Let’s be honest: Sports parents are not objective observers. We think that our kids can do no – or very little – wrong. We insist that it’s not their fault the other team scored, and we blame the coach or other team members for something that just may have been our child’s fault.
My daughter played on a basketball team with a parent who made it her job to yell from the bleachers at her daughter’s teammates when they dropped her passes or didn’t pass the ball to her when she was open. It was as if she wasn't able to admit that her daughter could make a mistake on the court. It was always the teammate who was wrong, not her daughter.
I’m guessing you’ve met a few parents like that.
Or sometimes we over-critique and come down way too hard on our own children. We think the one mistake our kids make is the huge elephant on the field or court, when in reality it’s only a fly on the end of the coach’s nose.
Either way – too hard or too soft – it seems impossible for a parent to be objective when watching their own children play sports. And yet there are ways.
How can you be both objective and subjective as a sports parent when it comes to assigning blame in youth sports?
As a sports parent, you will have days when objectivity wins and days when it does not. But this is a battle that is not worth getting stressed over as long as your child has a fun, character-building youth sports experience.
Janis B. Meredith, sports mom and coach's wife, writes a sports parenting blog called JBM Thinks. She authored the Sports Parenting Survival Guide Series and has a podcasting series for sports parents. You can also find her on Facebook and Twitter.