While intervention and reporting may be uncomfortable, the most important thing you can do for your athlete is protect them, and it’s your responsibility as a parent, coach, official, or other present adult to educate yourself and act. According to the U.S. Center for SafeSport, here’s what you need to know about recognizing, responding to, and reporting abuse and misconduct.

RECOGNIZE Abuse and Misconduct

Recognizing abuse and misconduct is a critical first step to both preventing and responding to it. To start, it’s important to realize that abuse and misconduct can happen between an athlete and many different people, including another athlete, a coach, coach’s assistant, athletic trainer, or physical therapist.

We’ll cover the types of misconduct and abuse below, but keep in mind that even if you can’t label a behavior or it doesn’t violate a policy, you should always report anything that concerns you. Additionally, while the below are referred to as misconduct, they can all be considered child abuse depending on severity, as per federal and/or state law.

• Emotional Misconduct: Emotional misconduct can include both verbal and physical acts, from name-calling to throwing equipment at an athlete. Stalking and denying support can also be considered emotional misconduct.
• Physical Misconduct: Physical misconduct is any behavior that does or could lead to physical harm, which includes both contact and non-contact acts. Examples include punching, knowingly letting athletes return to play after injury without medical clearance, and withholding food or water.
• Sexual Misconduct: Sexual misconduct includes a wide range of sexual actions that are done without consent. It also includes grooming, sexual harassment, nonconsensual sexual contact or intercourse, sexual exploitation, exposing a minor to sexual content/imagery, sexual bullying behavior, and sexual hazing.
• Bullying: Bullying involves repeated and severe physical, verbal, social, or sexual behaviors, including name-calling, spreading rumors, taunting, or ridiculing someone based on gender or sexual preferences.
• Harassment: Harassment refers to repeated or severe conduct that causes fear or humiliation, degrades an athlete, creates a hostile environment, or attempts to establish superiority based on an athlete’s age, race, ethnicity, culture, religion, national origin, or disability.
• Hazing: Hazing involves physical, mental, emotional, or psychological conduct that could intimidate, degrade, abuse, or put an athlete in danger in order to be socially accepted. This could include conduct like making people play drinking games, physically restraining them, or depriving them of water, food, or sleep.

RESPOND to Abuse and Misconduct

If you witness or know about misconduct or abuse, never assume that someone else is taking care of it. Be sure to intervene and put an immediate stop to any misconduct or other harmful behavior you witness. If you learn about misconduct after the fact, determine if it has stopped, and if not, take action to stop it.

As you prepare for your role as an active bystander and/or mandatory reporter, keep these best practices in mind:

• Understand your sport organization’s policies and know what actions to look for, how you are expected to respond, and how to report.
• Regularly discuss acceptable and unacceptable behavior and hold everyone accountable for their behavior.
• Respond quickly to inappropriate behaviors to prevent escalation and continued harm.
• Respond consistently to misconduct you witness or learn about so there is no confusion about boundaries and accountability.
• Consider the developmental level of those involved when identifying acceptable behaviors and responses to those behaviors.

If abuse is disclosed to you, respond with these best practices in mind prior to reporting:

• Listen with empathy and let the athlete tell you the details they want to share at their own pace. Keep your body language and facial expressions open and non-judgmental.
• Thank them for telling you and trusting you.
• Remind them that you and others are here to help.
• Inform them of your next steps, including who you will report the information to. Remember, even if a child does not want the incident reported, mandatory reporters must follow legal reporting requirements.

If abuse is disclosed to you, do NOT:

• Doubt the accuracy of the report. Remember that false reports of abuse are very rare.
• Ask leading questions. Only ask open-ended questions and let the athlete tell you what happened in their own words.
• Call a child’s parents. Let authorities like child protective services identify when to communicate with parents and the appropriate steps needed to ensure a child’s safety.
• Check with other people to uncover more information or confront the perpetrator, as this can jeopardize the athlete’s safety.

REPORT Abuse and Misconduct

To best protect athletes, report abuse or suspicions of abuse immediately and regardless of your mandatory reporter status. Make sure you familiarize yourself with federal and state reporting requirements, as well as SafeSport reporting requirements.

For adults affiliated with the Olympic and Paralympic Movement, the SafeSport Code requires you to first follow applicable state or federal laws around reporting abuse and misconduct, but also to report:

• Child abuse, including child sexual abuse, immediately to law enforcement and the U.S. Center for SafeSport
• Sexual misconduct regardless of age immediately to SafeSport
• Emotional and physical misconduct (including bullying, hazing, and harassment) to your National Governing Body or SafeSport
• Violations of proactive prevention policies (such as the Minor Athlete Abuse Prevention Policies) to your National Governing Body

Your athlete’s team should have an abuse prevention policy already in place, which should include detailed instructions for reporting suspicions of abuse. If you haven’t seen this policy, ask the coach. Often, part of the reason abuse and misconduct are allowed to continue is that they are reported to the wrong people. Don’t automatically go to the athlete’s parents, the school administrator, or the coach.

