By By Sandro Angulo Rincón
Imagine you are a parent of a six-year-old boy and an eight-year-old girl, and you want them to start practicing a sport to stimulate their physical and mental development, convinced that it contributes to the present and future well-being of the children. However, you are unclear about the role you should play in this educational context to make it truly beneficial and healthy.
This journalistic note offers scientifically validated clues about the appropriate behavior you should adopt when your children join a school or club for soccer, basketball, cycling, or another discipline where they will have contact with coaches, opponents, referees, and other parents.
Indifferent, Balanced, and Overprotective Parents
The benefits of sports practice in children and adolescents are well-known. According to Professor Diana Amado and her colleagues, the benefits are concentrated in the physical, cognitive, and psychosocial areas.
– Physically, it reduces the risk of suffering from many chronic diseases.
– Cognitively, exercise is related to improved academic performance.
– Psychosocially, physical activity regulates emotions and promotes social and communicative skills.
Likewise, parents experience a sense of community in sports schools by interacting with other parents and participating in committees to organize sports events for the children. These benefits, however, can increase the children’s stress when their parents transform this educational scenario into a goal, end, and achievement of social and economic rewards. Children’s and youth sports sometimes become a crossroads for participants since they can initially develop games and socialize. However, later, it turns into a competitive activity planned by adults.
These parents are portrayed as overprotective, indifferent to fair play in sports encounters, assuming the role of managers, critical of the changes of the coaches, and concerned about statistics. They induce their children to believe winning is the only valid outcome, generating a curvilinear relationship between the child’s stress and parental involvement. Often, Professor Miguel Ángel Betancor asserts that when the outcome is not favorable, they physically and verbally assault other parents and players, referees, and coaches, creating a conflictive atmosphere in a place where empathy and companionship should prevail.
According to researchers Marcelo Roffe, Alfredo Felini, and Nelly Giscafre, authors of the book “Mi hijo el campeón: la presión de los padres y el entorno,” the effects of overprotective parents’ behavior tend to be very harmful to minors: psychosocial imbalance typical of the age, stress, anxiety, guilt, dropout, panic crisis in the face of sports failure, and fear of disappointing their parents are some of the most known manifestations.
In a study by communicators Luisa Amaya, Sandro Angulo, and Camilo Patiño published in the Cubun journal, 65 parents were surveyed to determine if they had acquired a verbal or physical offensive behavior or had witnessed any while watching their child’s soccer match at Grama Deportes school in Ibagué, Colombia, and 38.5% of them indicated that they had acquired such behavior, 35.5% did not, and 25.5% said they had witnessed that behavior (see graph).
The same surveyed population stated that the verbal or physical offenses carried out or witnessed occurred as follows:
– 29% of the parents against other parents.
– 24.2% of parents against their children.
– 11.3% of parents against coaches.
– 29% of parents against referees.
– 6.5% of the parents state that they have never acquired or witnessed offensive behaviors.
These data reveal that parents’ overprotective attitude in sports training schools is typical, although these behaviors depend on broader economic and social contexts. However, as questionable as the exhausting parental pressure is, the attitude of indifferent parents is no less harmful. They know nothing about their children, do not give affection, do not ask about their well-being, not with the intention of not pressuring them, but due to a lack of interest because their minds are elsewhere; they see sports clubs as a daycare or are of the type “I will leave you at the game and then come back to pick you up.” Thus, it becomes difficult for a minor to commit to the sport and, therefore, to take advantage of its benefits at the physical, cognitive, and psychosocial levels.
Specialists like Marcelo Roffe, Alfredo Felini, and Nelly Giscafre suggest the figure of balanced parents who get involved just enough in their children’s sports practice. They accompany and do not demand or pressure. They care about them and do not ask about the effectiveness of athletic performance but whether they enjoyed the experience.
The Influence of Industrial Sport
Overprotective parents are likely influenced by industrial sport, characterized by large-scale production and productivity, the elevation of athletes through the enhancement of their image, and the pursuit of scandalous profits through stadium admissions, athlete transfers, broadcasting rights on television and the internet, and the sale of team or athlete-related merchandise at retail points.
Undoubtedly, the discipline that embodies these characteristics is soccer, the king of sports. The book “¡Cállate, papá! Padres y violencias en el fútbol industrial” by researcher Luis Cantarero describes this sport as a producer of serial coaches and players, as well as being physically and verbally violent and suspected of corruption, and parents as people who project their weaknesses, traumas, and frustrations onto their children.
Parental figures and clubs are attracted to the transfers of young prospects who can be signed by professional soccer clubs in Europe, generating significant income in euros or dollars. However, to prevent mafias from conducting these transfers without respecting the rights of children and adolescents, as reported by Chilean journalist Juan Pablo Meneses in his book “Niños futbolistas,” FIFA published the Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players. The document states that signings are approved when players reach the age of 18, though they are authorized at a younger age if “the player’s parents move to the country where the new club is based for reasons not related to football,” among other four exceptions. In the case of clubs, they receive training compensation only “(1) when the player registers for the first time as a professional and (2) for every transfer of the professional player until the end of the calendar year in which he turns 23.” Everything must adhere to rules or standards.
I close this chapter of Agon and Areté with a record of sports stars who have testified in press interviews and their biographical books about how their overprotective and pressuring parents influenced their lives.
André Agassi, the American champion of eight Grand Slam tennis titles, shares in the book “Open” how his father, an Iranian immigrant, demanded that he run after and respond to 2,500 balls daily to improve his timing (the precise moment a play action is executed) during merciless training sessions, while also behaving violently, brandishing a gun near André’s nose when his exercise routine did not meet expectations.
Tonya Harding, the American figure skater better known for allowing people from her circle to attack her rival Nancy Kerrigan with a metal bar to eliminate her from the Winter Olympics in the Norwegian city of Lillehammer, suffered abusive treatment as she became an elite athlete. Her mother, Lavona Golden, called her “ugly,” “fat,” and “a failure,” “denied her bathroom breaks during training because she considered that she paid for her classes so that there would be no interruptions,” and on more than one occasion, hit her near the ice rink.
These are just two examples of athletes who ended up with exploitative and abusive parents. I suggest mentioning renowned athletes with balanced parents who helped them succeed. Remember, you can subscribe to our newsletter for free and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
