The Responsibility of Adults in Children’s Sports: When Sport Becomes a School of Life
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF ADULTS IN CHILDREN’S SPORTS: WHEN SPORT BECOMES A SCHOOL OF LIFE
Author: Sandra Bohinec Gorjak
PhD candidate in Humanities, certified NLP trainer and founder of ARISA – Center for Business Communication and Personal Potential Development.
Words shape a child. Coaches and parents are the ones who speak them. The triangle of child-coach-parent is a space where words linger, mold, and guide. The only question is, where do they lead?
When a child enters the world of sports, it opens up not only a space for physical development but, above all, a classroom for life. Every drill, every win or loss, every compliment or reprimand is recorded in their inner experience. Sports training is not just physical activity; it is a process of growing up, shaped by the triangle of relationships between the child, the coach, and the parent. This triangle is emotional, delicate, and crucial. It is within this triangle that the most important things happen for the child: learning values, experiencing success and failure, and—most importantly—developing self-esteem and identity.
Communication between coaches and parents in children’s sports is far from secondary. It is the backbone of how a child perceives sports as a safe space for growth or, sadly, as a field of anxiety and pressure.
Parents: The Caregivers and Observers of Small Changes
A parent sitting on the sidelines is not just watching the result of the match; they feel the vibration of their child’s heart. They notice when the child comes home quieter than usual, when they no longer want to attend practices, or when anxiety grips them before every performance. This is why parents should never be silenced or excluded from the dialogue with the coach. When a parent expresses concern, it is a reflection of their deep responsibility and love.
They need effective communication tools to express their concerns clearly, respectfully, and without fear of being labelled as overbearing or “dragon-like.”
We see too many cases where parents were afraid to speak up. On the other hand, coaches, often overwhelmed by results and limited communication skills, either cannot or do not want to open space for honest conversation. However, a child’s perception of sport is interdependent on this relationship. When communication in this triangle breaks down, learning in sport turns into fear and anxiety.
Coaches: Guides or Aggressors?
Being a coach to a child means being much more than a mediator of sports techniques and strategies. A coach is often one of the first important adults outside of the family who, through their authority and personality, shapes the child’s view of the world. Successful sports learning is based on trust between the coach and the child. When a child trusts their coach, they can learn and progress. Therefore, the coach has a powerful psychological influence on the child. However, when a coach belittles, yells, makes disparaging comments, or even intimidates a child, the child, as an immature and vulnerable personality, is exposed to psychological harm.
When we talk about children’s sports, we often forget that training is not just an exercise for the body, but a deeply pedagogical process. Every interaction, every look, and every word between the child and the coach is an important learning moment. Learning here is not only about physical skills but also about shaping values, understanding oneself, and the world. Therefore, it is essential that the sports environment is also understood as a pedagogical space where identity, stability, and social awareness are built. Only then can sport become a key to the safe and holistic development of the child’s personality.
Research in developmental psychology and neuroscience confirms that psychological safety is crucial for successful learning. This aligns with attachment theory (Bowlby) and Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development, where a child is ready to take on challenges, learn from mistakes, and build internal motivation. A child who feels heard, validated, and emotionally accepted in the coach-child relationship will more easily develop self-confidence and self-regulation skills. On the other hand, repeated exposure to verbal aggression, shaming, ridicule, or intimidation by the coach can be psychologically traumatizing. The child’s neurobiological system detects this environment as unsafe, resulting in stress. A child who experiences anxiety, fear, or belittlement in sport will not only stop training; they will lose confidence in the learning process as a whole. They will feel inferior, frightened, and lost.
Chronic activation of the HPA axis (hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal gland) in such cases leads to chronic stress responses, a diminished sense of self-efficacy, and an increased risk of developing anxiety, depression, and avoidant behaviour strategies in adulthood. Negative psychological pressure does not only affect the child’s current experience in sports but can permanently shape their relationship with authority, learning, and their own sense of capability.