If you’re unsure who to report to, go directly to local law enforcement, where they are better trained to handle these situations. You can also direct questions about abuse and misconduct to the SafeSport Helpline at 866-200-0796 or safesporthelpline.org. More information on reporting to the U.S. Center for SafeSport can be found here.

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Takeaway

Additional resources on recognizing, responding to, and reporting abuse are available here. Other local and national organizations are also available to help, including RAINN, the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization.

Here, board-certified family physician and TrueSport Expert Deborah Gilboa, MD, explains how coaches can better model and teach respect to their athletes in order to help the athletes grow and mature.

Don’t Expect Respect for Nothing

The first thing Gilboa stresses when talking to coaches and other adults about respect is that respect isn’t something that should be automatically owed to you. “A lot of people think, ‘Kids just owe me respect,’” Gilboa says. “But when I give talks about respect, I’ll often ask someone, ‘May I please have $1,000 in cash?’ And they smile and laugh, and they say, ‘No, I don’t have that.’ And I’ll respond, ‘Part of being here is that you need to be able to give me $1,000 cash, and you should just know that without being told.’ And that’s exactly what you’re doing when you’re demanding some behavior from young athletes without earning it, and without explaining what behaviors are respectful.”

Don’t Expect Students to Understand the ‘Rules of Respect’

You may think ‘respect’ is an obvious behavior that everyone understands. But as Gilboa’s example above points out, not everyone has been told ’the rules.’ It’s often assumed that parents have taught their children how to be respectful, but that’s not always the case, and different cultures may even have different connotations around the word ‘respect.’ Adults tend to assume that student-athletes inherently understand what ‘being respectful’ means—and that puts many young athletes at a disadvantage. “There are many people who would respond to the request for $1,000 by saying, ‘I’ve never had $1,000 in cash, and I don’t come from a world where I would just happen to have $1,000 dollars in my pocket,’” Gilboa adds. “Some kids don’t come from a world where they just happen to know what respect looks like and can easily give it to someone. We have to start by giving it to them and helping them learn what respect looks like, rather than demanding it from them.”

Modeling Respect Earns You Respect

The golden rule—do unto others as you would have them do unto you—applies here. If you want athletes to respect you, you need to treat them with the respect you want for yourself, says Gilboa. This may be a perspective shift for you as a coach, but modeling respect by giving it to the athletes is the fastest way for them to learn how to show respect back. “Rather than expecting people to guess what feels respectful to you, modeling it is the most effective way to show it,” says Gilboa. “If you want your team to address you as Mr. Smith or Coach Smith, you could choose to model that behavior by referring to the athletes as Mr. X—using the appropriate pronouns, of course. The athletes will never forget that you treated them with respect by using their honorific and their last name rather than a nickname or just their last night. This is a simple way to teach the lesson rather than nagging them to call you a certain name.”

Your Bad Behavior is Even More Noticeable

“You have to practice what you preach, or you are teaching something else,” says Gilboa. If you demand that students show up to practice on time but you’re usually several minutes late, you’re teaching them that punctuality isn’t actually important. Similarly, if you’re telling athletes to be sportsmanlike to the team they’re competing against but you’re yelling at the referee, you’re not modeling the respect you’re telling them is necessary.

Set Clear Expectations

While respect seems like a quality that athletes should just ‘know,’ your athletes will be better served if you lay out your expectations around respect in a clear set of rules, with a defined set of consequences, says Gilboa. If you consider being punctual to practice a sign of respect, make being on time a rule for the team and have a consequence if an athlete is late. The important part here, though, is sticking to the consequences, even if it means benching your star player. “Athletes need clear expectations and reliable consequences,” says Gilboa. “Reliable consequences mean that no matter who you are on the team, the consequences for not living up to those expectations still apply.”

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Takeaway

In order to receive respect from your team, you need to lay out clear expectations and reliable consequences around respectful behaviors. Make sure you’re modeling these behaviors and ensure that all teammates face the same consequences when they don’t model those same behaviors.

Here, board-certified family physician and TrueSport Expert Deborah Gilboa, MD, is helping caregivers understand the best times and opportunities to instill concepts of both giving and asking for respect. The process starts with an understanding of why teaching respect just by talking about it isn’t always helpful.

