Golf & Tourism Magazine July - September 2014 | Page 17

PARENTS’ ROLE
Very frequently I see juniors playing sports
they don’t really care about, just to please
their parents. Speaking as a parent, I believe that our most important job is to support our children in their positive pursuits,
letting them decide what to pursuit and to
what extent. Once the decision is made,
parents can have a positive or negative
influence on their development.
Some recent research indicated that
during the child’s early years, parents, for the most part, exhibited
many positive behavior traits such
as providing emotional support
through intelligent discussions,
and developing the child psychologically
and socially through participation in sports.
But through the child’s middle years, the
mounting pressure to produce results created conflicts with the players, and negative parenting manifested itself often. This
counterproductive behavior which inhibits
development includes: being negative and
critical, over pushing, over emphasizing
winning and talent development over other
areas of the child’s life,
and using controlling
behaviors to reach performance goals. Sarcastic comments like
“Can you three putt
one more time?” or
“Are you even paying attention, why am
I wasting all this time
and resources?” can
have a huge negative
impact on youngsters.
Recently I saw a special
on cable named “State
of the Game – Trophy
Kids,” which shows just
how bad things can get
with obsessed and
controlling parents,
and should serve as a cautionary tale
for parents. Most of the times, during later development stages,
parents back-off and become
less involved, allowing the
coaches to do the work.

My advice to parents is to try to manage the
process as a sort of General Manager rather than to act as the child’s training coach.
If you want to coach don’t try to facilitate
training, do so by offering positive support, and don’t focus on results. Criticism
rarely motivates, praise
and acceptance always
do. One of the fastestgrowing fields of study
today is “positive psychology”.
Research
supporting the effectiveness of positive
feedback goes back to
1925 when Dr. Elizabeth Hurlock measured
the impact of types of
feedback on fourth and
sixth grade students in
math. In the research
students who were
praised increased the
number of problems
solved by 71%, as opposed to the group that
was criticized, which increased by 19 percent, or the group who
was ignored, by just 5%.

“Speaking as a
parent, I believe
that our most
important job is
to support our
children letting
them decide what
to pursuit and to
what extent.”

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Developing your junior golfer can be one
of the most rewarding experiences, if you
can avoid the pitfalls and positively support
them. By doing so, you will also create a
higher level of bonding between you and
your child.

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