Dangerously Loving Parent: Parent Ed

I called it the Dangerously Loving Parent in a research paper I wrote in college. It is eye catching, and it describes the situation ok, it isn't that it is completely dangerous, but a hyperbolic statement can catch the eye of potential readers better.

It was the look at parents and their behavior with youth sports. There are plenty of examples of people who go over board, and are not excusable, but my view was on the more minor issues that parents don't realize until years later, that what they did might have been a bad move on their part.

I began at animal instinct because deep down we as humans still have animal instinct, and it was the approach of philosophers like Plato and Aristotle to begin at the origin. So that was my approach. You realize that in human nature the parent wants to protect and do what's best for their children. If you look at many issues that arise it stems from this concept. I then observed parent complaints and how parents treated their athletes in a way that I thought was wrong, and then look at it from their side. All they really are doing is trying to do the best thing for their child. It makes me as a swim coach more sympathetic, despite not ever having a child of my own, so empathy can't really be felt.

Most parents don't know how to be a parent, we observe others and learn. Some may read a book, but we basically learn from observation and trust our instincts. Ah ha, back to the instincts. This is where most issues come into play.

So what can we as coaches do? We definitely can't teach people how to parent. We must provide parent education on what we know about our sport, and the different things that may come up. Our information is normally dated though. Either it is from when we swam, or it is from a past experience with a swimmer. Times are changing, and there are new and different issues now. This parent education doesn't necessarily have to tell a parent exactly how to be a parent, but provide some information that can prepare them for what may come up. What they can do to help the team survive, and maybe how coaches deal with some situations.

Our hope is that the parents will listen, and be able to try to do some as we advise. In parent education articles, there things they say a good swim parent does, that can be very tough because they may ask you to not go with your instincts, like don't be critical of bad swims. If you are critical of your swimmers swims with them, try not doing it, and just be positive. It is hard, as you just want to say, "why were you doing this like that." There are other things that are hard to follow, but we ask that the parents do their best. We try to provide information; some is taken well, and some not so well. All we can do is try.

So, it is not that the parents are dangerous, but the instinctual nature of our competitive selves can be detrimental to the long term success of an athlete, so please coaches continue to try to educate parents despite the fight you may get. Some do listen. Parents please allow us to educate you about the development of young athletes in this sport. We are all in it for the long term success of our athletes.