1. Give Your Kids Respect

As parents, it can be hard to handle your child’s negative emotions. For instance, if a young athlete is upset about how a competition went—maybe they weren’t selected for the starting lineup and feel as though they deserve more game time—it can be tempting to try to ‘fix’ the situation for them by talking to the coach and demanding more playing time for your athlete. But this isn’t respecting your athlete: This actually shows that you don’t believe they’re able to take care of themselves. Instead, Gilboa suggests offering empathy. Listen to their feelings on the subject, and perhaps even help them develop a plan to improve the situation, but don’t step in (unless your athlete’s health or wellbeing is at risk, of course).

2. Let Athletes Feel Feelings

Additionally, Gilboa says it’s important to allow athletes to feel their feelings. Parents often unintentionally disrespect their children by telling them that their feelings are invalid. This can be a seemingly innocuous “toughen up” or even a well-meaning “it’s not as bad as you think it is.” Allow your athletes to have and fully experience their feelings.

However, behaviors still have consequences. An athlete angry with his performance at a game, for example, might be yelling at you because that’s how he can express his frustration. While the frustration is natural and he should be able to express it, he also shouldn’t be able to do so in a way that disrespects others in the process. “Talk to your athlete about how their feelings are theirs, but their behaviors still have boundaries,” says Gilboa.

3. Stick to the Rules You’ve Set

Rather than setting broad guidelines around respect, the best way for a young person to learn about respect comes from unexpected moments that teach kids how to be both respectful and respected. And one of the best ways to teach children about respect is by having rules in the household (around homework, curfew, practice time, cell phone usage, etc.) that are clearly set out and have specific consequences attached to them. Most importantly, you have to stick to those consequences when rules are broken. Often, parents have vague concepts around what the rules of the house are, but their kids may be unaware of exact parameters, which can lead to confusion and an inability to follow those rules.

Part of teaching respect is teaching young athletes that even if they disagree with a rule, whether it’s no cell phones at the table or a weeknight curfew, the rule still needs to be followed. And that means establishing reliable consequences. “Reliable consequences are important,” says Gilboa. “These consequences are the same for everyone, no exceptions.”

4. Start with Simple Concepts for Young Kids

With younger athletes, break down large concepts like active listening by simplifying it. “When someone is talking, we want to teach young kids to keep hands, feet, and mouths still, so we don’t interrupt them,” says Gilboa.

5. Teach Consent

In the last few years, everyone has had to rethink how we maintain physical boundaries and what’s acceptable in terms of respecting personal space. From a very young age, kids can be taught about personal space and about asking for consent, says Gilboa. It’s common in kindergarten classrooms now to teach students to ask if they can hug each other. Teach your child at any age how to ask for personal space in a firm way that commands respect, and how to ask for consent when it comes to physical contact, whether they want to hug someone or use a teammate to demonstrate a new hold or stance.

6. Get Kids Excited About Respect

“I like to teach older elementary and younger middle school students about what I call Adult Secret Code,” says Gilboa. “As an adult, if you meet a kid and they speak to you respectfully, you are subconsciously more likely to try and help them get what they need or address their concerns. Teaching a young student to speak the ‘Adult Secret Code’ turns respect into a game and makes it easier to understand. It almost feels like they’re getting away with something!” For example, students can put an honorific (e.g., Ms.) in front of an adult’s name, or even ask an adult how they should be addressed. It can also include things like making eye contact while speaking.

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Takeaway

Respect is a two-way street and no matter a child’s age, you have the ability to help them learn how to both ask for it and give it. Use small teachable moments, from household rules to post-competition discussions in the car, to teach, model, and require respect.

Here, board-certified family physician and TrueSport Expert Deborah Gilboa, MD, explains how to ask for the respect that you need from anyone within your sports circle, from doctors to coaches to teammates.

Start with Self-Respect

It’s hard to ask for respect from others if you struggle to respect yourself, says Gilboa. In many cases, having self-respect can look like a series of practical actions, rather than just an attitude or feeling that you adopt. For example, self-respect can mean arriving at practice on time and properly fueled with an afternoon snack, showing that you respect your body and role as an athlete. You can also demonstrate self-respect by respecting your own boundaries out loud, with something like ‘I have to get some sleep tonight, but I’d love to hang out tomorrow.’

Set Your Own Boundaries

Maybe you’ve never thought about what your boundaries are before. Now is the time to start, since it’s hard to demand respect—which includes respecting your boundaries—if you can’t articulate them. Gilboa says this can start with simple things: “Is there a name you prefer to be called? Do you not want to talk about competition on weekends, or during lunch at school? Figuring out and communicating your boundaries makes it possible for people to respect them.”

