Young athletes and parents: the pressure we don't see

The car is still in the car park outside the sports hall when the father asks: “Why didn’t you go on the counter-attack in the second half?” His twelve-year-old son looks out of the window. From the front seat his mother adds that the coach was unfair to him today. His brother is playing a game in the back. It is twenty minutes home, and in those twenty minutes the match is played all over again — this time with no audience, but with marks.

No one in that car is a bad parent. The father spent the whole afternoon in the stands, the mother asked for a day off work, and both have driven their son to training four times a week for three years. The question about the counter-attack comes from interest, not criticism. And yet in those twenty minutes the son hears something else. He hears that today he was not enough.

I write about the relationship between young athletes and parents as a therapist in training in marriage and family therapy. I am not a sport psychologist, and I will not advise you how many hours your child should train or which sport to choose. What interests me is the family: what happens between parents and child when sport becomes important, and how parents can help without it landing as pressure.

Parents are part of the sport, even from the touchline

In the late 1990s the Canadian researcher Jean Côté studied the families of young athletes who went on to reach a high level, and described three stages of their development. In the sampling years, roughly between the ages of 6 and 12, children try out several sports, and play and fun dominate. In the specialising years, roughly between 13 and 15, they focus on one or two sports. From about the age of 16 come the investment years, when practice becomes deliberate and demanding. In all three stages parents play an important role — but a different one each time. In the first they spark enthusiasm and do the driving. In the second they support the child’s decision. In the third they are above all emotional back-up when defeats and injuries come.

This matters, because two extremes are often heard. One says parents should keep out of their child’s sport. The other says that without parents pushing there are no results. Research, especially the work of Camilla Knight and Chris Harwood, points to a third view: the question is not whether parents are involved, but how. In a position paper, Harwood and Knight (2015) described “parenting expertise” in youth sport — the ability to support a child’s development while also managing one’s own stress, the relationship with the coach and expectations.

One’s own stress is the key phrase here. Parents of young athletes are under pressure that is rarely talked about: time, money, logistics, comparison with other parents, their own unlived hopes. That pressure does not disappear when a parent sits down in the stands. It often spills over — onto the child.

The drive home after the match

The Canadian researcher Katherine Tamminen and her colleagues (2017) looked specifically at conversations between parents and young athletes after competitions — including in the car on the way home. The finding is simple and at the same time demanding: timing and manner matter more than content. The same comment that a child hears the next day as interest lands as a verdict straight after the match, when they are still full of adrenaline, disappointment or shame. In these conversations young athletes often say they would like their parents to wait for them to start — and to be able to tell when they do not want to talk about the match at all.

Similarly, Knight, Boden and Holt (2010) asked young tennis players what they wanted from their parents at competitions. The answers were surprisingly modest: that parents do not give technical and tactical advice (that is the coach’s job), that they take care of practical things such as food and transport, that they are positive whatever the result, and that they behave calmly in the stands.

The car has a particular power. It is a space with no exit. The child cannot go to their room. They cannot withdraw until they are ready. And because they are driving, parents face forward, not towards the child — which can make a conversation easier, but can also turn it into an interrogation in which no one looks anyone in the eye.

What love that depends on results sounds like

Most parents, asked whether they love their child regardless of results, would answer immediately and sincerely: of course. But a child does not read this from what parents think. They read it from what they see. From the face in the stands after a missed shot. From the mood at dinner after a defeat. From how many words a win gets and how many a loss gets.

The researchers Avi Assor, Guy Roth and Edward Deci (2004) studied what happens when children experience parental affection as conditional — when they feel that a parent accepts them more when they meet expectations and withdraws when they do not. They found that this style of parenting can increase a child’s effort, but the price is paid in the inner experience: short-lived satisfaction after success, shame and guilt after failure, a sense that the parent loves you “because of” rather than “in spite of”. The research was not done specifically in sport, but sport is an area where conditionality shows very quickly — because the result is measurable, public and weekly.

In relational family therapy we understand this as a pattern that does not begin with the child. Often the parent has had the experience of being seen only when successful. Or carries an unfulfilled sporting plan of their own. Or the family is under strain — there is tension between the parents that nobody talks about — and the child’s sport becomes the only topic that still connects them. Then the child, without anyone planning it, carries a burden that is not theirs. In therapy we call this triangulation: a third person (the child) stabilises the relationship between the other two.

A child who is loved conditionally often develops a voice that they later carry with them outside sport too. I write about where it comes from in The inner critic: where the voice that keeps judging you comes from.

A conversation in the car (composite, not a real person)

To illustrate, here are two versions of the same evening. First the more common one:

“So, what happened today? You know how to do it, you did it in training.”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know? And the coach told you to get back faster.”
“I know.”
“If you don’t play the way you can, he won’t put you in the starting line-up any more.”
“…Can you just leave it?”

And then the second, in which the father decided to say nothing about the match for the first ten minutes:

“Are you hungry? We could stop for a burek.”
“Yeah.”
(silence, a few minutes)
“I was really bad today.”
“How was it for you?”
“Awful. Everyone was watching.”
“That sounds hard. I loved watching you, today too.”

The second version is not perfect. The father said nothing clever about the game. But he let his son start the conversation, and he looked after the body first — the hunger, the tiredness — and only then the match. The sentence “I loved watching you” does not judge. It says the father was there for his son, not for the result.

