Should Parents Watch Sports Practices?
Parents, do you stay and watch every one of your athlete’s practices? Depending on your child and their training situation, technically there is no right or wrong answer, but I’m going to give you my opinion anyhow.
Assuming your child is in a training situation which is healthy, safe and well supervised (which it should be), I don’t see any benefit to staying and watching every one of your child’s practices. Here’s why:
- As a parent, if you watch every practice you are less likely to see the gradual improvements that your child is achieving every day. Stay and watch once a month or so and you will be amazed with your daughter’s progress.
- Your child needs to learn to interact with other adults and her teammates without looking to you for approval/disapproval at every turn. For most children, the lure of looking out into the audience for parental approval after every turn is just too great.
- Certainly you have something more productive to do with your time – take a walk, go work out, do errands, or better yet, carpool so you only have driving duties one way giving you more time to do other tasks.
Some of the gyms I have coached at in the past (before I had kids of my own) actually had “no-watch” policies. I don’t agree with that philosophy either. As a parent paying tuition or players fees, it is your right to observe what your child is learning. Additionally, I would be very cautious allowing my child to participate in a program that regularly held closed practices unless there were multiple coaches that I knew well and trusted present at all times.
Years ago I had a student who’s Mother watched every practice. She would sit in the stands and count how many turns each child took and if her child got any fewer turns than anyone else, she would make a point of letting me know after practice. She was constantly comparing her daughter’s progress to the other girls and it put a lot of unnecessary pressure on her daughter.
On the other hand, there are a few situations where I highly recommend you stay and observe (or at least be close by).
- If your daughter is taking a private lesson with coach, there should always be at least one other ADULT present at all times.
- If your daughter is new to the class/team or just returning from an injury.
- If you or your daughter is not completely comfortable with the training situation.
I would really like to hear your opinion! Leave me a comment and let me know whether you think parents should stay and watch every practice or not, and why.
11 Comments
July 31st, 2007 at 11:48 am
Yes! I fully agree! Give your child some room to grow. Learning to interact in a social environment independently is VERY important to a child’s development as is learning new skills and knowledge.
July 31st, 2007 at 1:32 pm
As a former school coach I never had a parent sit in on a practice. I would have found this very intrusive and I believe that each school I taught at had a closed gym policy.
However, when I coached middle school I often invited parents to help me, as my team was very large and the girls were squirmy, as they often are. It was a great help and the parents got to see first hand how I ran practices.
July 31st, 2007 at 8:14 pm
My daughter doesn’t play any sports yet. However, I would probably watch at a distance in the beginning. Once she got used to things, then I’d probably let her go on her own.
August 1st, 2007 at 6:52 pm
I always feel like it’s rude to leave the coach responsible for my kid. I’d love to leave, but I didn’t know that was allowed. Also my kid really likes me to be there, maybe when she’s older she won’t care as much. But, I do have to reign myself in to not interfere.
off topic, but perhaps of interest:
Blogher is inviting women bloggers to take part in an intitiative called Bloghers Act. I’ve responded to their request for nominations of a cause. I have asked Blogher to make healthcare in America their pet issue for this year and posted my request at So Sioux Me – I encourage other bloggers to echo my request. It also lists 3 tangible and easy ways bloggers can influence the change. Earlier in the week I asked the question What Would Jesus Do? Concerning health care in America at http://traceesioux.blogspot.com/2007/07/what-would-jesus-do.html.
Earlier in the week I asked the question What Would Jesus Do? http://traceesioux.blogspot.com/2007/08/bloghers-act.html
Pass it on.
Tracee Sioux
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August 1st, 2007 at 7:01 pm
Tracee – I think it really depends a lot on the length of practice, age of child, and venue. For example, I doubt I would leave my 5 year old’s 30 minute swim practice, but I would read a book, take a walk in the vicinity or something similar.
Most of the time my 9 year old has gymnastics practice at the same time as I am teaching it, but I rarely pay attention to her group’s where abouts while I am teaching. One day a week she has practice when I don’t and it is 3 hours long. There is no way I would consider sitting through that, yet there are parents who do precisely that. They are the ones I am concerned with most.
August 1st, 2007 at 7:50 pm
I agree — it depends on her age, the environment, etc.
Once I saw how my 7-year-old’s soccer team was, I gave her the option if she wanted me to watch, or not. I wanted her to feel the space to be unsupervised, if she wanted, or to feel my presence near.
She said she didn’t really care one way or the other, but I think she liked having me there. (I stayed.)
August 1st, 2007 at 9:21 pm
I don’t believe parents should be at every single practice ever no matter the age. Unless of course the child is small and there is no way to watch without he/she seeing you. I’m all for watching from a distance so they can be free to be themselves.
To stay at every single practice is not always for the best. There can never be any surprise performances and as Char stated in her post, it’s harder to notice the growth as they develop.
I’m also referring to a controlled and professional situation.
I can remember being on the girls soft ball team. I think my Dad was at every single practice there ever was that he could be at. That put a lot of pressure on me as a pitcher to perform well.
Now my Dad didn’t put that pressure on me at all. But, just his mere presence there was enough pressure. Kids are always the hardest on themselves. Sometimes they are even harder no matter the parental disposition.
Now if you are staying at your child’s practice because you think little susie is getting more turns than little johnnie then you’ve got some serious control issues. Life is not always fair and sometimes different kids have different needs. It’s not always going to be about what you think your definition of “fair” is..
August 24th, 2007 at 4:11 am
I have been a swim coach for three decades. I have some literature on all the walls of my pool that says basically…”your child is nourished by regular casual observation”…but which also cautions that “relentless observation is actually surveillance and auditing….which is unhealthy for kids”. By having this information prominent, parents actually become self supervising through peer judgement.
Your point about parents being unable to notice improvement when watching daily is also right…especially when improvements are as incrmentally small as they are in swimming. By the way, I, like most of my peers these days, always insist on at least one parent being in attendance at every session….to provide proprietary assurances for parents. A coach who works without any parent/witness at all is not doing the right thing by his sport in my view. Maybe this is a harsh judgement…but it is looking after the bottom line.
August 24th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Brad – thanks for adding your insight! We have a rule that at least one additional adult always has to be present for a practice. Due to the nature of our training facility it is a rare occasion that there would ever be only two adults present.
My youngest is really taking to swimming so we are now in the process of finding a swim program for her. I may email you for some pointers.
August 29th, 2007 at 9:01 am
Hi Char,
If your child likes a challenge, she’ll enjoy swimming. My humble advice to any parent starting their child off in swimming is this. Don’t expect the coach’s words or deomonstrations (or remonstrations!) to translate into orthodox “correct” movement. Movement — especially in a counter-intuitive leverage environment like water — serves anatomical imperatives before it serves form. Novice swimmers are wobbly for a long time. Your child’s instructor can never make your child improve as fast as the child who gets more practice….regardless of how good or bad their instructor is. Every swimmer has a unique style. World record holder Janet Evans swung one arm high and the other a little wide. The pedants and classicists hated this and would ring her coach up at all hours telling him how to improve her! Optimum attendance rates for competitive training are sometimes expressed as “age minus 5″. In other words a competitive 8 year old might train 8 minus 5 = 3 times a week. Turn 9, bingo, its 4 times a week. (60-90 minutes a time). These are only norms…not commandments.
Regards Brad Cooper
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:07 am
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