Respect is a Two-Way Street

It’s important to note that there is a balance here. Developing a set of boundaries and sticking to them is important and helps you demand respect, but you still have to give respect while maintaining your own boundaries. For example, you can politely but firmly tell your coach that you can’t do an extra practice because you have another commitment, and you may suggest an alternative plan, like doing an extra strength workout at home.

Understand (and Work) the System

There are a few fast tracks to getting respect, especially from adults in your life, says Gilboa. One is simply being honest and accepting responsibility for mistakes that you may have made. “Accountability is huge,” says Gilboa. “If you’re able to accept responsibility for something you’ve done, make an apology, and offer a solution if the situation warrants it, you’ll quickly gain respect. You will make mistakes. But if you know how to look an adult in the eye and apologize clearly with accountability, you will be much more successful.”

How to Get Respect from Your Circle

Model the respect that you’d like to receive. If you treat your teammates with respect, from using the pronouns that they’ve asked you to use to generally being aware of how your actions make them feel, you’re helping them learn how to treat you.

Here are a few specific examples that show how to apply this guidance:

Coaches, parents, teachers: Ask for clear rules and expectations. Coaches and parents sometimes enforce certain rules for some people on the team (or siblings, in the case of parents) but not for others. You can advocate for yourself by asking them to lay out the rules and expectations in writing, as well as the consequences. That way, if they aren’t asking all the team members to live up to this ruleset, you can easily point it out.

Doctors and other experts: Your sports circle may contain certain experts, such as physical therapists and dietitians. It can be difficult to ask for respect from these people, especially if they position themselves as all-knowing. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case, and you may have situations where you need to advocate for yourself if something doesn’t feel right. Don’t be afraid to politely but firmly ask for a second opinion, more tests, for further discussion. Often, these experts will respect you for speaking up. And you know better than anyone else if something is actually wrong.

Peers: Get clear on what you want, and then ask for it in a calm way. “A good example is expressing clarity around what you’d like to be called,” says Gilboa. “Maybe you don’t like to be called by just your last name or maybe there’s a nickname that you hate. Ask firmly and politely to be called by the name you prefer—and continue to ask anytime you’re called by the name that you don’t like.” And of course, extend those same courtesies to others.

People you lead: Start by being extremely clear about the respect you’re asking for. “Often, the biggest factor that helps you get respect from the team you lead is simply being able to articulate what respect means to you,” says Gilboa.

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Takeaway

It may feel uncomfortable, but asking for the respect you need and deserve is an important skill to develop and practice in sport and beyond. Be sure to establish, communicate, and enforce your boundaries, as well as show the same respect to others.

Here, TrueSport Experts Kevin Chapman, PhD, clinical psychologist and founder of The Kentucky Center for Anxiety and Related Disorder; Nadia Kyba, MSW, President of Now What Facilitation; and Michele LaBotz, sports medicine physician, share how to navigate these potentially tricky conversations and explain a few specific examples of the ways language has changed in recent years.

Language is constantly evolving

We often think of language as static, but the reality is that it’s always evolving. Consider the pronoun ‘they.’ In recent years, ’they’ has shifted from being plural to being grammatically appropriate to use in the singular. “People will try to say that using ’they’ as a personal pronoun isn’t grammatically correct,” says Kyba. “But that’s not true anymore. And maybe more importantly, if a person is requesting that they be referred to as ‘they,’ then the respectful course of action is to use that pronoun.”

Don’t avoid conversations for fear of being wrong

It’s tempting to avoid conversations around gender, sexuality, race, ableism, or ethnicity altogether to avoid using the wrong term or phrase, but ignoring these topics isn’t the solution. Doing so can make athletes feel less seen and less important. “Conversations around things like pronouns can feel tricky, but they need to be had,” says Kyba. “It’s important that we welcome these conversations about pronouns or appropriate terminology, even if that feels uncomfortable or you worry about getting something wrong.”

Shift how you think about potentially offending athletes

You may be reading this and feeling overwhelmed (or even potentially irritated) that you need to remember so many new terms and phrases. But while it’s easy to start thinking that young people today are ‘easily offended,’ focus instead on the fact that your words—or lack of acknowledgement—can truly wound the young people you care about.

Create an open door policy

As a coach, you likely already have an open door policy in place for your athletes. But make sure that your door is open to discuss anything—and let students know that you appreciate their feedback. “Start the season by telling your athletes that you want to make sure you are saying the correct thing and asking students to call you out if you aren’t,” Kyba says. “That starts the conversation and lets athletes know that you’re open to making change. And it sets you up to learn: People are going to be more inclined to talk to you if they think you’re willing to be corrected. If you make that clear to your athletes, you’re creating safety for those athletes to be able to come to you.”

