By Rob Cavicchia
As a high-performance athlete and youth coach, I have witnessed firsthand that many parents don’t know how to support their children to reach their full potential. When parents understand the game beyond the sidelines, they can become a powerful force for young athletes and the team or club they are a part of.
Why Parent Education Matters in Youth Sport Development
Parents do more than cheer from the sidelines. Like coaches, teammates, parents, siblings, and even game officials, they help shape the environment that nurtures or discourages a young athlete’s growth and commitment.
Most kids begin their sports journey thanks to their parents. From signing them up to driving them to practices and paying registration fees, parents make participation possible. But their influence goes far beyond the practical side, modelling values, teaching life lessons, and helping kids understand what effort, resilience, and teamwork really mean, both in sports and in life.
Parent education programs in sport are a vital part of helping young athletes thrive. When parents learn how their everyday words, attitudes, and reactions shape a child’s experience, they become stronger partners in that journey. Burke, Sharp, Woods, and Paradis (2021) found that thoughtfully designed parent education initiatives not only strengthen the bond between parents and children in sport but also encourage the kind of supportive involvement that leads to healthier, more positive youth development.
When parents adopt informed, growth-oriented, and child-centered approaches, they help cultivate a sporting environment where enjoyment, development, and well-being can flourish for everyone.
Parents play many roles, some explicit, some behind the scenes:
- Gatekeeper & Enabler – deciding whether a child can join, driving to practices, paying fees, buying gear.
- Supporter & Encourager – providing emotional encouragement, responding to ups and downs, offering perspective.
- Value Communicator – modeling how to respond to challenge, handling adversity, promoting effort over outcome.
- Boundary Setter & Mentor – guiding time management, rest, balance, recovery, and sport vs. school/social life fairness.
- Liaison – maintaining communication with coaches, supporting a collaborative environment rather than antagonistic one.
The Role of Parents in Sport Dropout Rates
It’s important to remember that youth sport dropout is a complex issue – and that parents are a contributing factor. Roughly 70 percent of kids have left organized sports by their early teens (Human Kinetics Journal and the Aspen Institute’s Project Play). As children reach ages 11 to 13, a mix of social, emotional, and structural pressures begin to shape their desire to stay involved. It is worth noting that girls are more likely to leave organized sports than boys due to factors such as social pressures, changing interests, and confidence challenges.
When we look at the full list of contributory factors it is important to reflect on how parents contribute to this and/or could help mitigate these factors.
- Loss of enjoyment/fun (loss of motivation often follows)
- Excessive pressure from coaches or parents
- Lack of playing time or limited opportunities for growth
- Overemphasis on winning rather than learning
- Conflicts with other interests (school, social life)
- High financial or travel costs
- Burnout often caused by early specialization (which causes them to lose motivation, feel constantly tired, or develop a fear of failure when the fun fades)
- Negative team dynamics or toxic environment
- Injury, or fear of injury
- Loss of confidence, or feeling “not good enough”
Parents have a role to play in balancing the physical, social and emotional factors around sport to continue making it a positive experience as they progress in sport and developmentally.
Parental Pressure and Child Performance
The way a parent behaves, in subtle or overt ways, shapes how the child views sport: as a source of pressure, joy, identity, or stress. For example:
- A parent repeatedly telling a child, “You must score goals,” or “DON’T miss that shot” may raise anxiety, shift focus from learning to outcome.
- When parents openly challenge referees or coaches, it can confuse children, cause anxiety, and weaken their confidence in the team’s structure.
- A parent comparing their child to siblings or peers excessively (“Why can’t you play like Sam?”) can damage confidence.
- A parent mentioning the cost of sport and saying things like, “We’d better get our money’s worth,” can make the child feel guilty or pressured to perform.
While research highlights the overarching effects of parental pressure, I’ve witnessed firsthand how their words or actions can influence a child’s confidence, emotional state, and love for the game. One example of this is when a parent entered the field at halftime to scold their eight-year-old daughter for not playing well enough. The child ended up in tears, visibly shaken, while her teammates stood frozen, unsure how to react. In that moment, the parent’s frustration didn’t just impact their child, it disrupted the entire team’s focus and emotional atmosphere. Other girls returned to the bench crying and frustrated. Individual parents can impact the experience of the entire team.
Negative Parental Behaviour
Negative parental behaviour can erode enjoyment, and increase stress which can impact performance, Here are some concrete examples:
- Constant criticism: “You’re too slow,” “You didn’t hustle,” “You’re not trying”
- Micro-managing: Instructing from the stands, telling the child what to do during game time, “joy-stick” coaching.
- Sideline coaching or shouting instructions: Undermining the coach’s role in front of the child.
