Sunday 2 March 2014

Parent Conduct

I was doing some research tonight and came across some amazing stats from an August 2001 article in Sports Illustrated for Kids titled Kids Speak Out:  Violence in Youth Sports 

Of over 3,000 children surveyed, it was found that:

- 74% have seen out-of-control adults at their games.

- 37% said they have witnessed parents yelling at kids.
- 36% cited embarrassment as the main emotion they felt while witnessing bad adult behavior.
- 4% said they have seen violent behaviors by adults.

I found these numbers staggering at first, though when I stopped to think about my experience at my children's games over the last couple of years, they are not surprising.  I think it is sad that most parents come out to games with good intentions, but can so easily lose control.  That this loss of perspective leads to embarrassment, is also unfortunate.  I think that this issue is a major part of the argument in support of having parents sign codes of conduct at the beginning of the season.  The only way to prevent this kind of behavior is to clearly state that it is not acceptable and will not be tolerated from the very beginning.    

Here is a link to a parent code of conduct form from the BC Soccer Website-




Interestingly, BC Soccer also provides a link to the Respect in Sport Soccer Parent E-Learning Course on their website.

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