will report the five findings from the study and will explain its relevance to coaches who constantly interact with children’s parents in competitive football settings. 

1) Policy Issues
There were certain policy issues that appeared to influence the ways in which parents verbalized responses in competitive football settings. In particular, parents’ criticism of referees may have been constrained by specific rules to punish such comments. Referees had the power to award a penalty to a team if s/he deemed that the fans were behaving inappropriately. During fieldwork, the group of sport psychologists found an observation that supported this when a referee said to a mother who had just yelled at him:  

“Be quiet or I will give you a card.”  

To which she replied: 

“You’ll give me a card? I’ll give you a card!”  

She was then quiet for the rest of the game. These policy issues are important for coaches to consider when looking at parents’ verbal reactions to competitive youth football settings. 

2) Parents’ verbal reactions in youth football
Parental comments were placed into categories on a continuum moving from ‘more supportive comments’ to ‘more controlling comments’. These comments were made in reaction to children’s performance behaviors. That is, the continuum of parental responses represented reactive rather than proactive statements. This article will explain the different types of reactions made by parents and will discuss the importance of coaches encouraging parents to engage in more supportive and less controlling behaviors.  

a) Praise/encouragement
This concept refers to general supportive comments and encouragement rather than comments that include specific performance-related feedback. Consequently, these comments were considered to be more supportive than controlling. Encouragement was one of the most prevalent types of parental reaction, accounting for approximately 35% of the comments recorded by the sport psychologists during observations. An example of praise/encouragement is a statement made by Jeff, who said,  

“I tend to applaud them and comment on them. But a log of things I end up applauding them.” 

Liv confirmed her father’s comments, 

“He says ‘good job, you run hard’ stuff like that’ 

b) Performance contingent feedback
This refers to parents making comments that were apparently intended to improve their child’s performance. These reactions were judged as being more controlling because they represented attempts to control the child’s behavior. Performance contingent feedback accounted for approximately 5% of the comments that were recorded during observations. This type of reaction was made mainly during games, with parents shouting comments that had some performance-related content such as “Good communication boys” or “Way to push him back” As a further example, Guy explained that: 

“I always try to give him [Aaron] all the little tips and that, then I can try and help him improve his play or to give him that little edge of whatever.” 

Guy’s son, Aaron, said that both his parents provided feedback: 

“They [parents] say just how to improve it. They sit there and tell me after that I did it bad and then we try and fix it” 

c) Instruction
Instruction refers to direct commands and included comments like “Kick it” “Get back” “Play the triangle” “Play your side” “Mark her” and “Shoot”. These comments were usually yelled as the child should have completed the play and accounted for about 30% of the recorded comments during observations. Instruction differed from performance contingent feedback because instruction was not based on the child’s performance. Rather, instruction involved direct commands apparently intended to provoke action. For example, an observation was made of one father who was extremely focused on his son’s playing. The father stood up every time his son was involved in the play and yelled comments such as:  

“Look behind you, John! Look behind you!” or “shoot!” or “kick it!” 

d) Striking a balance
This concept refers to striking a balance between providing positive and negative comments. These comments were controlling but varied in terms of the positive/negative tone and accounted for approximately 10% of all comments observed by the sport psychologists. For example, an observation was made of one mother watching her son who was a goalkeeper. She was extremely excitable; jumping up often, yelling encouragement and metaphorically kicking every ball in the game with her son. A goal was scored (which incidentally, the sport psychologists did not even think was due to a goalkeeping error), and the mum yelled angrily at her son “Glenn!” then there was a 5 second pause before she attempted to strike a balance by yelling “Good try” (shouted almost as loud but without the emotional tone of the previous comment). 

e) Negative comments
This notion refers to general negative comments made by adults toward children and were considered to be more controlling in its nature. For example, sport psychologists observed a mother yelling to her son “what the hell was that?” after a poor free kick. Another example was a father who shouted at his son’s team in a very angry tone “You’re supposed to run, not walk! What are you guys doing out there?” These comments accounted for approximately 10% of the comments directed at players. 

f) Derogatory comments
This idea refers to examples of derogatory and potentially damaging comments directed toward children and these comments were thought to be the most controlling of them all. A few examples of derogatory comments were observed by the sport psychologists. One lady yelled at the opposing crowd “too bad the goalie didn’t fumble that one” referring to a mistake the U12 player had made moments previously. Other comments such as “that’s pathetic” were yelled at children. Most times these comments were directed at the opposition rather than the parents own team. Derogatory comments accounted for about 5% of the comments recorded. 

Implication of parents’ verbal reactions
Previous research (outside of the sport domain) consistently shows that supportive parental actions are associated with positive outcomes like achievement, whereas controlling parental actions are associated with negative outcomes like aggression, delinquency and substance abuse. Thus, the implication is that coaches should encourage parents to make more supportive and fewer controlling statements to their children in relation to sport performances.   

3) Parents’ empathy with child
The study was also interested in the factors that may influence parents’ verbal reactions in youth soccer and the first finding reflected the concept of empathy. Empathy is the capacity to recognize or understand another’s state of mind or emotion. It is often characterized as the ability to ‘put oneself into another’s shoes’, or to in some way experience the outlook or emotions of another being within oneself. During the one to one interviews, there were indications that parents experienced the emotions that they thought their children were experiencing. For example, Debbie explained: 

“When they are expecting to do well and they don’t, you feel the pain they feel…When they’re disappointed, you’re disappointed. 

4) Emotional intensity
The sport psychologists also found that the emotional intensity associated with a particular competition influenced the nature and content of parents’ reactions during games. Emotional intensity not only stemmed from the segregation of parents from opposing teams but moreover, there was also tension among parents on the same team. 

Verbal reactions also appeared to change in relation to game circumstances. There tended to be a greater volume of comments overall during more important games. For example, parents made more comments during the final game than during the first round game of the four tournaments that were observed. Additionally, more comments were made when games involved local teams with rivalries compared to games between out of town teams.  

The following observation provided a good example of how parents’ reactions changed as the intensity rose. A woman started off using encouragement, and she did quite a lot of general cheering. But as the game progressed and the scores stayed close she made more controlling comments, especially at the end of the second half. She groaned in frustration when a player on her team failed to make a pass, then she yelled with exasperation “you should have passed it.” When she said this, a man in front of her turned and agreed with her. This example shows both how parents’ reactions appeared to change in relation to game circumstances and a way in which parents appeared to influence each other. 

5) Parents perceived knowledge and experience
This category referred to parents having perceived knowledge and expertise in sport which they thought gave them insight and the ability to provide feedback. All of the parents who were interviewed thought that they were knowledgeable in the various sports, and furthermore expressed some displeasure in other parents’ lack of knowledge, and the types of comments this appeared to produce. In this way parents’ perceived knowledge and expertise influenced their interactions in youth sport contexts.

Conclusion
The purpose of this article was to examine parents’ actual involvement in competitive youth sport settings and to discuss the five findings of a study that a group of sport psychologists conducted with parents whose children’s main sport was football. The study showed that parents’ involvement was reflected by dynamic interactions between parents and other parents, game situations, children’s performances, parents’ empathy and their perceived knowledge and experience. Such complex combinations of personal and contextual issues lie at the heart of human functioning and development. By highlighting and outlining just a selection of these interactions, we hope to have revealed some of the complex issues that warrant attention in youth sport settings. 

Summary of points for coaches to reflect on:-