Your children will spend around 7 hours in school, roughly 8 hours sleeping, leaving 9 hours for you to guide them for the rest of the day. During some evenings your kids may want to take part in sporting activities. Even though the coach takes control of the training sessions it now makes you a sporting parent.

Subconsciously, you could be passing on messages and expectations that hinder your child’s mental development, by setting unrealistic expectations, adding additional pressure or affecting their enjoyment within the experience.

This article is solely going to examine the role the parents play in sport and how this behaviour could affect your child. This feature will offer some practical examples for the role / duty of the parent. 

The role sporting parents play in youth sport is vitally important for the development of their child and caution should be taken to ensure the sporting development and more importantly happiness of their child isn’t hindered. This doesn’t necessarily apply just to sports either but in terms of education and other aspects of their lives as well. 

We can start by looking at who’s role it is to get their bags ready, food intake and sleep time. This is of course age dependent and sometimes different sports can have an affect also. Around the ages of 10-12 would be a good age for them to start taking responsibility for their own sporting participation as a rule of thumb.

But speaking generically, if the sporting child were to pack their bags, they gain some autonomy over their preparation and will have a greater impact on them when they grow older.

If they forget something, then it will be their fault and they can take accountability for their mistakes. If you know they are forgetting something, it may be more beneficial for them in the long run if you don’t remind them. Hold back!

If they are very young, you may want to prepare a visual checklist with them so that they can use it when they are packing their bags to foster this autonomy with their preparation. 

With regards to food preparation, again this is age dependent but to start igniting accountability for their food intake then they can get a say when they want to have their meal before training or games.

Perhaps they can prepare something the night before if it is going to be a rush or if they are younger then you can come up with an agreement for what to get in with food shop. If you feel that they can start taking greater control over this area, then introduce that topic and start the conversation with them.

Don’t just announce that they have to do everything from now on for themselves, help them learn how to do it. 

In terms of sleeping, it is critical that children and teenagers get enough sleep. Especially in term of growth and recovery. So, if you haven’t already, set some ground rules around sleep.

A set bedtime, no phones in the bedroom, buy an alarm clock instead of the alarm on their phones for optimum levels of sleep. 

There will be further articles on this website around the sporting parent which will discuss parent behaviours during and after games and how this will influence your child.

Furthermore, it will examine the messages the parent delivers and whether or not that message is beneficial or hindering your child’s development.