ILCA UK Chair Blog #124

Feb 10

At the end of England’s Six Nations game against France, Fin Smith, England’s young player of the match, embraced his parents. All those unsung hours on school and club touchlines, all those youthful ups and downs, distilled into a tight group hug of the purest emotional joy, according to the Guardian. It has made me realise it has come time to discuss the role of parents in our sport.

Parents or guardians provide the opportunity for children to be involved in sport. Whether it is signing them up to clubs or after school sports or bringing them to training, often waiting around to bring them home. In most sports, from rugby and football to swimming and sailing, it is a big time commitment and a financial one too. Many young sailors can’t walk to their sailing club nor access public transport and so rely on parents. And when it comes to competitions, either one day or weekends, it means a lot of travelling and hanging around. (Of course, a significant benefit is that many parents volunteer to help make these competitions work, but that’s another subject.) We have to also understand that not all children get these opportunities, and it is important (in my view anyway) than our children understand that and the sacrifices that their parents make.

But to be clear children have many different motivations for doing sport. I touched on this in Blog #122 about sailing (ILCAs) – it is about the pure enjoyment of sailing, the physical exercise, the mental stimulation, the thrill of competition, the socialising and the independence and every child is different in why they are doing it. Another factor is of course to please us parents. It is something I ask myself – are they really doing this for their own reasons or because subconsciously they know we want them to.

Parents also provide not just the opportunity but the emotional support that children need in sport. Sport invariably involves winning and losing and young people need to learn how to deal with that. Study after study has shown that positive parental involvement contributes to a positive sporting experience for their children. That involvement supports self-esteem, motivation and social skills. And again, studies have shown that these valuable skills gained in sport, transfer and help development in other areas of life like school and careers. What is less clear though is that positive parental support results in an increased likelihood of success in sport (there may be a correlation but a casual link is not proven).

One of the challenges of youth sport is that children develop at different rates, physically and mentally. A “child-wonder” may not develop into the next Tiger Woods (or they could) but in a sport like sailing, which is not “early specialisation”, the stars can also develop later, making talent identification so difficult. With all the benefits that sport can bring, it is important that we help our children develop a passion so that they can “sail for life” as well as getting all the benefits.

Studies also show that being “over-involved” in your child’s sporting development can have negative consequences - I mean beyond providing emotional and tangible support by for example over-inflating player’s ego or putting pressure on them. Stories in the press abound from other sports and most sports administrators will tell you the hardest part of their job is dealing with over-zealous parents. We are lucky in our class that parents understand this boundary and also step forward to help and volunteer.

So parents play such an important role in the sporting life of our children and it is important to celebrate those moments of bonding that it creates, even if not as player of match in the Six Nations.

Snippets

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