youth sports athletes

Parents can sometimes be too pushy when it comes to their children playing their sport.
In this video Coach Dan shares with us the best ways a youth sports coach can deal with parents.

This video is the 7th part of our series of interviews with Coach Dan.

What you are about to read is about Best Ways Coaches Can Deal With Parents. Make your thoughts known by leaving a comment below.

You don’t want to get in between the player and the parent. A lot of times I will talk to the kid. I won’t contradict anything the parent has said necessarily, unless it is way over the top, but I try to help them look at the situation a little bit differently.

That there are other ways of looking at the situation and help them ultimately to choose a path that is going to be more healthy for them.

I’ve also had to talk to parents and say, “Here’s what I see with your son or your daughter and here’s where I think they are at. Here’s how I think we can work together to help him be successful.

So if I am telling him these things on the field, if you can help reinforce some of those things at home and here’s the language we are using with him, or here’s the language we are using as a team.

If you can do that, then I think we can help him be successful.” Most parents will see that as, “Okay here’s some I can do.” They want to be involved. They want to help. For the most part, their heart is in the right place.

They just may not have thought about the impact they are having on their kid. If I can give them some language and if I can give them some tools to be successful, then that’s good.

The other parents and some parents, when I have that conversation with them, they start to, “Oh am I being one of those parents? ” I had one Dad say that and I laughed. I didn’t say no. I said, “Well let’s just make sure we get him in the right frame of mind when he comes to play.” Dad did what he needed to do there.

One of the things we have to do as coaches is try to help the kids have a healthy relationship with the game, but also help the parents have a healthy relationship with the game. It isn’t easy. It’s not something that is just innate.

Just because we played as a kid or we played in high school or we played in college or even if we played pro ball, it doesn’t mean we have the skills to be a good supportive parent and that we have necessarily a healthy relationship with the game.

Those are learned skills and it takes all of us working together to help parents and coaches and kids get ultimately what we need out of it. We want so much for our kids to succeed, “I have this experience and I have this way of doing it and it worked for me, so it’s got to work for you.”

No… maybe, maybe not. Maybe it’s worth giving it a try, but if it’s not sticking with the kid, then back off and let them do what works for them.

If you missed the first Part of this series click here.

To go to the next part of this series, click here.


youth sports athletesDan Clemens is a 10-year youth coach spanning four sports, a baseball umpire and basketball referee. He also was a Division I scholarship athlete.

Coach Dan is the author of an amazing book A Perfect Season: A Coach’s Journey to Learning. Click here to buy Dan’s book!