Ask, don’t assume

If you’re afraid of getting something wrong, the best way to avoid that happening is asking how to get it right. “From a preventative standpoint, what we always talk about with multiculturalism is the importance of asking, as opposed to assuming,” says Chapman. “Don’t be afraid to ask, ‘What is your preference? What should I say when I address you?’ It’s the single best thing someone can do to avoid stereotyping and micro-aggressing against people.”

EXAMPLES

If you’re wondering how these best practices might apply to you, here are four examples of language shifts that impact our everyday lives.

1. Pronouns (Not ‘Preferred’ Pronouns)

A few years ago, the conversation around gender revolved around asking for someone’s ‘preferred pronouns,’ meaning she/her, he/him, they/them. The problem with preferred pronouns, though, is that it suggests a choice. In this case, it’s actually a simple correction. Just ask athletes to share their pronouns. “Rather than asking for preferred pronouns, simply ask what pronouns a person uses,” says Kyba. “Recognize that it’s not a preference or a choice someone is making. Pronouns are part of a person’s identity.”

2. Native/First Nations/Native American/Indigenous People

This is an incredibly personal choice for every individual and their specific cultural preferences. And it does change constantly, so in this case, the best option is to ask a person how they prefer to be identified. For example, Kyba explains that in Canada, the term ‘First Nations’ has been widely accepted for years, but it’s an inaccurate term that was created by the government, not by the people it refers to. Many people who are typically referred to as First Nation now prefer the term Indigenous people. “However, it should be noted that some groups may have another preference, so if a person tells you they’d prefer the term Native American versus Indigenous American, always default to how the person prefers to be identified,” says Kyba.

3. Unhoused versus Homeless

Shifting away from the phrase ‘homeless’ is incredibly important. “The problem with the phrase ‘homeless’ is that it puts the responsibility on the person without a home, rather than on society as a whole,” says Kyba. “Being homeless indicates a certain sense of failing on the part of the person who is without a home. This is especially important for young people: Is it a teenager’s fault if they don’t have a home? Absolutely not.” Because of this, using the term ‘unhoused’ is more appropriate. Beyond that, avoid phrases like ‘he looks homeless’ or ‘dressing like a hobo,’ since comments like those pass a certain judgment on people who are currently without a home.

4. Not using ‘crazy’ or ‘insane’ in casual conversation

You’ve likely heard about this one already, but it bears repeating since it’s still very common to use ‘crazy’ or ‘insane’ to indicate something surprising, wild, or huge. It’s also common to use either phrase to suggest someone is acting out of character (e.g., ‘You’re acting crazy.’) But using terms like ‘crazy,’ even outside of the context of mental health, can be triggering to those who are struggling with mental health, says Kyba. Those phrases make light of mental health problems.

What to do if you get it wrong

Even as you work to choose the right words and try to avoid saying the wrong things, there’s a good chance that you will get something wrong, especially as language continues to evolve. But there’s a graceful way to get something wrong and learn from it, rather than acting defensively and potentially alienating athletes.

“Make sure that your athletes feel comfortable correcting you, so that you can get things right in the future,” says Kyba. “And when you are corrected, be grateful for the corrections and apologize. It can be a really awkward moment for you and for the athlete but try to see it as a positive that your athletes trust you.”

Chapman agrees and adds that acknowledging you got something wrong is critically important. “It’s so important to acknowledge that you got something wrong: too many times people sweep it under the rug,” he says. “You can say something like, ‘I’m sorry that I made an assumption. I’m not knowledgeable in that area. Can you forgive me for that and help me understand it better?’ Own the mistake and ask for help.”

And lastly, when you do apologize, make the apology count. And this applies whether you got something wrong out of ignorance, or you got something wrong despite your best efforts to get it right. “Remember that being wrong is still wrong no matter what your intention was,” says LaBotz. “The important part is the effect of what you said was, not the intent of what you said. You may have intended one thing, but the effect was totally different.”

Why does that matter? Because if you try to remain on the moral high ground of having the ‘right’ intent, your apology may be hollow. “You’ll often hear people say, ‘I’m sorry, but…’ and then have their excuse. That ‘but’ negates the apology. A bad apology like that is worse than no apology because the bad apology puts the blame back on the recipient.”

Instead, take ownership for your mistake and the effect you had—no matter what your original intent was. “Admit your misstep and apologize for it,” says LaBotz. “Initially, this might feel as though you’re giving away power, but admitting your misstep adds to the respect that your athletes have for you.”

