Coaching Your Own Child

They may be some of the most joyful, most worrisome, most rewarding, most soul-searching times of my life: when I coached my own child in youth sports. I’m sure there is many a parent out there who would agree. It’s true that many parents tend to sway toward one way or another when coaching their own child. Yep, you got it: Parents tend to be either too easy or too hard on their own. It seems like an eternal quest to find that happy medium.

Like many parents whom I’ve seen who coach their child in a sport, I likely swayed (at times, at least) a bit toward the “too hard” side of the spectrum. The most reasonable reason I’ve heard for this rather common occurrence is that a parent doesn’t want to show “favoritism,” which I truly understand because equitable fairness toward all players is something that is difficult (but not impossible) to implement when coaching one’s own child.