Parents Behaving Badly?

Last season, a fellow hockey parent Greg B, sent me one of those e-mails that gets passed around the Internet. This one was about hockey, so I read it. (Greg if you still have it send it to me again and I'll post it.) The letter was written by a hockey parent and he wanted to make the point that people have hockey parents all wrong. We're not crazy and violent. And playing hockey teaches our kids wonderful things like team work, taking responsibility, following the rules, listening to a coach, how to win and lose gracefully and a lot more. He even pointed out how hockey parents and kids actually talk to each other on those long, early morning car trips from rink to rink. (That's really true too. We do talk, and it's not all about hockey - it's a lot about hockey - but not all.) Like the parent who wrote the letter, I have found myself on more than one occasion defending hockey.

And while I do love the sport, I have wondered at times if there isn't a little something wrong here. What is it that brings out the bad parent behavior anyway? The screaming, the tantrums about playing time, the walking out in the middle of tryouts (If my Johnny isn't going to be AA, he's not playing here!). I try to tell myself, parents can be crazy in every sport - it's not just hockey. But just this season we had a few "incidents" of parents behaving badly that - well- made me wonder.

In one hard-hitting, intense Bantam game, the losing coach went with his team to the middle of the ice where the kids were lining up to shake hands. Now that is one of the best things about hockey, right? But this coach missed the point and he actually knocked players from the other team down to the ice. Really. (And no it wasn't by accident, these were bantams. You have to try to knock them down).

More unbelievably in another bantam game, after a very hard but legal (no penalty) hit, the parent of the kid who had been hit was so upset that, after the game, he waited for the player who had checked his son. When the player left the ice, the parent threw a cup of hot coffee at him. (Yes the parent was banned for the season, but this is really unbelievable isn't it?) How do you get to a place where you think throwing a cup of coffee at a child is the right thing to do?

But of everything that I saw and heard about this year, I was most bothered by one of my 8 year old's Mite games. It was one those one-sided games, where the coach has to tell the kids to stop scoring and pass the puck around. Though they were completely outmatched, there were three Dads from the other team standing up on the boards, around the bench, yelling down at their kids. These kids were so little 7 and 8, maybe even 6. And these Dads kept screaming. One Dad had even dragged a chair over from snack bar, so he didn't have to struggle to hang on to the boards. Happily, one their kids did manage to get the puck, take it down the ice and score. It was great for them to avoid the shut out. So the Dad, the one on the chair, you think he'd be happy. But then he yelled down at the kids "Cheer, cheer for your team! What's the matter with you?"

These kids can't even score without getting yelled at! Unbelievable. And how sad for those kids. They get to play the greatest sport on earth, but the sound track is being heckled constantly by Daddy Dearest.

So what do you think? Are we hockey parents the same or worse than parents for other sports? (Aren't most of us also soccer parents, baseball parents and basketball parents anyway?) What has to happen to fix this problem? I think firm codes of conduct and strict enforcement would go a long way. But then things have to be enforced by the businesses that want our money. Hmmm. Oh and if you go up on the boards, even once, you should immediately be shown the parking lot. What do you think?

Update - Greg B. sent me the letter. It is posted here http://bit.ly/NDwPX