Keith Wilson, MSW, D. Div.

I believe we all want to be good parents. We encourage our children's participation in sports because we believe they (and us) benefit through their involvement in the group experience. We want to believe that our attendance and support helps our children play better on the field. Most of us want what is best for our children on the athletic field. We want a positive environment that teaches the values of positive sportsmanship.

The stories of parents acting out on the sidelines are all too familiar. The problems range from parents yelling at parents, parents verbally abusing referees, to incidents of physical violence between adults. The unfortunate part of this behavior is that not only does it teach children that abuse and violence are ways to solve disagreements, but it constitutes a form of emotional abuse.

Parents and officials never seem to be on the same page. There always seems to be some tension between them. It often seems to parents that the person officiating must be seeing a different game than they are. Every call seems to go against their child's team. But it doesn't have to be that way.

Every parent enjoys that moment when they open up the newspaper and they find a picture of their athlete child accompanied by a story. Hopefully the story is about what a great kid they are and how hard they have worked to achieve their athletic success

his is one challenge from which, I believe, we should not back down if we hope to change how parents behave on the youth sports sidelines. The need for a change in parent behavior is well documented. Simply put, the number of times when parents act inappropriately towards officials, players, coaches and other parents is unacceptably high. Most agree that something must be done, but are unsure whether they want to put in the effort required to change the status quo.

As parents we have a lot to learn about the youth sports our children play. Most of us have not played the game with age appropriate rules and therefore we are learning on the job what our children are doing on the field. Some rules are new to us and, of course, have little in common with the rules we see professional athletes use while we watch them on television.

Each summer, 12-year-old boys are thrust into the spotlight of the Little League World Series. It is a great thrill for most of them to be on TV and have the whole country watch them compete play against the best young baseball players in the world for what is truly a world championship.

It is every parent's nightmare that their child might be a victim of a sexual predator while participating in youth sports. This has become a very high profile issue in sports as well as in other segments of society. Unfortunately sexual abuse of young players has occurred in youth sports leagues of all kinds, as well as with individual coaches in individual youth sports.

It might seem a little odd to think about a ten year old baseball player with performance anxiety. We usually reserve that term for adult players who choke under pressure. However, odds are that, as a parent, you have seen some of the following symptoms of performance anxiety in your young athlete or one that you know...