IT’S a sad state of affairs when the state government has to announce a crackdown on abusive parents standing on the sidelines at children’s sporting contests.
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Hundreds of junior sporting associations across the state are to receive new guidelines reminding organisers of the need to ensure sport remains fun for kids and that winning is not to be taken too seriously.
Officials – and players – will also being encouraged to “shoosh” parents who take their barracking too far, and particularly those who target umpires and referees for abuse.
But what does it say about our culture that the government has to bother itself with such matters in the first place?
Australians have always prided themselves on excelling on the sporting field and a healthy spirit of competition must be part of that make-up.
And there should be nothing wrong with young competitors being encouraged to do their best in any sporting contest, and being urged to get better each week.
But something has gone horribly wrong with the world if a parent’s desire for their child to do their best has somehow become conflated with tearing down the child’s opponents or berating the match officials.
We’ve seen too much of the ugly parent syndrome in Australian senior sport in recent decades – and particularly on the tennis circuits – and we are now seeing it more and more at the younger level.
Perhaps those parents screaming loudest on the sideline are blinded by the lure of the great riches they see their young prodigy raking in by becoming a success in their chosen sport.
Perhaps they are mistakenly using their child’s weekend sporting contest as a chance to blow off steam after a stressful week at work.
Perhaps they’re just jerks.
Whatever the reason, we need to reset the thinking of (some) parents around their children’s sport.
It can be as simple as if you have nothing nice to say, then say nothing, but we don’t want to reach a stage where there is an eerie silence while any children’s sporting contest takes place.
It should not be that hard to find the balance.
Encouragement is fine, anything else isn’t.
Kids seem to understand. Aren’t we lucky the government has nothing better to do than help parents understand as well.
