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ONE thing almost all parents have in common is the desire to ensure the well-being of their children. This translates into protecting them from adversity while at the same time trying to give them skills that make them successful adults.
Undoubtedly, parents’ influence on a child’s involvement in sports and physical activity is significant. It is usually parents who provide the first opportunity for their child to take up a sport. They also have significant influence on a child’s decision on continuing or quitting a sport at some later point in time.
Parental influence
Parental involvement entails the time, energy and money parents invest in their child’s sports participation, providing instructional assistance. Parental influence goes beyond the initial input of socialising a child into sport but also continues to help them maintain their sport participation. Parents can provide fun, support and enjoyable environments or they can be a source of stress and anxiety or a combination in-between.
On one hand, parental help seems to be very important like bringing their child to a training session, supporting them during competition, motivating them when discouraged, providing them with feedback or sharing a child’s success and progress in sports.
On the other hand, parents’ actions at times may hinder a young athlete’s development and adaptation to sports.
This is not only connected with parents’ inappropriate, rude, or aggressive behaviour such as shouting, insulting, or criticising others during a game or even engaging in violent behaviour.
Such actions hamper both the good spirit and mutual understanding found in sport and may result in a child quitting sports. However, other more subtle behaviours by parents, often read by others as parental dedication, readiness to help or their committed involvement, can be perceived by a young athlete as overwhelming and controlling. Besides providing instrumental support, parents also play an important role as role models, especially if they have sports-related experience or their interest in sports is seen in action. They have sports-related jobs or do sports, even recreationally. A study pointed that parents emphasize their commitment more by daily behaviours and activities than by verbal communication. These aspects include self-discipline and the productive use of one’s time; a child’s success in sports could be then directly attributed to their parents. The atmosphere at home, the appreciation of achievements and parental role modeling influence not only a child’s achievements in sports but also in other aspects of their daily life. The outcomes of such positive influence can be observed not just at child’s present-day stage of development but also later in adulthood.
Sibling Influence
Siblings can have a significant influence upon one another in terms of behaviour and development. A study identified that siblings spent more time with each other, participating in a wider range of activities than with parents or peers outside of school. Older siblings can act as role models for younger siblings.
Relationships
Dyadic relationships or two person relationships such as coach-athlete, athlete-parents or parent-coach relationships are believed to play a significant role in developing athletes and their enjoyment within sport. Finally, the season is over and players are encouraged to go and add value to their respective communities. I’ll be also going home to Ngwazini kaDzingumhlaba for the football break. Till next week. I love you all.