Are we all not delusional when it comes to our own children and their sporting capabilities?
I am pretty sure we are, but the reality is that we can be at different ends of the spectrum which can also be affected by that given moment, experience, or circ*mstance.
Keeping a sense of perspective can be hugely challenging particularly when our children look like sporting mini-adults wearing the same outfits, get selected for squads and performance programmes and there is no doubting that our patience can exceed our expectations particularly if we are told our children are talented and doing well.
The most difficult thing is being able to remain as objective as possible, not always an easy task, particularly with the sacrifices, cost, and emotional investment that many families make to support their young people on their sporting journey.
Delusional Parents are those who have false or unrealistic beliefs or opinions about their children even when confronted with facts. Most parents are pretty balanced and only suffer from a mild form of delusion, which I probably suffer from as well. However, there will always be some extreme cases.
It does seem that there is something in our genetic makeup that makes us parents feel that our children are always better than they are. We can’t help it and I feel that way about my own children.
The problem is that an extreme level of delusion may hinder our ability to parent a young athlete effectively.
When we have unrealistic expectations of our children’s abilities, we begin to put unnecessary pressure on them to perform to a potentially unrealistic standard. If we continue on this path, we can then fall into the trap of nothing ever been quite good enough and focussing always on mistakes, whilst neglecting to discuss any strengths and improvements our children may be making. Everything needs a balance to it.
If our expectations have become unrealistic and we are always expecting more, almost every interaction, selection, decision that is made on any given day becomes all about our child and as a result our behaviours change alongside it. We can become critical of coaches and programmes, become more desperate as we support from the side and then to make ourselves feel better, we then feel the need to unload all our feedback and feelings in the aftermath on the car journey home. Many of the children we have spoken to recently in performance sport have told us they need love, sleep, and food immediately after competition, only a few enjoyed talking about what had just happened at that point. That does not mean to say that these conversations did not happen at a later point in time.
All these behaviours potentially then can weaken the relationships around our young people which includes the parent-coach relationship, coach-child relationship, and parent-child relationship.
For example, when our children feel that they are not living up to our expectations and learning to take personal responsibility for their own enjoyment and improvement in their sport, they may learn to blame coaches, teammates and end up looking for someone else to help them get to the “next level” rather than finding the passion and desire within themselves to improve and reach their goals. Children, particularly teenagers, can also be very good at telling us versions of events that they know we would want to hear or to avoid having any longer more difficult conversations with us.
This piece is not about one group always being right either and there may be times that we have to intervene as sports parents. We may have seen totally inappropriate behaviour, do not understand why something has happened to our children and we are concerned about the lack of progress that they are making. It is our right to do this, and we mustn’t suffer in silence if we genuinely feel there is cause for concern.
So how do we avoid allowing our ingrained delusion to creep into our children’s sporting development and our parenting?
It all starts with understanding why we are putting our children into their sport in the first place. We do not have a ‘Crystal Ball.’
The younger the children are, the less accurate our predictions may be about what is coming next. If we had a magic formula for how we create world record holders and professional athletes and could bottle it up, we would be extremely wealthy.
We should be putting our children into their sport to enjoy the experience. Develop many of the character skills that will allow them to thrive in their sport, including if they make it to elite levels but also to ensure that they then can thrive in whatever walk of life they end up in. Sport remains one of the safest vehicles still to equip our children with these.
In our sessions we focus on the development of commitment, determination, consistency, resilience, patience, humility, adaptability, decision-making, self-organisation, and good communication to name but a few.
If our children’s sporting environment is providing enjoyment and valuing the development of the whole person, these traits and the benefits and experiences of the journey itself alongside the technical part we should be over the moon.
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