Early specialisation: when the choice comes too soon

One decision that also has a family side is when a child starts training in just one sport. In some sports, gymnastics for example, careers peak earlier and so specialisation comes earlier too. For most sports, however, expert recommendations (e.g. Jayanthi et al., 2013; Bergeron et al., 2015) warn against specialising too early: it is linked to a higher risk of overuse injuries, burnout and dropping out of sport, and for most sports there is no evidence that it is a prerequisite for success at the elite level.

Why am I writing about this in a piece about relationships? Because in families the decision to specialise is often not made between child, parent and coach, but under the pressure of comparison. “Others are already training six times a week.” “If not now, it’ll be too late.” A child who started because they loved playing finds themselves in a programme they did not choose. And because they know how much the family has invested, they do not know how to say they no longer want it. I write about what happens when the love of sport fades in Burnout in athletes: when the love of the sport goes out.

The question for parents is not only “is my child good enough” but also “do they still have room to be a child”. Friends outside the club, a lazy Sunday, another sport just for fun — none of this is wasted time. It is protection.

What a child really needs

To sum up what research and therapists’ clinical experience show, a young athlete needs four things above all from their parents:

• A secure base. The sense of being accepted at home whatever the result. This is the core of what attachment theory calls a secure base — more on this in Attachment and parenting: how the pattern passes to a child.
• Clear roles. The coach coaches, the parent is a parent. When a parent becomes a second coach, the child loses the place where they could take refuge from being assessed.
• Help regulating emotions. After a defeat a child does not need analysis, but someone who stays calm in the face of their disappointment. We call this co-regulation — a child calms down alongside a calm adult.
• Room for their own voice. As they grow up, children increasingly decide for themselves how much sport means to them. If parents support them in this, even when they choose differently from what the parents hoped, it strengthens their differentiation — the ability to be themselves while staying in a relationship.

It also matters what a child does not need: perfect parents. Every parent will at some point say something they should not have, shout from the stands or be disappointed at dinner. What counts more than the mistake is whether they can come back to it later and say: “I was too harsh yesterday. It wasn’t right.”

An exercise for parents: twenty minutes after the match

You can do this exercise at the very next match. It requires nothing more than a little self-observation.

1. Before the match, write down what you want for your child today — not the result, but something that is in their hands. For example: “That they enjoy it.” “That they are not afraid to try.”
2. During the match, watch your own body. Where do you tense up when your child misses? What happens to your face? Your child sees this from the pitch more than you think.
3. After the match, for the first ten to twenty minutes, do not start talking about the game. Ask whether they are hungry or thirsty. Wait for them to start.
4. When they do start, listen first. Repeat what you hear (“it was hard because everyone was watching”) before adding anything. Leave technical comments to the coach.
5. Finish with a sentence that is not an assessment. “I love watching you play.” This sentence carries no judgement — it tells your child why you were there.

If you find step three almost impossible — if the question about the match practically burns in you — that is valuable information. It says something about how much of you is invested in your child’s sport. That is nothing to be ashamed of. It is worth looking at.

Where this does not apply

I want to be honest about the limits of what I have written.

Not all pressure comes from parents. Some children are extremely hard on themselves even in families where no one pushes them. Perfectionism can have several sources — temperament, comparison with peers, the coach, social media. Parents are not to blame then, but they can be the ones who show the child a different relationship with mistakes. I write about how confidence is built in Confidence does not start with praise but with self-awareness.

Involvement is not the enemy. I am not saying parents should step back. Children whose parents never come to a match miss it. Research does not warn against being present, but against involvement that turns into control.

Some things are not a family matter. If a coach humiliates a child, treats them roughly or crosses physical boundaries, this is not a question of family communication but of protecting the child. Then turn to the club’s management and the relevant authorities, and in cases of violence, in Slovenia, call the SOS helpline for women and children victims of violence on 080 11 55 or the police on 113.

When someone else is the right person. If the issue is mainly pre-competition nerves, focus or preparation, the right person is a sport psychologist. If a child is losing weight, not eating, not sleeping, withdrawing from friends or says they no longer want to live, the first port of call is a paediatrician or GP, and if needed a child psychiatrist. Psychotherapy, especially family therapy, comes in when patterns repeat in relationships — when sport becomes the place where something that is not about sport is being worked out. I write about how a family can open a conversation with a child who has closed off in When a teenager goes quiet: how family therapy opens the conversation.

When the child grows up and leaves

Many young athletes leave home at fifteen or sixteen for sports schools, academies or clubs far away. Then the parents’ role changes once more: from daily driver and spectator to someone at the other end of the phone. This transition is demanding for both sides. I write about it in The young talent who leaves home: moving to a club at sixteen.

But even then the core stays the same. An adult athlete who knows their parents accept them whatever the result copes more easily with defeat, injury and even the end of a career. A secure base does not disappear with distance. If it was built, the child carries it with them.

What to remember

• With young athletes and parents, the question is not whether parents are involved but how — support yes, control no.
• The drive home is a sensitive moment: wait for your child to start, and look after the body first, the match second.
• Children read love from faces and moods, not from what parents think. Conditional regard increases effort, but the child pays for it with shame.
• In most sports early specialisation is not a condition for success, but it increases the risk of injury and burnout.
• A child needs a secure base, clear roles, help with emotions and room for their own voice — not perfect parents.