Everyone Plays a Role in an Athlete's Mental Health
Parents, coaches and athletes each contribute to supporting or negating an athlete's inner journey
“My kid needs to play on the top team or we’re going to find another club.”
“My son is better than the rest of these guys. He needs to start or we’ll be looking to transfer to another school.”
“If you’re not perfect, you’re not a part of this family.”
“I don’t understand why the coach even plays the other girl, my daughter is clearly a better athlete.”
Themes like these are so prevalent in youth sports nowadays, that ironically the parent who advocates for their kid to wait their turn, work harder or be patient is the one who comes off sounding like the anomaly. In my work as a sports parenting coach, parents sometimes casually mention to me something along the lines of, “I don’t really mean the things I’m saying, but it feels like I need to be (over)advocating for my child, because no one else is.”
When in reality, the over-bearing parent isn’t going to be the difference maker for their kid to get the most playing time or become the super star. In fact, many times it has the opposite effect and coaches are left in tough positions of wanting to win but at the same time not wanting to encourage or indulge the bad parenting, which shows up in the form of the athlete “acting out”, not following team rules and not being a team player.
So who’s the bad actor in this situation, the parent or the coach? The truth is both play a role.
While a coach may only be in a child’s life for a short period of time (no matter how long the season feels), the more important concern is the impact negative messaging from both parents and coaches has on the mental health of young athletes, which can last a lifetime.
A few years back, when I was working on my book, Raising Empowered Athletes, I met a mom who was asking for advice in how best to support her teenage athlete. She admitted she really didn’t have a clue. “I just want to do the opposite of what my Dad did to me.” Now a woman in her mid-forties, she teared up as she recounted a memory from her own childhood, when she was thirteen years old.
“My father wanted me to be the best tennis player. I don’t remember playing the match, I just remember the screaming that happened in the car ride home where he accused me of not caring. Eventually, he stopped the car on the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) (which is a very busy road), opened the passenger car door and told me to get out and walk the five miles home. That I didn’t deserve a ride.”
There is a new short documentary out, Not Good Enough. The statistics of impact that stressful parenting and coaching is having on kids is only getting more bleak. The one quote in the movie from a coach gutted me as a parent, “For 6 years, I was a high school baseball coach. During that time, 7 kids committed suicide at that high school. I coached two of them.”
“Dude, we hit 100 ground balls this week. That’s a routine ground ball.”
“ That was crap, you guys aren’t representing the school well.”
“You play like that, you won’t have a spot on the team next year.”
Please take a few minutes to watch this video with your athlete (and send it to your coaches!) It is a wonderful conversation starter.
Please send us a message of what resonates with you.
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I have reached out to Eileen to be a guest on #RA podcast but in the meantime, this is a fantastic TedX Talk! She’s a great resource for parenting.
