On Rabid Soccer Parents and Bullying

Karen, your post called to mind Fun Fair Positive Soccer, a kids’ soccer league near Houston, that one of my friends is involved in. Personally I’ve always despised the way too many parents at little league games etc. go completely bonkers, yelling from the stands, ruthlessly making it into some life or death competition, etc.

FFPS has a system that limits what parents can do, to make soccer a positive experience for the kids, instead of making them pawns of their parents who are using them to vicariously re-live their own childhood. As FFPS states, they see “the main problem as parents who put too much pressure on the kids to perform and the programs that emphasized winning as the main focus. They developed a system so the kids could play and enjoy the sport without demands from adults to win or perform. They modified the rules and designed a process of 5 aside rules, equal play with a unique equal substitution system, balanced teams, and parent training to ensure that it would be fair. The parents would behave and be positive so it would be really “Made For Kids”.”

So, all players rotate to each position and every player plays equally each game; and parents are not permitted to yell things like, “KICK IT! KICK IT! KICK IT!!” Hey, the kid knows he needs to kick it. Or, if some hapless kid starts going the wrong way down the field, the parents are not permitted to say anything. It’s up to the kids, players, and teammates.

You know this has to drive the type-A former-jock soccer-dads nuts. But I hear the kids love it.I wonder, by the way, how many of those ex-jock over-excited types were into bullying when they were younger? A fair amount, I’d bet. Speaking of bullying, I wonder what the libertarian defenders of bullying (2, 3) would say about the recent videotaped school-bus beating (2, 3) of the 10-year old boy. Ah well, I guess it’ll toughen him up. Let’s give him another few doses of tough-love.