The ride home.
What kids want from their parents.
For parents · 3 min read
After the game, the kid is sitting in the car, and the parents have questions. Why didn't you shoot? Why did the coach take you out? Well meant, but often the wrong moment.
Sport psychologists have asked young athletes exactly this. Girls in team sports wanted practical support before the game, encouragement without technical instructions during the game, and honest but sensitive feedback afterwards (Knight, Neely & Holt, 2011). Young tennis players preferred emotional support over technical advice, and negative body language from parents went over badly (Knight, Boden & Holt, 2010). Both studies are small and not from basketball, but they point in the same direction. Research explicitly counts keeping your own emotions in check at the sideline among the skills of good sport parents (Harwood & Knight, 2015).
The car ride itself has been studied too. 27 young athletes and one parent each described how these rides go: some enjoy them, others sit them out. Many young athletes develop their own strategies to avoid difficult conversations (Tamminen, Poucher & Povilaitis, 2017).
One sentence that coaches have been passing on for years doesn't come from a study but from practice. US coaches Bruce Brown and Rob Miller asked athletes for years which words from their parents meant the most to them. The sentence that came up most often: "I love to watch you play."
Three things that help
- Before the game: bag, food, good mood. No assignments like "Today you shoot more."
- During the game: cheer, don't coach. Two voices giving instructions are confusing. The coach gives the instructions.
- After the game: wait until your kid starts talking. And if you can't think of anything: "I love to watch you play."
Our theses
- There is one coach at the sideline. It's not mom or dad.
- The best conversation after a game is the one your kid starts.
- Ask about the fun, not the score.
In PRACTX
If your coach uses the practice report, you get a short summary after practice of what the team worked on. That's a better conversation starter than "How was it?", for example: "You worked on fast breaks today. How did the countdown go?" Team standards for parents are coming soon. Then you'll see in the app what the team stands for and which principles guide the coach's decisions.
Sources
- Brown, B. & Miller, R. Proactive Coaching. Practitioner material, not a scientific study.
- Harwood, C. G. & Knight, C. J. (2015). Parenting in youth sport: A position paper on parenting expertise. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 16(1), 24–35. doi:10.1016/j.psychsport.2014.03.001 (opens in a new tab)
- Knight, C. J., Boden, C. M. & Holt, N. L. (2010). Junior tennis players' preferences for parental behaviors. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 22(4), 377–391. doi:10.1080/10413200.2010.495324 (opens in a new tab)
- Knight, C. J., Neely, K. C. & Holt, N. L. (2011). Parental behaviors in team sports: How do female athletes want parents to behave? Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 23(1), 76–92. doi:10.1080/10413200.2010.525589 (opens in a new tab)
- Tamminen, K. A., Poucher, Z. A. & Povilaitis, V. (2017). The car ride home: An interpretive examination of parent–athlete sport conversations. Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology, 6(4), 325–339. doi:10.1037/spy0000093 (opens in a new tab)
As of 29 September 2026