Parental communication and reflective practice among youth sport parents

Abstract

Parents can enhance their children's intrinsic motivation, and competence by providing positive feedback and encouraging them to become involved in decision making and problem-solving activities (Babkes & Weiss, 1999); however, there is limited research available that has demonstrated how parents might learn to engage in these supportive behaviours with their child.Thus, the purpose of this research was to examine whether increasing parents' awareness of communication influences parent-athlete communication behaviours. Ten athletes between 13-15 years of age, and one of their parents were recruited (total N = 20). Parents and athletes completed pre-and post-study interviews and surveys. Parents also participated in a workshop and completed at least one audio diary entry per week over the course of six weeks. The findings indicated that reflective practice and increased awareness of parent-child communication led parents to engage in more autonomy supportive parenting, and to be less critical of their child's performance.

Understanding and Supporting Parents of Academy Footballers

“…these examples of parent education it appears that parents benefit from the increased exposure to information and gain knowledge from their engagement (Richards & Winter, 2013;Thrower et al, 2017). Such programmes enhance the parent experience and that of their child too, for instance following engagement with these programmes it appears that parents provide more support, have better communication with their child, report increased parenting efficacy, and there is an increase in their children's enjoyment (Azimi & Tamminen, 2020;Dorsch et al, 2017;Tamminen et al, 2020;Thrower et al, 2019). Parents find the practical tasks, group discussions, and the opportunity to share experiences enjoyable, as they are able to enhance their relationship with other parents and gain social support (Richards & Winter, 2013;Thrower et al, 2017;Vincent & Christensen, 2015).…”

“…Although, the online programmes provided an alternative delivery method to overcome the issue of parent attendance, it potentially removed the opportunity for parents to interact and gain the social support that they benefited from in face-to-face sessions (Thrower et al, 2019). A further criticism of the current examples is that they only provided an evaluation of the programme and delivery at one time point (Azimi & Tamminen, 2020;Dorsch et al, 2017;Richards & Winter, 2013;Thrower et al, 2017Thrower et al, , 2019Vincent & Christensen, 2015), with the exception of Tamminen et al (2020). As such there is limited information about the long-term impact of parent education programmes on either parents or children.…”

“…A further shortcoming with the research on parent education programmes was that the majority of the programmes (Azimi & Tamminen, 2020;Thrower et al, 2017Thrower et al, , 2019Vincent & Christensen, 2015) were delivered by an external researcher delivering to parents within the sporting environment. This approach to delivering to parents potentially reduced the relationships that were built with parents, reduced the understanding and empathy of their needs, and as a consequence negatively impacted on the buy-in that was received from parents and their desire to attend.…”

“…Recognising the importance of parents' accessing support and guidance, has led in recent years to a growing number of parent education programmes being developed and evaluated within the scientific literature (Azimi & Tamminen, 2020;Dorsch et al, 2017;Richards & Winter, 2013;Tamminen et al, 2020;Thrower et al, 2017Vincent & Christensen, 2015). These parent education programmes have included a face-to-face parent education programme delivered in British gymnastics (Richards & Winter, 2013), a face-to-face collaborative education session delivered to US soccer parents (Vincent & Christensen, 2015), the combination of a face-to-face education session and a guide delivered to US soccer parents (Dorsch et al, 2017), a face-to-face parent education series delivered in British tennis (Thrower et al, 2017), an online parent education programme delivered to British tennis parents (Thrower et al, 2019), a face-to-face educational workshop combined with reflective tasks delivered to Canadian soccer and hockey parents (Azimi &Tamminen, 2020), and an online parent education programme delivered in Canadian hockey (Tamminen et al, 2020). This growth in support for parents is positive, demonstrating an increasing commitment to help enhance the involvement of parents in their children's sporting journeys.…”

“…First, there has been little consideration of parents' specific support needs within these programmes, specifically as they change over time (Knight, 2019). That is, these programmes have been based on the scientific evidence regarding positive parental involvement (e.g., Azimi & Tamminen, 2020;Dorsch et al, 2017;Tamminen et al, 2020), but the vast majority of these do not account for parents' experiences or support requirements. One exception is that by colleagues (2017, 2019) who based their tennis parent education programme on an earlier study in which they identified parents' support needs.…”