Author: The Coach Diary

There is condition in the US called “Achievement by Proxy” that adults living vicariously through the success of their children. It’s natural to want the best for your children — and to take pride and pleasure in their successes. Sometimes, though, a parent’s involvement in a child’s activities goes too far.

Ian Tofler is a child Psychiatrist Louisiana State University and the Children’s Hospital of New Orleans and say, Example: Tolerating a verbally abusive if the coach can help the child “win”… pushing a child in one direction, even if he/she has strong interests elsewhere.

Even children who seem to be thriving may be caught in the trap – feeling that winning is the only ticket to parental love. A parent who makes a child’s success essential for his/her own happiness will always be disappointed. Achievement is a mountain without a top – one can always do better. Parents may not recognize the damage done to the child. There is a fine line between giving your children a boost and undermining their needs. Parents should beware of what Ian Tofler and his colleagues call Achieve by Proxy Distortion (ABPD)

“ABPD occurs when a parent goes well beyond encouraging his child’s efforts and continuously pushes him to perform better.  ABPD Parents become fixated on the renowned, career advancement and financial rewards they think a child’s success will bring. If your child’s athletic, theatrical or academic gifts become the end that justifies the means, you may be flirting with ABPD. Tell tale signs…”

Risky sacrifice – making major life changes to promote a child’s success, such as relocating to be near facilities or taking on second and even third jobs to pay for private lessons. Such moves put enormous pressure on a child. He/she may feel he “owes” it to his parents to make his own sacrifices, such as giving up other interests or friendships that detract from the goal.

Objectification – parents come to see the child as an achieving machine. The child becomes increasingly defined by the one thing he does well.

Potential for abuse – turning a blind eye to risky situations, such as when a coach enforces strict weight limits or intrudes on others’ personal space while chaperoning children. The parents’ need to see the child succeed eclipses the child’s welfare.

Ask yourself: Am I, my spouse or the coach focusing on my child’s achievements rather than his efforts? Is my child enjoying the activity… or just doing it to please me?

Be on your child’s side – Psychiatrist Studies

Parents need to offer their children a childhood – not early entry into the rat race. With parents’ guidance, children can learn to enjoy the process of what they do – not only the trophies.

Guidelines for a healthy perspective on your child’s achievements…Be realistic about your child’s talents. Telling an average student he is brilliant does no one any good. Worse, it sets your child up for shame and failure.

In the real world, some people perform better than others. You cannot protect your child from this reality. But you can nurture his abilities and help him achieve at his own optimal level with realistic and not overinflated — self-esteem.

If you believe your child has unusual gifts, get an objective evaluation by an appropriate professional who would have nothing to gain from the result.

This will help you…

• Keep your expectations in line with his abilities.
• Choose educational and other settings in which he can thrive.

A child should be encouraged to experience many activities both before and after he is labelled as a high achiever with aptitude in any one area. Children develop skills at different rates. A child under age 10 who seems advanced may simply have gotten out of the gate faster and might not necessarily achieve more over time.

• That’s why sending children over on trials can be damaging in the long run.
• He may go over at 10 and at 15 he is classed as failure if he doesn’t succeed.
• At 15 he is still developing, but many kids can become feed up with the pressure and give up at an early age.

Acknowledge your child’s unique needs and goals. Your child is not an extension of you. Keep your identification with your child within normal bounds.

Example: Sounds crazy, A father who was perennially picked last for games as a child may still be angry and insecure. He may want his child to “avenge” his own sense of failure by becoming a top athlete, whether the child has athletic talent or not.

• Focus on your relationship with your child rather than on any contest. Your love should never be contingent on performance.

Express interest in all of your child’s activities. If your daughter, a budding actress, decides to join the basketball team, support her efforts by attending her games just as you would a show in which she was performing.

• Take responsibility for decisions that affect your child’s physical and mental health.

Examples: It may be important socially for your child to attend a friend’s birthday party even if it means missing a game. If your son, a runner, gets a stress fracture, insist that he stop training in order to heal and overrule the wishes of a coach focused on an upcoming competition.

Encourage your child but also set developmentally appropriate limits.

