In the hands of the right people with the right attitudes, sport can be a positive, character-building experience. It provides one of the best opportunities for children to come in contact with rules and social values. It defines the need to get along well with others and be accepted as part of a team. It plays a prime role in promoting values such as tolerance, fairness, and responsibility. It provides the opportunity for children to acquire an appreciation for an active lifestyle; develop a positive self-image by mastering sport skills; develop social skills with other children and adults; learn about managing success and disappointment and learning respect for others.

If you want your child to come out of their youth sport's experience a winner (feeling good about themselves and having a healthy attitude towards sports), then they need your help! You are a vital and important part of the coach-athlete-parent team. There are three important points a parent needs to know.

Firstly, parents need to redefine what winning is. A recent poll indicated that in general, children participate in sport in order to have fun and play with their mates along with improving skills and getting fit.

Children don’t think like adults. They view success differently and these views differ with age, gender, and the type of sport they play. Young children are more concerned with having fun than with beating others — at least until someone tells them that it is important to win.

In general, children tend to keep sport in perspective. At the end of a game, lots of children don’t know if they’ve won or lost. While parents and coaches may dwell on the result of a competition, a child can go home and quickly forget about it. According to a poll in the USA, almost three out of four children aged 10 to 17 years said they wouldn’t care if no score was kept during a game. Add this to the recent article from the Norway team that dominated the Winter Olympics earlier this year that stated;  “Unlike the U.S., where they keep score of everything all the time, Norway puts kids in sports but doesn’t let them keep score until age 13. The idea is to make sports part of their social development so that the motivation to stay involved is to have fun with their friends, not winning… We think it’s better to be a child in this way because then they can concentrate on having fun and be with their friends and develop. We think the biggest motivation for the kids to do sports that they do it with their friends and they have fun while they’re doing it and we want to keep that feeling throughout their whole career.”

Because of this a huge amount of Norwegian kids are doing sports and the elite sporting programmes have very broad recruiting base to choose from.

I’m not talking about not trying to win as I am as competitive as the next person or probably more so. If you are not trying to win then you might as well take away the goal post. What I am referring to is redefining what winning is. In the team I coach, we define winning as, ‘Giving the very best you can, knowing you have left everything you have on the court and that you have played with integrity and Christian character’. After all, if your players give the best they can and still can’t win then they were simply beaten by a better team on the day.

In every sport contest there are winners and losers. The tendency to value winning above all else has been recognized as the cause of many problems in children’s sport. When winning is kept in perspective, the focus is more accurately placed on striving to win and the pursuit of victory.

In the film 'Cool Runnings', the Jamaican bobsleigh team is so desperate to win an Olympic medal, they're convinced none of their efforts matter if they end up without it. All the learning, joy and growth they'd devoted themselves to, is forgotten next to a piece of metal on a ribbon. Their coach is a 180kg man who won an Olympic medal bobsleighing 20 years earlier and had been a complete loser ever since. In a redefining moment he tells them, 'If you're not enough before the gold medal, you're not enough with it.'

But the pursuit of rewards can hurt us when we go after them for the wrong reason. A trophy is not the achievement itself - it's not the learning we've gained, the muscles we've trained, or the courage we've developed along the way. At best, the trophies in the showcase are little reminders, something to make us grateful for the past and keep us motivated for the future. At worst, the trophy case becomes a shrine, a tool to prop up a false image of ourselves. When you give all the glory to God, your accomplishments bring joy, but when you try to take the credit for yourself your trophies tarnish, fade and become a burden. Remember your child is a winner if they know you just love to support them when they compete.

Secondly, if you really want your child to be as happy and as successful as possible in everything they do, then teach them how to lose/fail graciously. The most successful people in and out of sports do two things differently than everyone else. Firstly, they are more willing to take risks and therefore fail more frequently. Secondly, they use their failures in a positive way as a source of motivation and feedback to improve. Mistakes are an everyday part of learning to play sport. Mistakes are just ‘miss -takes’ It gives you another chance to do it right next time. If you learn from your mistake then it’s not a mistake but a learning experience.

You can't learn to walk without falling enough times. Each time that you fall, your body gets valuable information on how to do it better. One of my favourite Einstein sayings is - I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

If it’s not a big deal for you then it won’t be a big deal for your child and they will be willing to give something else a try next time, if they know you won’t be calling them up on their miss-takes’. Remember to say, "I love to watch you play".

Thirdly, a parent’s job is to provide encouragement, support, empathy, transportation, money, help with fund-raisers, etc., but it’s not to coach! Coaching interferes with your role as supporter and fan. The last thing your child needs to hear from you after a disappointing performance or loss is what they did technically or strategically wrong.

Around 1982, whilst competing in an athletics meet I broke the New Zealand record. I was only a teenager and can remember that I did it but to this day I couldn’t tell you the day, month or even with absolute certainty the year. However I do remember my Dad was there watching me. If you ask me today what I remember about my youth sports, it would be that my Dad used to drive me from our home each weekend to Mount Smart to compete. At the time I never realised the sacrifice of him giving up his Saturday golf game to drive me nearly an hour each way. I also never realised the importance of the time in the car to and from the events where we chatted about our week. I especially didn’t realise how wise my father was when on the car ride home we would stop for a milkshake or an ice cream and did anything but chat about the day’s competition. Sure we debriefed about the competition and my Dad had lots of advice to give, however, he was wise enough to let me bring it up when I was ready to chat about it. I think he realised I would listen more to what he had to say if I asked him. Today my dad is still one of my best friends, we still chat daily and he will still be the first person I go to if I need advice. If you really want your child to love their sport, feel good about themselves and have a good chance to go as far as possible, then one of your most important jobs besides loving them unconditionally is to be a parent and not the coach. One place where the most 'coaching' happens is on the car ride home right after a competition.

Unfortunately, many parents choose this moment to confront their child about a play, comment about their poor games or one of their team mate’s poor performances. They even have an opinion on what the coach did or didn’t do, the referee or even the opposition. There could not be a less teachable moment in your child’s sporting life than the ride home, yet it is often the moment that well intentioned parents decide to do all of their teaching.

As parents our actions and conversations after games can make our children feel as though their value and worth is tied to their athletic performance. Give them the time and space to digest the game and recover physically and emotionally from a match.

If you weren’t lucky enough attend your child’s game and you are enthusiastically waiting at the door when your child comes in, then the first thing to come from your lips is likely to be, “Did you win?” I’ve said it hundreds of times over the years and even now when I am trying to teach myself to redefine what winning is, it still slips out. It doesn’t seem natural to say anything else. So here’s a few ideas you may like to try:

• “Did you enjoy the game?”
  
• “Do you feel you played better than you did last week?”
  
• “Do you think you could have put any more effort into today’s game?”
  
• “What did the coach say about today’s game?”
  
• “Is there anything you think the team needs to work on for next week’s game?”
  
• And if they had a really bad game then ask, “What do you want to eat!”
  

Remember you will never go wrong with, “I love to watch you play”.

Please take the time to watch the inspiring message below entitled, "Changing the game in youth sports" by John O'Sullivan at TEDxBend.

Lynda Hay
Sport Coordinator