“Teams that are more inclusive have better outcomes, both in terms of their actual success in competition, but also in terms of the success of individual athletes,” LaBotz adds. “There’s better camaraderie, and that creates a better atmosphere for athletes to succeed in both life and sport.”

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Takeaway

It can feel hard to start conversations around diversity, equity, and inclusion, but these conversations are important and help athletes to feel safe and seen. Understand that language is constantly evolving and changing, and make an effort to stay current. Tell your athletes that you want to get things right, ask for their corrections, and apologize if you do get things wrong.

Here, three TrueSport Experts—Michele LaBotz, sports medicine physician; Nadia Kyba, MSW, President of Now What Facilitation; and Kevin Chapman, PhD, clinical psychologist and founder of The Kentucky Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders, share a few easy tips to help you navigate a thoughtful conversation around physical difference.

1. Teach kids early that everyone is unique

“The biggest thing a parent can teach a young person is that there are individual differences between everyone, and those differences don’t mean one person is better than someone else,” says Chapman. “It might help to start by explaining that everyone’s output on the field is different because we’re all different. Kids need to know that there’s going to be a wide range of physical ability within their teams.”

2. Teach them to find common ground

“Especially as you get into the teen years, the best thing an athlete can learn to do is to find commonality with their teammates,” says LaBotz. “Peer groups are driven by commonalities. When there’s a person on the team who is different or who has a disability, that commonality is diminished a bit, but it’s still there. Help your athlete figure out that common ground, whether it’s being fans of the same sports team or liking the same music.”

3. Remind kids to focus on process, not outcome

Even on youth sport teams, young athletes can fall into the ‘I want to win’ trap. But that focus on an outcome—winning—is often detrimental to athletes with disabilities or less skill. “I try to teach kids early on to focus on process and progress rather than outcomes,” says Chapman. “Help young athletes understand that we’re all created differently, and some people will be slower to make progress, but that doesn’t make someone better or worse. That’s the developmental message that parents need to reiterate because it’s easy for young kids to mistakenly equate physical differences as being ‘bad.’”

4. Use the right words

Your kids are likely going to repeat general ideas from you, but they’ll also adopt specific phrases. So, your language needs to be impeccable, especially when discussing disability. For instance, using ‘person first’ language is important.

“Always take a person-first approach,” says Kyba. “Instead of saying ‘a wheelchair athlete,’ put the person first and say, ‘athlete with a wheelchair.’ When you’re talking to your kids, always speak that way.” It may take some getting used to, depending on what you grew up saying, but this shift helps show that you see someone as a person first, rather than focusing on their disability.

5. Help your child understand how to help without overstepping

It’s important that your child doesn’t automatically assume that a player with a disability will need help—but at the same time, your child should feel comfortable offering them a hand. This can be hard to navigate.

“I think teaching discretion is important. Most kids with differences don’t want to be singled out in front of the team, even if an athlete means well,” says Chapman. “But simply asking in private, ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ goes a long way. If the answer is no, encourage your athlete to be graceful and respond with, ‘If you ever need help, let me know.’ And that’s it. Make yourself available but don’t force it.”

6. Teach kids how to ask questions the right way

Kids are naturally curious creatures, especially at very young ages. This means that if they see an athlete who has a physical difference, they’re likely to be curious and to want to ask questions. There’s an appropriate way to do that, and an inappropriate way. “Help your athlete understand that if they have questions that they want to ask other athletes or other adults, they can ask them in a respectful way,” says Kyba, “Tell your athlete to remember the importance of language—focus on the person first—and to only ask questions with positive intent.”

7. Teach your kids to stay alert

Unfortunately, bullying is still a common problem, and because of this, it’s important that your young athlete understands how to recognize it and what to do if they see it happening. Teach your athlete to speak up if they notice a player being bullied in any way.

“The thing I see most often isn’t that many athletes are bullying a kid, it’s that one or two are bullying the kid but the other athletes on the team are complicit, often because they’re too insecure to speak up,” says Chapman. As Chapman and LaBotz both say, teach your kids to be upstanders, not bystanders.

8. Understand their curiosity

It’s tempting to tell kids to stop asking so many questions, or to simply ignore that other kids will have physical differences. But this is naive and not helpful. “Kids who aren’t around a lot of people with physical disabilities will have curiosity,” says LaBotz. “And if you don’t help them navigate it, they will ask honest questions that could hurt another athlete’s feelings. Instead, use this opportunity to talk about how we’re all different and unique. By definition, sport is an activity that puts obstacles in our way, and we all adapt to accommodate those obstacles differently. People with physical disabilities need to accommodate and adapt in a different way.”