Communication as a Bridge, not a Battlefield
The key question is not whether parents should be present in children’s sports, but how they should be present. The same applies to coaches. It is not a battle of two worlds but the creation of a common language between them. For the bridge between coaches and parents to be built on solid foundations, parents need communication tools to express their concerns clearly and respectfully, while coaches need listening and self-reflection skills. Both need a great deal of humanity, empathy, and mutual respect.
It is crucial that the coach does not view the parent as a threat to their authority, but as an ally in the learning process. Likewise, parents should recognize the coach as a professional and mentor and give them the mandate of professional trust. When both parties align in their shared goal—the well-being of the child—trust is built, and space is created for real learning. This is when sport becomes an opportunity to teach perseverance, dignity, cooperation, respect, and self-improvement.
Learning Sport Beyond Results: When Training Becomes Personal Development
Learning sport is not just an individual effort to master a certain skill; it is an important social process.
Scientists emphasize that the greatest part of learning in sport takes place in interpersonal relationships, in spontaneous situations where the child experiences the world through others. In the context of children’s sports, this means that the child is not only learning the rules of the game but, alongside the coach, learning social norms, values, respect, and cooperation. When this learning environment functions harmoniously, it strengthens the child’s sense of belonging to the community. Otherwise, the child loses more than just motivation for sport—they lose trust in relationships that should be safe.
Learning sport, like any other form of learning, stems from existential curiosity—the basic human need to make sense of reality. Therefore, a child does not learn just to compete or win but to understand themselves and the world around them. When both coach and parent understand this inner developmental dynamic, sport training becomes a space for personal growth, not just a stage for results. Overemphasis on achievement, rewarding only success, and overlooking the child’s internal experience often leads to anxiety. In such cases, sport becomes a source of pressure, which is in direct contradiction to the original function of sport.
Therefore, we define learning sport as a transformative process that includes not only cognition but also emotional and social components. Through physical activity, the child develops self-esteem, resilience, empathy, and social skills. It is important for the adults overseeing this process to create conditions for safe reflection, honest feedback, and gradual integration of new knowledge. Only then can the child build healthy mental models—internal cognitive structures that shape their perception of the world. The child-parent-coach triangle represents an invaluable framework for learning about life, as long as it is governed by respect, openness, and shared responsibility.
When a child experiences harmony in relationships within the sports environment, they are not just marked by a successfully performed drill but by an internal sense of safety and meaning. At that point, learning sport transcends the framework of exercise and becomes a solid foundation for a sense of safe coexistence in the community. This is why the responsibility of adults—coaches and parents—is to co-create a learning space that allows for growth, reflection, and honest dialogue, where children experience success and learn from their mistakes. Otherwise, learning sport will not strengthen the child but wound them.
Sport, as a strongly symbolic and physically marked domain, has the power to shape the child either toward healthy self-esteem or toward long-term inner insecurity. The responsibility for the direction the child’s development takes is not individual—it is collective.
We Are All in the Same Boat
Coaches and parents should not row in different directions, for at the centre of this vessel is the child—still forming, yet full of potential, which can only be safely guided by the coordinated movement of both rowers. If communication in the child-coach-parent triangle breaks down, the child loses the sense of orientation, safety, and meaning they need for healthy growth. Sports training, which is essentially a learning process, requires a high level of responsibility and compassionate awareness from the adults who co-create it.
Together, parents and coaches have immense power: they shape the psychological foundation on which the child builds their self-esteem, their relationship with learning, themselves, and the world. When they collaborate in a spirit of openness, listening, and mutual respect, sport becomes a space of courage, joy, and inner strength. But when they view each other as obstacles instead of allies, the child gets caught between opposing forces. This is why the space of children’s sports demands more healthy dialogue and less labelling. More patience and less impulsiveness. More collective awareness that we are not in sports just for victories but for the people involved.
Our children deserve a safe environment where they can develop not only physical skills but also courage, self-confidence, resilience, and compassion. Coaches and parents! Let’s shape this space together! Thoughtfully, responsibly, and with heart. This is the victory that matters the most.
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