From USA Football ... good advice from a football mom ...
What to do when your child doesn’t like the coach
Wed, 01/08/2014 - 9:50am
Throughout 21 years of sports parenting, we’ve dealt with at least 80 different coaches among our three kids. We’ve experienced every kind of coach you could imagine.
We’ve had coaches who try to please everyone and didn’t care about winning and coaches who cared way too much about winning and not enough about developing players.
We’ve had coaches who were high strung and emotional and coaches who only showed poker-faces and were very hard to read.
Yet even with the endless coaching personalities we’ve worked with, I’ve concluded that there are really only two kinds of coaches: the ones we liked and the ones we didn't.
If your child plays sports long enough, he will have both kinds. What will you do when your child comes home and says he doesn’t like his coach? Consider these steps:
- Let him voice his frustration to you without judging his feelings.
- Decide with your child about whether a confrontation with the coach is needed.
- If a coach confrontation does not resolve the problem, then you and your child may simply have to agree to disagree with the coach (unless there are moral issues).
- Keep your conversations about the coach between you and your child. Don't share your complaints with other parents.
- If you decide to disagree with the coach and remain on the team, then accept the situation without bad-mouthing the coach to your child.
- Find a way to vent your frustrations about the coach. Whether it's writing it down or sharing your feelings with your spouse or a friend (not two or three or four). Then leave it at home when you go to games.
- Teach your child to treat the coach with respect even if he has a problem respecting the coach.
What should you not do when your child doesn't like the coach?
- Stir up trouble behind the coach's back. If you have a problem, confront the coach face to face instead of behind his back.
- Try to get the coach fired. If you want to get a coach ousted because you do not like him, what exactly are you teaching your child? That we just get rid of people we don't like? I've known parents who complained to the administration and got a coach fired simply because their children were not playing the position they wanted.
If your child faces a season with a coach he does not like, help him learn to look for the good in his coach. This is a great opportunity for young athletes to learn how to work with someone who they find difficult. If they can learn this while they are young, they will have a head start in learning life skills to work with future bosses.
Janis Meredith, sports mom and coach’s wife, writes a sports parenting blog called JBM Thinks. Check out her Sports Parenting Survival Guide Series with survival guides for football, basketball, and volleyball moms.
