Helicopter Parents
Parents play an incredibly important role in the athletic development of their children. For the majority of the child's life they are incharge of paying for, scheduling, and driving them to activities. However, many parents can take this too far and begin to overly insert themselves into the lives of their children. It is usually done with positive intentions, parents want their children to succeed, unfortunately in some instances, parents can take sports from being a fun activity for their children and place their kid unnecessary pressure. All with the hope that it will help improve their athletic performance.
Helicopter parents, which are parents that are extremely overbearing and controlling of their children's lives, are not exclusive to sports. Parents will become overly controlling about things like homework and friends as well. However, there is an extra level of pressure by some parents regarding sports specifically. One helicopter parent, Heather Behrends, recounted, “Eventually it felt like he was doing this thing he didn’t want to do, even though he loved the sport. For him, it started feeling like a chore. It is a sad situation because, in many situations, the parents do not realize what they are doing, and the end result is a child who loses passion for a sport that they once loved. Heather, in her mind, was doing everything she could to help her son excel in his sport, but then she later realized that it had the opposite effect.
This creates a negative culture within a family dynamic. Some parents fail to realize that young athletes hold immense respect for their coaches and take their advice to heart. So when they have a parent yell at them on top of a coach already doing it. One former athlete stars that, he doesn’t need the “crushing pressure” of a dad yelling from the stands to ‘Come on, get going, fight for it!’” This is because he feels that he is already a person designated to coach him, he expressed that he just wants his parents to tell him that they are proud of Him.
One specific instance of this is former Ohio State quarterback Dwayne Haskisn Jr. On the day of the NFL draft Haskins jr.’s father had planned an event and created a logo with two Hs. This created immense confusion because “only one Dwayne Haskins was about to be drafted. So why two H’s? The other H was to represent his father, Dwayns father had completely taken over his son's draft day to selfishly launch a company.
There are many instances of parents taking over their children's sports endeavors, from little league baseball to some of the best players in college football entering one of the most prestigious professional sports organizations in the world. This epidemic has only gotten worse overtime and for the sake of their children's happiness, parents should take a step back and double check that everything they are doing is truly in the best interest of their children.
Works Cited
Kahler, Kalyn. “Rise of the Snowplow Sports Parents.” Sports Illustrated, Sports
Illustrated, 19 June 2019, www.si.com/nfl/2019/06/19/snowplow-parents-sports.
McDavid, Will. “Helicopter Athlete Parents and the Pressure to Perform.” Mockingbird, 4
Feb. 2022, mbird.com/grace-in-practice/helicopter-athlete-parents-and-the-pressure-to-perform/.
News, Fox. “Helicopter Parents in Youth Sports May Increase Kids’ Stress Levels: Psychologists.” New York Post, New York Post, 15 Sept. 2022, nypost.com/2022/09/15/the-pressure-on-kids-that-parents-need-to-know/.
Settembre, Jeanette. “Hey, Helicopter Parents - Your Bad Sportsmanship Is Killing Kids’ Love of the Game: Experts.” New York Post, New York Post, 23 Sept. 2022, nypost.com/2022/09/23/helicopter-parenting-is-ruining-youth-sports-and-harming-kids/.