Delusional Parent Disorder (DPD) In Youth Sports
Delusional Parent Disorder (DPD) In Youth Sports
By Keith Van Horn, husband, father, entrepreneur, coach, writer and former University of Utah All-American and NBA Basketball Player, October 1 2014
Definition of Delusional Parent Disorder: Parents who have false or unrealistic beliefs or opinions about their children even when confronted with facts: “Watching John yell at his son after the game makes me think he suffers from Delusional Parent Disorder.”
I am not a psychologist. To my knowledge, there is no confirmed condition called Delusional Parent Disorder (“DPD”). I’m just a dad and a coach, but coaching middle school girls’ basketball for Colorado Premier Basketball Club sometimes makes me wish I had a degree in psychology! It would certainly help me to understand the thought process of some of the 3,000 parents who have kids in our programs. Most of the parents on our basketball club are amazing and only suffer from a mild form of DPD, which I also admit to suffering from, but there are always those extreme cases. You know that dad or that mom. While I simply made up the name of the disorder, it is a real problem, especially when DPD creeps into parenting a young athlete.
It does seem that there is something in our genetic makeup that makes us parents feel that our children are always better than they actually are.
Read more:
I am not a psychologist. To my knowledge, there is no confirmed condition called Delusional Parent Disorder (“DPD”). I’m just a dad and a coach, but coaching middle school girls’ basketball for Colorado Premier Basketball Club sometimes makes me wish I had a degree in psychology! It would certainly help me to understand the thought process of some of the 3,000 parents who have kids in our programs. Most of the parents on our basketball club are amazing and only suffer from a mild form of DPD, which I also admit to suffering from, but there are always those extreme cases. You know that dad or that mom. While I simply made up the name of the disorder, it is a real problem, especially when DPD creeps into parenting a young athlete.
It does seem that there is something in our genetic makeup that makes us parents feel that our children are always better than they actually are.
Read more:
