Comment: Questions all parents should ask themselves about kids sport

How can you as a parent keep actively and positively engaged throughout this season? Photo / Getty Images

OPINION

With the start of another sports season upon us, it’s a great time for parents to equip themselves with the skills and knowledge that will provide their child (and themselves) with a positive experience this winter.

Parents play a key role in their children’s sporting experiences, whether that’s as a supporter, coach, volunteering to help the team or getting players to and from games and tournaments. For many parents, it’s many or all of these things.

These roles give parents an ability to make a massive contribution to how much children enjoy the sports they play. Over the next couple of articles, we’ll have a look at five questions from Sport NZ that might help parents use their role to make winter 2023 a great sports season — here are the first three:

1. Do I know my child’s ‘why’ for playing sport? And do my behaviours support their ‘why’?

Ultimately, it’s important to understand your child’s “why” so that your behaviour matches what drives their motivation for playing sport. The key thing here is having a conversation with your child about why they play sport, possibly without unduly influencing their answer! Following that, you should reflect on how your behaviours support or undermine this “why” and, if necessary, ask for feedback from your child about how you can continue to support them.

2. How will I, as a parent, keep actively and positively engaged throughout this season?

We know happy parents are a key part of the equation when it comes to supporting young people to have great sport experiences. We also know sport places many demands on parents, whether that be emotional, logistical or financial. So, what are some ways parents can keep actively and positively engaged? Become more knowledgeable about youth sport — balanceisbetter.org.nz has been developed just for this. For parents new to a sport, something as simple as getting your coach or your child to explain the rules or strategy might help provide you with the understanding you need.

Do not let the winning and losing get in the way of the wider lessons sport can teach us. In the face of adverse moments — losing, deselection, bad referee decisions etc — role model emotionally intelligent responses to your child.

Connect, share and ensure transparency around logistics and commitments between the “wider team”. Most sports these days are pretty good at outlining at the beginning of the season what athlete commitments look like, and parents will quickly figure out what that means for them. Often this might come in the form of an email induction or an induction evening. If your coach/club/school does not host a meeting, we would encourage you to ask for one. These meetings are good forums for logistical commitments to be clarified, as well as other expectations around behaviours and codes of conduct.

3. Is my child getting enough variety?

Parents play a key role in supporting their children to find sports that they grow to love, and this starts with encouraging them to sample various codes. Research on New Zealand athletes on the verge of entering high-performance sport showed that, on average, they were playing five sports in their primary school years and at least three sports through secondary school. Is your child getting enough variety?

The next article we will look at the last two questions parents should ask themselves