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Takeaway

Talking to kids about physical differences can feel daunting, but it’s an important conversation to have early and to continue having as your young athlete gets older. The key principles are simple: put the person first and act with positive intent.

Here, TrueSport Expert Amanda Stanec, PhD, the founder and owner of MOVE + LIVE + LEARN, explains how ranking systems can be harmful to young athletes, and how a coach can navigate making gains as a team without an extreme focus on numbers.

How Rankings Hurt Athletes

As a coach, pause and ask yourself why you care about ranking kids in the first place, says Stanec. “Kids aren’t professional athletes, they aren’t nearly finished growing and developing, and ranking them at an early age makes very little sense from any perspective,” she adds. The emotional toll of being ranked first or last (or stuck in the gray zone in the middle) can be hard for young athletes, and from a practical physical perspective, your highest-ranked player could change depending on when kids hit puberty or have growth spurts.

“Rankings cause too much attention to be focused on the individual, and this can stunt development in a variety of ways,” Stanec adds. “Rankings create this culture of playing for the short-term wins, instead of focusing on the long-term plan to help kids develop and reach their potential.” This isn’t just true of youth athletes under 12. This is also true of teen athletes, even at the high school level.

“Focusing on winning rather than developing all the athletes is also more likely to hinder team chemistry, as some coaches will play those experiencing success early in the season and fail to give others a chance to prove themselves,” Stanec says. “When the team chemistry falls apart, I’d argue that you’re much less likely to achieve that high ranking as a team anyway.”

So why do we rank kids if there isn’t a positive outcome? Because adults seemingly enjoy applying adult constructs to youth sports. “There don’t seem to be positives to ranking youth athletes, other than serving adult egos,” Stanec says. “Championships and rankings are adult constructs that we’re putting on kids when it is not age or developmentally appropriate to do so.”

What a Coach Should Do Instead

Maybe your director has said that rankings matter, or you’re aware that colleges are looking at competitive high schoolers for scholarships. So, rankings matter, right? Not really, argues Stanec. Even if you can’t avoid rankings in high school, you can deemphasize them and simply focus on the daily behaviors that will optimize results.

“When you keep a sport enjoyable—and enjoyable includes competing at your best and being an exceptional teammate—you develop stronger athletes who stay in sport longer,” says Stanec. “That means your retention is better, so your chances of developing better players actually grows when you stop emphasizing who’s doing the best.”

Rankings can also be a hard metric to work with as a coach. “You can’t control how good the other team is. You can’t control the officials. All you can control is what you control,” says Stanec. That means focusing on process goals for your players rather than game day outcomes.

“Remember, this isn’t about avoiding competition: As a coach, your goal is to have every athlete do their best. A focus on development doesn’t mean you don’t care about the win. It means that the decisions you make in pursuit of winning are made from a developmental lens. Some people think that focusing on development means losing, but you will win more when you are centered on development and the growth of each player.”

However, Stanec does note that some pushback from parents may come when you make the shift to long-term development. “I’d be remiss to not mention that there is privilege in this conversation,” she says. “Some parents are simply over-competitive, but for other parents, that competitive nature comes because sport could be their child’s only chance at affording school. So have empathy and understanding. Help educate the parents who don’t understand your position.”

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Takeaway

Rather than focusing on individual or team-based rankings, focus on developing young athletes as happy, healthy humans. This doesn’t mean giving up on competition—it simply means rewarding hard work and growth rather than number of goals scored. If you emphasize the work rather than the result, your team will still see gains and you might be surprised by which players make the biggest improvements.

TrueSport Expert and registered social worker, Nadia Kyba, addresses how parents, coaches, and athletes can respect and overcome generational differences to improve their communication and relationships.

Learn more about Nadia Kyba.

TrueSport Expert and President of Now What Facilitation, Nadia Kyba, MSW, shares her approach to giving appreciative feedback that will help your athlete actually make improvements for the next game.

1. Feedback should be a conversation

“Feedback shouldn’t be about criticism, or an excuse to tell others how they should change,” says Kyba. “Appreciative feedback is a tool that should be used to help see developmental potential. It’s a collaborative approach, where the person who’s giving the feedback is open to a conversation.” As a coach, especially if you know you have a tendency to get emotional during competition, it can be easy to tip into criticism when talking to athletes about how a competition went. But if you want to see athletes make real progress, feedback should be a conversation, not a one-sided dialogue where you list the mistakes an athlete made.

2. Focus on the future

Why do we offer feedback? It should be because we want to help an athlete improve their performance. So, rather than start a conversation with an athlete about what they did wrong in a recent game or at practice, focus on the player’s future performance and solutions for improvement.