Example: Saying that your 10-year-old chose to stay up studying until 3 am is renouncing your responsibility.

• Shift your focus from outcome to process. When the emphasis is only on competition, nothing but a win is good enough. Focus instead on personal and group or team improvement and the “small victories.” This will help your talented child enjoy his own gifts in a grounded context in which he is also developing his mental toughness for life’s future battles.

Kids need to be left alone to be kids and at the early ages should be able to play any sport they like unless they wish to stick at just one and let that be their decision. If some kids discover on their own that they have extraordinary skill in one sport and want to dedicate themselves to reaching a top level, so be it. But for most, the million-euro contracts won’t come and we need to be realistic about this!

Starting out

Did anyone ever say, “ it’s crazy to be training midweek when they have school the next day” Parents get sucked in, they give up so much; spring, summer holidays and winter holidays are planned around the childrens sports.

Usually when you start out, it’s supporting your child that makes you feel proud; then you start to sacrifice things, letting things go, you might even skip work to get them there on time. Then this commitment can turn into obsession (the same thing is happening for the coaches, I’m one of them obsessed about training the kids, you can’t miss a session) and the child’s identity is lost in the goals set out by the parents etc.  Kids should not be forced on diets, forced to play whilst injured, not getting surgery as it might jeopardise that professional contract, forced to stay in sports even after they have fallen out of love with it, failing to see the stress that a child might be suffering because of the pressure to succeed and for the parent failing to speak up when his or her child is treated unfairly by a coach.  This is the extreme and most parents will never go this far but it does and has happen.

As a nation we are under so much pressure now, the lack of time to do things is enormous and the main problem today for parents and kids. My own nephew gets 3 hours of home work every night he’s 9; this is crazy. We’re really trying to do too much; we’re over-scheduled and sleep-deprived. and pushing to hard.

Are we doing too much?

Parents are worried that their kids will fall behind if they aren’t engaged in as many activities as possible on as many teams, going to as many events, pressure from other adults, competing against each other for status.

Coaches worry that their team will suffer and fall behind if they don’t train as much as the competition. Maybe, Maybe not? But we have to ask ourselves at what expense, is it better to have a happy child and know what they are doing with their lives or win a few more games? If you look back to when you played, “would it have made a difference if you had won a few more games or leagues to your life now?”

Have we taken this too far?

I think so, I think it’s time to step back and revert to some of the old ways. Don’t make it so structured, take away the pressure at younger ages; don’t put demands on parents and children alike. Get rid of the competitive leagues, bring back the community in the clubs, play internal leagues up to certain ages, make it more about fun and more about the fundamentals of the sport. Play blitzes with the other LOCAL clubs; stop all this travelling week after week to and from games, it makes no difference who they play and keeping it local is good for all concerned. It’s nice to go away on a trip but every other week is a bit much for kids age 6-10. They rarely enjoy those long trips and some of the screaming that goes with it; kids just wanna play and for as long as they can, by heading off every other weekend is only reducing valuable playing time and eating into player development, who wants to be screamed at for a duration of the game every weekend.

More internal leagues, adds to to more playing time, which in turns gives all kids a chance. Mixing the more technical players with the ones just starting out or adapting late to the game can only be good for all kids concerned.  Bring in non competitive, reduce the leagues numbers, make it more fun, more about the fundamentals of the game at early ages, make it more local and less travelling to far away communities. We need to built better club houses and facilities, bring back the community game we once had and give the Parents and Coaches some more time to themselves and theirs families.

Over Involved Parents

How did we get to this point? We have gone from playing on the green, the streets; the lane ways to the play must be supervised.

Does it pay to train hard from an early age to gain glory in the future; I think not all who did succeeded and teams sports is a different game altogether. Individual sports like Golf, Snooker, Swimming, Tennis maybe, but football?

To many obstacle and if your a smaller more technical kid growing up in Ireland you probably have little to no chance of making it.

I don’t think soccer has gone as bad as some of the trouble which can be seen at GAA matches but it’s only a matter time before something does happen. The game has gone so competitive at the younger ages that emotions will soon get the better of us!

