Ditching One-Upmanship: How to Create Sportsmanship in the Stands
Ditching One-Upmanship: How to Create Sportsmanship in the Stands
We all know the stereotype of the ‘hockey dad’ or ‘soccer mom.’ The red-faced screaming parent in the stands at every game, viciously berating refs, coaches, and even other people’s children as the game goes on. That behavior might seem simply annoying, or even comical, but it can have serious negative impacts on young athletes.
Joseph Burgo, PhD, author of The Narcissist You Know, explains how competitive parenting can be more damaging than you might realize—and offers some practical suggestions for how to recognize, defuse, and deal with bad sportsmanship in the stands.
“I look at competitive parenting as narcissism by proxy,” he says. “The whole narcissistic view is to look at the world as winners and losers, and a narcissist is driven to show the world that he or she is a winner. And as parents, they use their kids to do the same thing: their kids have to be winners, so that the parents can be winners by having produced winning offspring.”
If you’re reading this and worrying that you’re overly-invested in your child’s results and may be suffering from narcissistic tendencies, Dr. Burgo is quick to add that parents can be competitive without being narcissists. “Most of us are competitive to some level—you have to have that competitive edge. You don’t enter into things not wanting to win,” he explains. “But often, those parents aren’t seen yelling at the ref.”
So how can you avoid the trap of being “that parent” in the stands—or deal with other parents who aren’t as gracious?
