A tennis teaching professional, Mike Dumitru, from Boca Raton, Florida wrote an excellent article, “Do’s and Don’ts for Tennis Parents, which appeared in Florida Tennis magazine. As a sports psychology consultant who works a lot with high performance kids and parents, I found a lot of good suggestions were included in this piece.
I think for the parents who are unsure of how to best help and guide their children, this article offers good and thoughtful ideas. It will however, do little for those parents who feel very sure that their way of interacting is perfectly fine, even when it may be hurtful, even harmful at times. When I come in contact with these parents (and sadly, sometimes coaches), I work with the kids to view them as distractions or obstacles that need to be dealt with.
It’s also important to remember that parents sometimes err in the opposite direction of not being available or supportive of their child’s sport of choice. For example, the father who wants his son to play football, rather than tennis or the mother who never attend any of the child’s matches either due to lack of interest, work or other reasons.
While tennis provides opportunities to learn and develop many important mental and physical skills, as an individual sport, it lacks many of the social and cooperative skills (cooperative effort towards a common goal ) teamwork, communication, helping others succeed) that group sports provide. Parents can help and encourage kids, (especially young ones) to cross train and develop their skills and interests in several sports. Most kids below the age of 12, don’t really know what they like or excel at. Giving a kid a choice along with opportunities to explore their interests is another “gift” parents can give.
