Soccer Coaching - Should you Coach your own Child?

In many junior sporting clubs, the dilemma of coaching your own child happens as a matter of course. There is usually not a great number of willing and skilled coaches that are available to coach the junior teams. For this reason the coach will often be a parent of one of the children on the team. There are a number of challenges faced when coaching your own child’s sporting team. I do not currently coach my son’s soccer team, but have coached him for a number of years previous to this. When everything goes well, coaching your own child can be a rewarding experience, but it also has pitfalls that you must be aware of.

In a lot of instances parents see that they don’t really have any choice but to coach their own child. You are willing to do it (maybe!!), no one else is willing to do it (likely!!), you are going to be there anyway, and so it becomes a marriage of convenience. Unfortunately, like a lot of marriages of convenience there are dangers. So, do you have another option? If it looks likely that you will end up coaching your childs sporting team and you have some reservations about this, look around your club at the other teams to see if there is another parent coaching their own child. Perhaps you can swap teams, so that you coach their childs team and they coach your child. Perhaps you can swap drills and coaching ideas and work together as a coaching team. This is one solution to the challenge of coaching your own child.

I coached my sons soccer team for a number of years. I always tried to treat him as just another player. Sometimes I was harder on him than I was on the other players just to demonstrate to other parents that I was being fair, and that I was not playing favourites with my own child. Is it possible to treat your child as just another player? After all, they are not really just another player because they are the only member of your team that is your own flesh and blood. My son used to get upset because he believed I was being too hard on him in comparison to the other members of the team.  It is very important to be aware of this when coaching your own child.

If you are going to coach your own child I think it is essential that you set groundrules before you start. In all teams that I have coached I have always set groundrules at the start of each season as to what I expected from them in terms of commitment and behaviour, and what they could expect of me in return. When coaching your own child, I think it is vital to also do this process with them alone, so that there is a clear understanding from the beginning as to what the expectations are. Allow them to have an input in the process as well. What are their fears and concerns? Are their teammates giving them a hard time because Dad or Mum is the coach?

Coaching your own child can be a very rewarding experience. I also know some very successful coaches who have expressly avoided coaching their own child. In order to do it successfully you must set clear groundrules at the beginning of the season with both your child and your team. If you leave it to chance you could very likely finish up with an unhappy child or an unhappy team.