DADDY! WILL YOU PLEASE SHUT UP! Encourage Positive Values in Youth Sports
	JULY/AUGUST 2004

by Kerry Salisbury, Recreation Services Supervisor
Photos by Brad Shifflett

Larry L., a professional umpire in Oregon, tells a great story about an experience he had with an obnoxious fan. The catcher behind the plate for one of the girls softball teams at a game Larry was umpiring wasn't having a good time because of the constant hollering of one of the fans. Turning to Larry she asked plaintively, "Can't you get that guy to shut up?"

"No," Larry replied. "He paid for his ticket. He can holler if he wants."

In a later inning the girl again made another appeal to Larry that he try to quiet the noisy man in the stands and received the same reply. Later she turned a third time to Larry and said, "Can't you kick that obnoxious guy out of the game?"

"No," he replied. "The man paid for his ticket and there's nothing I can do about him."

The catcher then stood up straight, turned to face the stands, put her hands on her hips, and shouted in an angry voice, "Daddy! Will you please just shut up."

This is a laughable illustration of a disturbing phenomena. All parents, I imagine, understand the unwritten commandment, "Thou shalt not drive thy children crazy," but in my role as youth sports supervisor I've seen a number of incidents in which parents and even coaches broke this commandment in ways that defy rational explanation or comprehension.

Providing Positive Athletic Experiences for Children
Over 25 million young people under the age of 14 participate in out-of-school youth sports programs across this country. Seventy percent will quit by the time they are 13. Boys on average stay in sports only 3.2 years, girls only 2.5. In many cases the children are driven out of sports by an improper focus upon competition and an insufficient emphasis upon values-based standards of participation and development.

Our City of Brentwood Parks & Recreation Youth Sports Program is working with a number of organizations, including the NAYS (National Alliance for Youth Sports) to develop programs to turn this around for our Brentwood children's athletic programs.

We try to build into the very structure of the Brentwood Parks & Recreation sports program processes and methods that will encourage children to learn important lessons having to do with teamwork, fairness, and generosity. Most importantly, we try to maximize the likelihood that the kids who participate in our program will have a lot of fun.

Parents who attend the games and coaches who work with the kids need to understand and cooperate with these goals.

Coaches and parents, to a large extent, control the outcomes that take place on the playing field and, thereby, become the main factors determining whether or not the kids get what they want and need out of the sports they participate in.

We have come to regard the coaches in our youth sports program as teachers and to regard the playing field as their classroom. The areas of learning include: development of motor skills, self-esteem, confidence, sportsmanship, commitment, dedication, and teamwork.

Focusing Children's Sports on Children
We try to lead coaches in reflecting upon their own participation in youth sports. We try to help them ask the questions, Why am I doing this? What do I want out of this? What are my goals for the kids?

Until people can answer these questions, they really aren't ready to make the decision to become a youth coach.

The same type of introspection is appropriate to parents of youth sports participants. Some of them may come to realize that their honest answer to the question, "What are my goals in putting my kid into youth sports?" is actually a shameful response.

For example, a father might finally admit, "I want my son to succeed as a baseball player so I can feel proud of myself as a father." Or "I want my child to learn that unless he excels in soccer he is a worthless person who deserves to be ridiculed and shamed."

Parents who come to some realization like this about their attitude should not attend any games their children are playing in until they somehow get their attitudes cleared up.

We help coaches and parents alike work through these issues. Following a training session one youth sports coach said, "I've been coaching for three years and I realize that I have damaged a lot of children." That's a sad fact for a youth sports coach to realize, but a wonderful thing for him to finally become aware of.

Looking at Sports from a Child's Perspective
We adults create dysfunctional situations for children in sports because of our failure to accommodate the children's own needs and interests. We need to be able to look at the world from their perspective, not from our own.

One big difference between the attitude of children and adults is that children naturally identify with the process, whereas adults often identify with the product. In other words, after a game an uninhibited child will ask with excitement things like, "Did you see how I hit that?" "Did you see how close I came to that?" Children will get excited about these things even in contests in which their team lost.

For an uptight adult, however, the only significant question is, "Did your team win?" with only one acceptable answer.

"Did we win the game?" one small player asked his coach on the way to the ice-cream parlor.

"Well, did we have fun?" the wise coach asked. "Boy! we sure did!" the child responded.

"Then we were winners," the coach answered.

The only kind of youth sports activities worth creating and supporting are those that produce "Yes" answers to questions such as:

• Did the kids have fun?
• Did they learn something and increase their skills?
• Do they want to come back and play again?

In order to encourage parents to support children's sports in a positive manner, we're trying to promote a number of principles that will help parents conduct themselves in ways that will help the children develop abilities and attitudes in positive directions.

