Doctoral student Camilla Knight is developing an international theory of parental involvement in sport. She'll soon be gathering data in Australia.
Winning shouldn't be prime focus of youth sport, researcher says
The way parents behave when their child is involved in sport, can make or break the experience for young athletes, says doctoral student Camilla Knight, who grew up playing competitive tennis in England. She wants to better understand what parents need to be thinking about and doing to be involved in their child's sport in a positive way.
"Parents are crucial to youth sport," says Knight, "so I am looking at developing an international theory around parental involvement in tennis. One reason I'm interested in tennis is because tennis is an individual sport, so the emphasis on parental involvement is often greater (than in team sports.) Also tennis opened many doors for me and I'd like it to be a positive experience for all players."
While her own experience as a competitive athlete was positive, with parents who were supportive, she witnessed other parents behaving inappropriately, shouting or even hitting their child for losing a match. "Many kids' experiences were positive, but other's bordered on the child abuse end of the scale," says Knight, who won a Dorothy J. Killam Memorial Graduate Prize for outstanding scholarship this year.
Knight says there are a number of reasons some parents misbehave. "Youth sport has become a way for children to show their parents are successful, and for parents to show others that they're successful parents because they have these good athletes as children. Some parents may be living through their children or perhaps the parents weren't successful athletes but want their children to be," explains Knight.
As a result, says Knight, "Parents experience a lot of stress around sport. One of those stressors is the emphasis on winning.
"Research shows that when the environment is only focused on winning it doesn't have the best outcome. We have to have measures around individual effort and improvement and keep each match in perspective."
Educating parents about appropriate behaviours around youth sport is key to Knight's parental involvement theory. She says, "It's important for parents and athletes to determine what their goals are for being involved in a sport. If parents are focused on a gold medal and the athlete is OK with that, that's fine. But when the parents and the athlete differ in what they want, for example, the parent is focused on winning, and the child likes sport because of the friends they meet, these differences can lead to issues."
Knight is collecting data for her study in Canada, US, Australia and the UK talking to players, ex-players, parents and coaches, asking them how parents should be involved in junior tennis to make it the best experience for young players. Knight is also investigating what support parents need to help players have a positive competitive tennis experience.
"Parents are telling me that it's not easy to behave the way we want them to if they're not receiving the right support," she says.
One way of supporting parents lies in reducing their stress and that may mean changing the regulations around junior tennis where players are responsible for their own line-calling and scoring, and where cheating invariably occurs, says Knight. "We could have older players step in and help referee at this level, for example. That would reduce some stress on parents as it's hard to watch your child play if one of the players is 'cheating'".
"Coaches have said that a lot of tennis parents they work with are educated and successful in business, and they wonder why parents think that shouting and sighing, and pushing kids around will work in sport, it's not the way you motivate people in business," Knight says.
It's a constant education process, through coaches and organizers of youth sport, who have opportunities to talk to parents and reinforce supportive behaviours, rather than a one-off parent education session, which Knight feels is helpful but superficial.
"I think that educating and taking the time to help parents understand the consequences of their behaviours is critical. My goal is to take the voice of the athletes to the parents and facilitate the discussion between the parents and athletes," she says, "because parents are more likely to respond to the voices of athletes, than the voices of experts."
Knight heads to Australia shortly then returns to Canada to complete the data collection for her thesis.