Body Language / Coping strategies for the Side-line:

First things first, ask your kids how they want you to behave on the touchline, after all it is their game! 

Body language can have an impact on your children. Non-verbal communication is an essential part of communication as a whole and deserves some thought. This will include things like facial expressions, gestures, posture and eye contact.  

Your children may look your way during a game, and they will need to see you behaving in positive and encouraging manner, showing that you are supporting them. However, unfortunately, on occasions, it is easy for you to look down in disbelief, put your hands on your heads, roll your eyes or maybe turn away when they make a mistake, fail to score or their team starts losing the game. 

Some parents, for example at a training session have been seen to lean/hide around the lamp posts which could be seen as them spying on their kids. The influence this will have on your children could be way more negative with them maybe thinking, ‘oh no I have blown it yet again’ or maybe even worse, for example ‘my parents are going to be so disappointed with me.’ Imagine your boss at work behaved like this at your work performance, how would this make you feel towards your job and the people around you? 

So, what could we do to improve our body language around our children’s sport?

• With your gestures, you could focus on clapping and cheering all members of the team whilst being mindful about pointing fingers or putting your head in your hands in disbelief. 

• With your facial expressions: It is self-explanatory but the more you can display a positive and happy facial expression the better whilst being mindful about displaying negative facial expressions e.g. frowning or looking angry. 

• A good relaxed posture will also express a positive vibe to your children whilst making sure you avoid crossed arms or pacing up and down the side-lines.

• If you feel you are getting too annoyed then you could walk away, go grab a coffee to compose yourselves and then come back. 

• Check in with your behaviours. Every now and then use something that could remind you to check in with your sporting behaviour e.g. make an association with the goalpost for you to check on your goals / behaviours as a sporting parent. 

• Count down from 10 if you feel like you are going to shout anything (negative). 

Omli and Wiese-Bjornstal (2006) summarised three roles of the sporting parent. The “supportive” parent (a) which children prefer, and they prefer it when the parent avoids playing the “demanding coach” (b) role or the “crazed fan” (c).

The supportive parent is attentively silent during play, cheering after there is a positive outcome e.g. try in rugby as well as encouragement and praise at appropriate times (after competition or timeouts). 

The “demanding coach” role, however, involves unwelcomed advice, instructions, or commands, particularly at inappropriate times (e.g. when the ball is out of play). This could well be contrary to the instructions of the coach.

This role also includes “critical encouragement,” which contains a positive message spoken in a disapproving and negative tone (e.g. “oh come on, you can do better than that”). 

Lastly, the “crazed fan” role involves angry behaviours. For example, yelling, arguing, derogative remarks and other distractive and embarrassing behaviours. 

What one person could observe on the side-line could be very different in the car journey home or at home itself and a parent showing support on the side-lines could behave very differently in another setting. 

Reference:  

Omli, J., & Wiese-Bjornstal, D. (2006). Kids Speak: Children’s preferences for coach and parent behavior. In meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Applied Sport Psychology, Miami, Florida, USA.