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Ever wonder how to approach that over zealous parent, or if it's even possible to get along with parents, if so these 5 keys will really help!

As long as you coach a softball team working with parents is a fact of life. How well you work with them can really determine how enjoyable your season is While there aren't any secrets to dealing with parents there are some things you can do to prevent frustrations and keep things as positive as possible.

When coaches and parents don't see eye-to-eye and emotions get high, opinions differ and voices start to raise softball can get really tough really fast. Nobody likes tension, especially your players so to help keep a great relationship between coaches, players and parents consider having a pre-season Parent's Meeting, as well as just a few information sessions throughout the season.

The tone for these meetings should be to provide information and details about the team and the upcoming season and not to boss the parents around.

Consider the following for your next Parent's Meeting:

1.      Explain the different Perspectives at work within the team - Parents and coaches come to the team with a TOTALLY different view, incentive, need and perspective. It's because of this different perspective that most of the disagreements occur between parents and coaches:

        Parents see Their Child as most important and the team as #2 important (maybe)

        Coaches see the Team as most important and any one particular kid as #2

Because of this we'll all interact with the players differently but not because we don't care, instead, because we don't have the same perspective.

2.      Three Important Parts of a Team- for a youth softball team to be successful it needs 3 different parts:

       Players

        Coaches

       Parents

Each part is important and each part must work with and support the other 2 parts. Help the parents understand that no one part can become more important than the other and each part has a totally different and yet important role. When one part starts to do the job of another part it can cause a lot of problems within the group.

3.      Rules of Communication - It's helpful for all 3 parts of the team to live by the Rules of Communication, and those rules are:

        Everyone agrees that words matter, that all 3 parts of our team matter, and that we will all work our hardest to support each other through the words we use.

       Everyone will only talk to the person they're talking about

        Everyone will talk positively about people that aren't there

        Everyone will work to support the entire team and not just one small part of it

4.      Giving Your Best - then tell them that we are all going to assume that all 3 parts of the team are giving their very best.

       That the Players are giving their best even if they aren't playing good. That sometimes bad is as good as they can play.

        That the Parents are giving their best even if they aren't getting their kid there on time, or able to come to games, or able to afford everything, or even sometimes saying things they may not mean later…that they are giving their best.

        That the Coaches are giving their best even if they make a decision you don't agree with, your child doesn't start, you don't understand exactly what or why they are doing something. The coaches have agreed to give up a lot of their time, money and energy to coach and are really trying their best to do their best.

 

5.      Leave the Emotions Out - competition is about emotions and it brings out the best and the worst in people. When it comes to talking to each other during or after a game or even a practice it's always best if we can leave the emotion out of it. But, that's not always so easy to do. So here's a suggestion that's followed by many teams when it comes to discussing anything after a game:

        24 Hour Rule:

This means that everyone (coaches, parents and players) must all wait 24 hours following a game before they can talk about the game with anyone. This allows the emotions associated with the game to die down and leaves only the issue itself. The great thing about this rule is that the issue often dies with the emotions and after 24 hours have passed so too do many of the issues.

Being a part of a team isn't easy for anyone and it requires a special commitment on everyone's part. If we would all work harder to work together to be successful instead of working hard to pull apart, the team would find more success and everyone involved would enjoy it more!