{"id":31,"date":"2008-01-03T03:25:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-03T03:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/youthsportspsychology.com\/youth_sports_psychology_blog\/?p=31"},"modified":"2025-08-08T06:14:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T10:14:15","slug":"youth-sports-when-are-sports-parents-too-involved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.youthsportspsychology.com\/youth_sports_psychology_blog\/youth-sports-when-are-sports-parents-too-involved\/","title":{"rendered":"Youth Sports: When Are Sports Parents Too Involved?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">By Lisa Cohn and Dr. Patrick Cohn<\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">One sports parent began training his son at the age of four to become a pro football player. The dad quit his job to facilitate his son\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s coaching. The boy is now 12 and spends 10 hours per day training with his father.<\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youthsportspsychology.com\">When is a sports parent too involved?<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Above all, sports parents need to keep in mind the importance of helping their young athletes lead balanced lives. Do they have the time to play with friends and pursue other interests? Or are their identities only defined by their role as athletes? You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want your kids to judge their self-worth solely on whether they score points or play on winning teams.<\/p>\n<p>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also important to let the child lead you. You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want your child to play sports to fulfill your dreams. When kids play only to satisfy their parents, they often feel pressured. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s difficult to play freely and intuitively. What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more, they generally drop out of sports, and then miss all its great social, emotional and physical benefits!<\/p>\n<p>We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not saying you shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be involved at all in your child\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sports experience. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all about striking a balance. Once your child decides to play sports, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got an important role to play as sports parents.<\/p>\n<p>You should take charge of finding an appropriate coach and team for your child. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a good idea to support the coach and team as much as possible by bringing snacks or organizing the parents.<\/p>\n<p>What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more, you should learn all about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153mental game\u00e2\u20ac\u009d strategies that will help your child boost confidence and happiness in sports. Some of these strategies include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">Setting manageable goals instead of communicating high expectations<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">Focusing your child\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s attention on the process of execution in the here and now instead of worrying about results, rankings, and statistics<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">Helping kids take responsibility for their confidence instead of leaving confidence up to chance\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand how well they play at the beginning of a game<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">Helping kids learn how to let go of mistakes <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">Encouraging young athletes to stay composed during crunch time so they can contribute to the team instead of tightening up and playing scared<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">Encouraging kids to play freely and intuitively rather than playing scared and being afraid of making mistakes.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">Award winning parenting writer Lisa Cohn and Youth Sports Psychology expert Dr. Patrick Cohn are co-founders of The Ultimate Sports Parent. Pick up their free e-book, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ten Tips to Improve Confidence and Success in Young Athletes\u00e2\u20ac\u009d by visiting <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youthsportspsychology.com\/\"><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">https:\/\/www.youthsportspsychology.com<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-family: arial;\">. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Lisa Cohn and Dr. Patrick CohnOne sports parent began training his son at the age of four to become a pro football player. The dad quit his job to facilitate his son\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s coaching. The boy is now 12 and spends 10 hours per day training with his father.When is &#8230; <a title=\"Youth Sports: When Are Sports Parents Too Involved?\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youthsportspsychology.com\/youth_sports_psychology_blog\/youth-sports-when-are-sports-parents-too-involved\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Youth Sports: When Are Sports Parents Too Involved?\">Read Sport Psychology Tip<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4938,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,24,22,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-abusive-coaches-youth-sports","category-balance-in-life","category-over-involved-parents","category-sports-kids"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthsportspsychology.com\/youth_sports_psychology_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthsportspsychology.com\/youth_sports_psychology_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthsportspsychology.com\/youth_sports_psychology_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthsportspsychology.com\/youth_sports_psychology_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthsportspsychology.com\/youth_sports_psychology_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthsportspsychology.com\/youth_sports_psychology_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthsportspsychology.com\/youth_sports_psychology_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthsportspsychology.com\/youth_sports_psychology_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthsportspsychology.com\/youth_sports_psychology_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthsportspsychology.com\/youth_sports_psychology_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}