How to Deal with Helicopter Parents

I think, there is something called Helicopter Parents, where parents have been so involved in their daughter's life at athletic life, many have coached them, have made sure they got to the right club team, made sure they were in the right venue to be seen, and when it comes to the college level, feel as though they want to participate in the coaching staff and the coaching decisions as well.

And we as coaches are so involved in the life of the student-athlete, we probably know the student-athlete better than anyone, and we as coaches have to do a really, really clear job of communicating the role of every player on the team. And I think, one of the things that we try to teach is accountability, and if a student athlete clearly understands her role in the team, there shouldn't be much interference or much conversation about playing time or where a player should play from a parent, because the student-athlete should clearly understand where she is, why she is there, and what her role is.

If there is a lot of interaction between parent and coach, I don't think that the coach did a good job of communicating to the player, what her role was on the team. And so I think, a lot of that can be short-circuited. A lot of frustrations parents have is because I think that that's not done. So as a coach, I try to clearly communicate to all my players what their roles are, how they can change their roles. If it's a playing time issue, how they can get more playing time, what they need to do to get more playing time, and I think once those issues are addressed with the player clearly, then it's likely that the parents doesn't hear from the daughter who is complaining about playing time.


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