Parents must balance their child's desire to have fun with their understanding that without hard work the child's enjoyment of the sport will diminish. Some positive ways parents can deal with this are:
- Support the coach's efforts to make practices fun.
- Show as much enthusiasm at watching your child practice as at games. If both parents go to games, both parents should consider going to practice. Remember, practices offer opportunities to express interest and support, not to be critical or corrective.
- Praise the learning of new skills and the improvement of existing ones.
- Pay attention to what goes on at practice and talk about the various drills afterwards. Ask what drills were the favorites and help explain the need for the ones that weren't as much fun.
- Allow extra locker room time for your child to visit with friends at practices.
- Be positive in the car ride heading to practice and avoid negative commentary on the way home from practice.
Parents need to help coaches as much as possible by encouraging their child to have a good attitude towards the practice. But more importantly, parents need to have their own good attitude towards practice so young players can enjoy going to practice to improve skills and to spend time with friends.
