Psychotherapist Says Parents, Not Kids, Are the Softest Generation in Youth Sports
A psychotherapist argues that adults screaming at referees and fighting at youth sporting events are setting a worse example than the children they criticize for being unable to handle disappointment.
A psychotherapist is challenging the widespread complaint that American children have become too soft, arguing that the real problem sits in the stands and on the sidelines. In a column published by Fox News, the therapist points to a girls' flag football tournament in Revere, Massachusetts, where a coach and a referee got into a physical fight in front of the children who had come to play. Both men later apologized, but the episode has become a case study in adult misbehavior at youth sporting events.
The central argument is that parents, not their kids, are the ones who cannot handle disappointment. Children who lose a game or sit on the bench may be upset for an hour or two, complain on the ride home and then move on. Their parents, by contrast, can stay angry for days, replaying a coach's decisions and treating an ordinary setback as a personal insult. The therapist describes a familiar scene: a father tells his son to stop making excuses after a strikeout, then berates the umpire. A mother urges her daughter to be a good sport, then complains that the coach did not give her enough playing time.
Part of the problem, according to the column, is that some parents have tied their own self-esteem to their children's athletic success. A father who never made varsity may experience his son's benching as another personal rejection, as if the child were a second chance at settling something from decades earlier. The therapist is blunt about this dynamic: a child's athletic career is not a do-over for a parent's own high school disappointments, and screaming at a Little League coach will not change the past.
Money adds another layer of pressure. Youth sports have become an expensive business, with families spending thousands of dollars on travel teams, private lessons and tournaments. Some parents begin talking about college scholarships before their children are teenagers. After that kind of investment, the therapist notes, parents can start to feel they are owed something. If a child is not starting, the coach must be playing favorites. If the team loses, someone must be incompetent. The simpler explanation is often the right one: sometimes a kid just is not that good, sometimes he has a bad game, and sometimes the other team is better.
The column also takes aim at the habit of treating ordinary disappointment as an emergency. Losing is not a crisis, sitting on the bench is not trauma, and a coach telling a young player he needs to improve is not abuse. The therapist acknowledges that parents should intervene when a coach is abusive or a child is genuinely mistreated, but draws a clear line between protecting children from harm and protecting them from disappointment. By blurring that line, adults deprive kids of some of the most useful lessons sports can teach: that effort does not guarantee victory, that someone else may be better, and that unfair things sometimes happen.
The pattern extends beyond athletics, the therapist suggests. Adults who were passed over for a promotion and assume the boss has it out for them, or who spend days complaining about criticism instead of considering what they might do differently, are modeling the same inability to absorb a setback that they criticize in children. The difference is that kids usually recover faster. The child who struck out has forgotten about it by Tuesday; the father is still furious.
That contrast is the heart of the argument. At the Massachusetts tournament, the girls showed up to play football and instead watched two grown men make fools of themselves. Had one of the players behaved that way, she likely would have been removed from the game. The adults were the ones who needed to be separated. The therapist's conclusion is pointed: the next time someone complains that kids today cannot handle disappointment, they should look at the adults standing on the sidelines. If a Little League game can ruin a parent's entire weekend, the child is not the one who needs to grow up.
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