In a perfect world, sports coaches would be caring, considerate individuals who motivate and inspire children without resorting to screaming, put-downs, or humiliating criticism. In a perfect world, coaches would understand each child’s strengths, weaknesses, personality and then work out the best way to communicate with her to generate best results in performance and motivation. The great majority of coaches are this way. However, sometimes parents run into a coach whose idea of a motivational speech is something like, “Is that the best you wimps can do? What did I do to deserve this? With this kind of play, we might as well stop playing,” etc. Such coaches at best are abrasive; at worst, they can be verbally abusive. Verbally abusive coaches tend to offer more criticism than praise, stick derogatory adjectives onto players, compare them negatively with others and highlight shortcomings without offering solutions. Such coaches tend to focus on their pupils’ weaknesses to get them to perform better. There is an entire school of coaches who believe that throwing a challenge or undermining a child’s abilities will cause her to try harder to “prove you wrong”. If your child is bothered by a coach’s abrasive style, what are your options? If it’s someone who has been coaching for a while, it’s unlikely you will be able to do anything to change the coach’s behaviour. However, you can help your child understand and depersonalize his education style. This is important so that your child does not lose interest in a sport because of her coach’s behaviour. There could be several reasons why a coach adopts an aggressive and/ or abusive style. He could be ignorant of other ways of communication. Perhaps he was raised in a home where this was the style. Or maybe this is the way he himself was coached, and he is following in his coach’s footsteps, believing that “My coach treated me like this and I turned out okay, so I can treat my players the same way.” But what they aren’t aware is that kids have changed a lot over the years. What worked with yesterday’s children is unlikely to work today. Verbal abusers often behave the way they do to grab attention. Maybe the coach fears a ‘kinder, gentler’ style would be ignored by players, or wouldn’t fire them up to perform. Finally, there is the possibility that the coach just doesn’t like your child for some reason. Are there other players whom the coach does seem to like, or favour? If so, what are their personalities like? Do they stand up to him? Do they play better/harder/ with more passion when he yells at them? If so, then they are just feeding his belief that he’s doing his job the right way. Abrasive coaches seldom acknowledge their behaviour and sincerely believe that being hard on players is in the latters’ best interests. Moreover there’s no shortage of coaches who believe likewise. This makes eliminating verbal abuse a challenge. Regardless of whether it is a healthy…