Appreciative feedback is an insight that’s offered with a positive and future focus,” says Kyba. “The emphasis is on how to be more effective and productive in the future, rather than placing blame for the past. Try talking about strengths or what you appreciated, then focus on opportunities for improvement.”

If, for instance, a cross-country racer fades at the end of a race, focusing on that fade may make the athlete feel upset or defensive. Instead, think about what the athlete should do next time before you begin the conversation: Should they focus on a sprint out of the final corner? Set a goal of holding a certain pace? Framing the conversation around what went well—the first chunk of the race—followed by what to focus on next time is more effective than simply critiquing their finish, especially when they are already aware of their mistake.

3. Use the four-step approach

There are four parts to providing appreciative feedback, says Kyba. Here, we’re listing out the steps and providing an example based on a specific in-game issue, but this can also be applied to behavioral issues like a player always being late for practice.

1: Signal that you’re giving feedback and make sure the athlete is receptive. Often, we forget this simple step, but it helps bring an athlete into the conversation. Example: “Can we spend a minute talking about some of the things I noticed in the game?”

2:  Cut out anything that’s not objective. Be descriptive about the issue, and in some cases, providing video footage to make your point may even be helpful. Example: Instead of saying, “You were shooting really poorly,” give specific, objective data that can be applied to finding a solution, like, “I noticed that you were a little off balance when you were shooting.”

3: Discuss the impact. Example: “When you were off balance, it allowed the defensive players to block you and your shots were going to the left instead of straight.”

4: End with a question. Example: “What’s your take on the situation?” or “Is there something we can practice to help that balance for next time?”

4. Listen to your athlete at all points in the conversation

Sometimes an athlete is simply not in a place where they can handle feedback. Perhaps they just took a hard test or had to give a major presentation and are still upset from that situation. Maybe it’s right after the game and emotions are running high. This is why step one—signaling you’re about to give feedback—is so important. Honor the athlete’s option to not be open to that feedback in the moment. “Asking an athlete if they’re open to feedback gives them that chance to be ready and not as defensive,” says Kyba. “It also gives them an out. If they’re not in a headspace to be able to have that conversation, respect that. You’ll be able to have a better, more productive discussion when they are ready.”

5. Let your athlete talk back

The reason we end these conversations with a question is so that the athlete has the chance to reflect and even to explain the behavior. Sometimes, there is a good explanation that you didn’t know about. In the case of an athlete always being late, it could be that he’s in charge of his little sister and has to call and check in with the babysitter before he can get ready for practice. It also allows your athlete to take ownership of the feedback, says Kyba. Asking a question offers the athlete a chance to come up with their own improvement plan, rather than waiting for you to tell them what to do next.

6. Start and finish with the positive

Commonly referred to as sandwiching, one of the best ways to offer feedback is to include positives around the area that can be improved. Any feedback can be hard to handle, especially for young people who are struggling to find themselves and develop self-confidence. That’s why it’s as important to appreciate and praise as it is to give honest feedback for improvement. Kyba also encourages coaches to make the praise real and genuine: Don’t tell an athlete what you think they want to hear, find something real and positive to share. This also helps you better appreciate the athlete—it’s easy to focus on the negative in your own head as well!

7. Make feedback regular and consistent

If you want your athletes to listen to your feedback, it needs to be part of your team culture. “Have feedback for the team and for individuals constantly,” says Kyba. “At the end of a practice, ask how it went, ask the players for their feedback, and provide feedback back to them.” The goal is to have a team where players are actively seeking feedback, not shying away from it. But for that to happen, they need to see feedback as a positive thing, as a tool that will help them improve in the future. Kyba also notes that it’s important to give all players feedback, not just the fastest or slowest players on the team. It’s tempting to focus your feedback on the top players, or conversely, on the players who need the most work. But that approach misses the players who are doing ‘fine’ but might make huge leaps if they’re given some constructive feedback.

8. Athletes want feedback

You may assume that no young athlete wants to hear feedback. And you’re not entirely wrong: Most people don’t love hearing feedback. But they do appreciate it when it’s done correctly. An athlete who wants to play collegiate sports, win a championship, or just see how good they can be will need that feedback in order to make improvements. “A star athlete wants to get better,” says Kyba. “And what they want and need to hear is specific feedback: What’s working, what can be improved, what we should focus on next.” It’s uncomfortable at first, but the more consistent you are with providing feedback, the more the athletes will come to expect and appreciate it for what it is, rather than hearing it as something critical and negative.

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Takeaway

Make feedback a regular, consistent part of conversations with the team and individual athletes. Focus on keeping feedback objective, highlight positives as well as opportunities, ask the athletes for their opinions, and stay solution-oriented to help athletes improve in the future.