- Comparisons: “Your teammate did it better,” “When I was your age…”
- Excessive pressure/threats: “If you don’t win, you won’t play next time”
- Emotional withdrawal or upset: Showing disappointment, sulking, or punishing when performance is below expectation.
- Unrealistic expectations: Expecting perfect performance, no mistakes, or constant improvement.
We need to be aware of the message we are communicating implicitly. “You are only good if you win” is counterproductive to learning and development.
Positive Parental Behaviour
By contrast, positive parental behaviour supports healthy development. Examples include:
- Praising effort and progress: “I saw how hard you worked today,” “Your pass improved a lot.”
- Encouraging autonomy: Asking, “What do you want to focus on next practice?” rather than prescribing.
- Modeling emotional regulation: Demonstrating calm responses to wins, losses, and referee calls.
- Providing emotional support: Listening to frustrations, empathizing, reassuring without judging
- Focusing on growth mindset: “Mistakes are opportunities to learn”
- Respecting the coach’s role: Letting the coach lead and discussing concerns privately
- Maintaining balance: Ensuring rest, other interests, variety, and social life are preserved
The impact of modelling positive behaviour is often reflected in the small, everyday interactions that follow practices and games. The way a parent responds to disappointment or perceived unfairness teaches their child how to handle emotions with maturity and resilience. Following a difficult game, parents might shift the conversation from the weight of the final outcome to the future by asking questions like, “What did you take away from today’s match?” They can also strengthen their child’s sense of autonomy and resilience by saying something like: “I believe in you. Let me know if you need my help in any way.”
Strategies for Positive Parental Behaviour
The following is a list of strategies parents can adopt to become positive allies rather than sources of stress.
1. Shift focus to process, not results
- Example: Comment on effort, attitude, resilience (“You kept going even when it got hard”) rather than goals or wins.
2. Ask open-ended questions
- Example: “How did that play feel to you?” “What would you try differently next time?” This encourages reflection, autonomy, and internal motivation
3. Use “I” language, not “you/you should”
- Example: “I noticed you seemed frustrated; do you want to talk about it?” rather than “You were careless out there.”
4. Encourage multiple interests and rest
- Example: Suggest a day off, making sure sport doesn’t crowd out everything
5. Set expectations collaboratively
- Example: Sit with your child to set goals (not goals you impose). Let them own their path. It is their journey.
6. Model self-regulation
- Example: If a decision by the referee seems unfair, remain composed, talk it over later calmly, not in front of everyone.
7. Build a parent community
- Example: Organize occasional parent-education meetings, share best practices, hold each other accountable.
Tips for Parents
| Do | Don’t |
| Emphasize effort, improvement, and attitude | Focus only on outcomes (goals, wins) |
| Ask about their feelings or experience (“What did you learn?”) | Demand results (“You must score more!”) |
| Let the coach coach, discuss concerns privately | Sideline coaching or criticizing coaches in front of your child |
| Celebrate small gains, not just dramatic ones | Only acknowledge “big” successes |
| Model respect to officials, other families, players | Shout at referees, argue in front of your child |
| Allow rest days, variety, downtime | Expect year-round intense training with nobreaks |
| Communicate with your child openly and compassionately | Dismiss their feelings, tell them to “harden up” |
In Conclusion
Parental behaviour in youth sport is not incidental, it is a key determinant of how children experience competition, challenge, growth, and ultimately whether they will stay in sport at all. By educating ourselves and partnering with parents to adopt supportive attitudes, and apply simple strategies, we can convert our good intentions into a genuine positive force.
By moving from pressure to support, and by valuing growth over perfection, parents can help transform sport into a space for developing lifelong skills such as resilience, teamwork, and integrity.
Ultimately, parents want to be part of the team. Let’s acknowledge their contribution and impact to make everyone successful.
Rob Cavicchia is a seasoned sport management professional with over a decade of experience in the non-profit sector, dedicated to transforming the landscape of athletic development and management. A former NCAA Division I athlete and Syracuse University alumnus with a Master of Science in Sport Management from Niagara University, he leads RFC Sport Solutions in empowering student-athletes, parents, and organizations through integrity-driven leadership and programs.
Blog Source List:
- Aspen Institute Project Play (2019). State of Play aspenprojectplay.org
- Burke, Sharp, L., Woods, H., & Paradis, K. (2021). Parent Education in Youth Sport: A Systematic Review of Programs and Outcomes. Journal of Sport Behavior.
- Human Kinetics Journal (2021). Youth Sport Dropout and Retention
- Human Kinetics Youth Sport Dropout and Motivation Trends.
- NBC 26 Sports (2022, August 9). Burnout by Age 13: A Look at the Dropout Rate in Youth nbc26.com
- Women’s Sports Foundation (2022). Girls in the Game womenssportsfoundation.org
- Women in Sport (2021). Reframing Sport for Teenage womeninsport.org