Parents are sometimes described as overgrown children who can’t keep their tempers in check and coaches too. It’s all part of our society today, which is fast, unkind and sometimes ruthless. We have road rage, Airline rage and yes, Youth sports rage.  We parents are naturally so protective of their children but its brining their own frustrations to the game that’s an issue. Combine the 2 and you have a ticking time bomb.

Pushy Parenting

Parent sometimes can be driven by a scholarship of a pro contract and are living their dreams of glory through the eyes of their children. Sports psychologist Alan Goldberg “Raising children is the most emotionally evocative experience you will ever have, rearing an athlete – no matter how amateur – is very intense “even the best adjusted suffer.

Some parents never have thoughts of their children chasing scholarships or even professional careers but often feel pressure to help their children excel and too often feel that they have to keep up with other adults. After all this does give the young sports achievers some status in a community, doesn’t it?

Even with parent busy work, life schedule and despite the huge amount of stress this can sometimes bring on, parents don’t want to let their child down and think they might fall behind. I believe that parents watching their children play in a game can be surprised by their own emotions. Even parents who sign their kids up in a team sport with the best intentions can be easily pulled into the intensity of the sidelines “Watching your child compete can be a horrible experience”, and most parents are kicking every ball, making every tackle and feeling the pain of a bruising one.

“See Achievement by Proxy post” later this week, Interesting article.

Not fit to be around kids

Some weeks back up in Sundrive Park, u7s game was on and I happened to be walking past the goal. I could hear some asshole lambasting a young girl, shouting at her “get back and mark the player” which to me seemed like what she was doing anyway. This coach continued to shout at her and distract her from what she was doing. When she turned in disgust at her coach, the ball was played in over her head and into the path of the opposing player, who only seconds earlier was being marked.  GOAL!  The next words to be heard, where “Laura I told you to mark him” Laura will probably play football for another year maybe less, if we continue to let idiots like that man into our game, our kids have no hope. Parents also need to stand up to people like this man and question what he is doing in the game. From what I could see, probably a parent/coach living his unsuccessful football career through the eyes of his own kid. its to easy for parents to step in and coach teams but they must have the interests of the kids at heart and not their own.

Parents need their own time too

I’m all for parents being involved and interested in what their kids do, after all kids look up to their parents and without Parents we may not have a lot and most are amazing mentors; But there should be a limit in how much you get involved. As much as kids should be left alone to be kids, it would also help adults and their kids if now and again adults were left alone to be adults, and find fun for themselves through their own interest.

I read a quote from a book Author Anthony Giardina wrote, “To be a good parent, according to the going wisdom, is to spend a great deal of time not at work, not out there hustling in order to provide for one’s children (as parents do) but staying in obsessing about them” Most kids will tell you they feel pressure when their parent are in the stand or on the line watching week and week out, and sometimes may not be as spontaneous on those days.

Most of us will probably fell the opposite, I would have loved if my father came to one of two of my games but we were mostly bundled into the back of a bread van, standing between the racks on a bumpy ride to the game. Very rarely was a parent present. I suppose society is a lot different now and its not as safe out on the road as it used to be. Parents need a break too and taking a week off can be good for you and the kids.

Under age football has gone Global

Should we even have kids travelling tens of miles at the age of 6, 7, 8, 9 to play leagues games, it’s absurd, where did this all begin and why do we stand for it. Why to Parents, spend their whole life once they get their kids into sports, travelling around Leinster or Munster etc to games and training. Most football clubs were created as community clubs; traditionally a “community” has been defined as a group of interacting people living in a common location. So why, all the long trips across towns to other communities even other counties. Some parents need computer printouts to keep their weekend planned. Partners rarely see each other – some have to be on different pitches at the same time. Later that day after being at 3 different games in 3 different communities with their 3 kids and sometimes their neighbours, they head to the take away and back home by some godly hour.

Getting back to the day job can be a relief for most. Parents all over Ireland complain about these crazy schedules when they chat amongst themselves, they discuss how ludicrous it is, but they go along with it. Do you ever take a step back and see how this stress can add to your life and on your child’s life or are you happy to go with it, does the good out weight the bad.

See also “Not to late too turn back and adjust”