We are, each of us, all too familiar with this phenomenon. Why? Because it has become the social norm at children’s sporting events. On occasion, we may even have lapsed into this type of behaviour ourselves.
Children playing sports love to hear their names called out by their parents, when it is accompanied by positive reinforcement for what they are doing. This increases their enjoyment of the experience and makes them try harder. They do not, however, like to hear their parents shouting obscenities and verbally abusing them and everyone around them.
In fact, our research has identified parent’s behaviour as the top threat to all that is good in community sport.
Members of the True Sport Movement have been crying out for effective tools to address unruly behaviour of parents.
There is promising work going on in this area, for example, under Respect in Sport and by Hockey Canada’s “It’s Just a Game” campaign, but clearly much more needs to be done if we are to shift the social norms around parental behaviour.
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