In particular we try to make the following four important points:

1. Parents should demonstrate positive support for all players, coaches, and officials.

"Values are caught not taught," runs an ancient, and very true, proverb. If children see mom or dad treating everybody at all the games with honor and respect — even coaches and players from the other team — they will subconsciously pick up the message that such attitudes represent proper conduct.

By such examples, children will even pick up the negative side of the communication — that evidences of anger and rage, harsh shouting, and bitter denouncements are evidence of poor upbringing and bad manners, which, of course, is exactly true.

2. Parents should place the emotional and physical well being of the child athletes ahead of any personal desires or opinions.

Parents could surely never imagine that obnoxious and abusive conduct might be helpful to the sport or uplifting to the children. All they know is that they're determined to voice the rage and anger that is rising up in themselves no matter what effect it has on others.

Such parents are determined to give their opinions in a manner sufficiently loud so that everyone will be able to hear them. They don't care if people like them behaving like that or not.

As far as such parents are concerned the game is not about the children but is all about them. The focus of the experience of attending the children's sports activity, in their minds, is solely upon themselves.

Surely all these people need is to step back and actually understand what they are doing in order to make changes in attitude and behavior that will bring the focus to bear upon their children, and not on themselves.

3. Parents should do whatever it takes to make youth sports fun for children.

When a parent or a child athlete concentrates too much on winning and not enough on the processes involved in such things as sportsmanship, team play, and cooperation, the game isn't really fun after a while, even when the outcome is a victory. There might be a rush; a sense of "we got those guys!"; and perhaps a feeling of exaltation for a brief period. But no real, lasting fun. "It isn't supposed to be fun; it's warfare," is the attitude of some people.

Sometimes parents impose a no-fun, win-at-all-costs attitude on their children because it is the narrow philosophy that they themselves hold. People who live in a dog-eat-dog world aren't having fun whether at play or at work. Such people imagine that they're being realistic but the the actual reality is that many people take joy and satisfaction from the things they are doing in all parts of their lives. Fun is a part of life and should be an important part of everything we do.

Our motto is "...adding joy to people's lives." If children can be encouraged to really have fun at sports, through emphasis upon such things as personal best and encouraging others, maybe they can learn that it is the best way to live in other areas of life, as well.

Parents should be willing to let that happen. Perhaps they themselves can learn something about life from the enjoyment they see their kids having when they are playing according to the rules of the game; according to the best rules for life.

4. Parents should insist that their children honor and respect everybody on the playing field regardless of race, sex, creed, or ability.

We're convinced that good citizenship can be learned on the playing field. We are teaching children how to live as well as how to play.

Parents need to catch this vision and do whatever it takes to see that the American ideals of liberty, justice, and equality are modeled at every level of play, particularly by the parents themselves.

Learning and Practicing Appropriate Behavior
I'm aware that a lot of the problems we have on the field with parents and coaches is the result of learned behaviors. It isn't enough to just tell such a person that they should act better, somehow the information has to go from what they know to how they actually behave.

For example, a brother of one of our staff has a child in our sports program. The brother underwent our training. The staff member said that he subsequently attended a baseball game at which the man's little girl got up to bat. The coach was hollering directions at her, telling her what to do, the parents in the stands were hollering at her. And her dad was standing right by the sideline screaming directions at her.

The staff member said that the little girl was paralyzed. She had no way to shut out all the inputs that were bombarding her ears. The staff member pulled his brother aside. "Weren't you listening when you went to the training?"

"What's the problem?" the guy said. "I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm just trying to help."

"Look at your daughter," the man said. "She's confused and terrified to do anything." The staff member was amazed that the father could have supposed that yelling at the poor girl would help her be a better player or help her have fun. "Weren't you listening to the training?" he asked.

If the problem really is one of learned behavior than we have to put processes in place to relearn behavior. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that we need to learn better behaviors. As in the case of the staff member's brother, this is something that takes work. That guy has to go back and try these things out until he gets it right. He has to practice. He needs other people helping him and reminding him.

Focusing on Children; Learning about Life
If you are a parent and your child is sometimes crying after a game; or ashamed of the quality of his/her play, then let them stop playing. Or else, explore the reasons for the negative outcomes and take steps to change them. We are ready to help you.

I want to emphasize that team sports has the potential of becoming one of the best teachers about life that children can have. Lessons about discipline, training, working together, and winning or losing graciously. These are lessons for life that extend beyond sports.

We're working all the time to reinforce the values that are now embedded in the program. We're trying to get better at helping parents be better parents, helping coaches be better coaches, and, most of all, helping the kids be better kids. Our aim is to knock down all the barriers that would prevent youth sports in Brentwood from reaching the tremendous potential in young lives that sports are capable of.

So we're changing the face of youth sports one parent, one coach, and one player at a time. If you are a parent of a young athlete or are thinking about going into coaching, jump right in and work with us to help us bring about these wonderful changes.