The Parent Pressure Trap: Why Giving In Makes It Worse

Why do parents keep intervening in coaching decisions—and why does giving in usually make the problem worse?

In this solo brief, I describe the fear underneath parent pressure: the belief that failing to secure every possible opportunity means failing their child. I explore how coaches unintentionally reinforce that anxiety, why concessions invite more intervention, and how proactive communication can prevent conflict before it begins.

The episode offers a practical framework for defining the roles of coach, parent, and athlete—allowing parents to support their child meaningfully without feeling they need to control coaching decisions.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to the swim brief. I'm Chris DeSantis, and today we have a solo brief. And today I want to talk about the underlying psychology of something that creates a trap for a lot of coaches. And I see a lot of coaches, and frankly, in my own career, I've fallen into this trap many, many times. To introduce this concept, I want to just tell you a story. And if you're a coach listening to this, tell me if this sounds familiar to you. So I was talking with a friend of mine recently. This friend had an athlete on their team that had qualified for a high-level competition, national level competition. And the athlete in question had since qualifying been pretty inconsistent in training. They're not definitely not showing up to the level where the coach has confidence, hey, this person's going to go to this national level meeting and they really have a shot to do well. I was having an honest conversation with a friend. They would say, I don't think it's going to go well at this competition. And frankly, I don't think it's a good idea for the athlete to go to the competition. But they didn't say that to the parent because they didn't want to start that conflict. They didn't want to start a fight saying, hey, I don't think your kids should go to this meet, and then the parent is upset. And so they relented and they put the athlete in the meet, the athlete's not coming to practice, all the way up to we're one week out from the competition, and the athlete pulls out. And now the team is left with unreimbursable expenses, and the coach, you know, essentially is left holding the bag. What I want to talk about in the course of this podcast is the trap in the first place. You may have experienced a version of this story that's similar to the one I described, where you, you know, you just don't want to say and start the conflict with a parent on the front end, or maybe you have a parent that's putting pressure on you to put their kid into a higher level meet or a group that's different from where you've placed them on your team or give them different opportunities, and you've given into that pressure. And then down the line, you find out that giving into that pressure created an even bigger problem. It's a story about what happens when parents feel responsible for preventing every missed opportunities, and coaches don't know how to respond to that fear. I think where we're going to start is understanding why are parents behaving this way? Why are they putting pressure on you, putting pressure on their kids in this way? Because if you don't understand that, you are going to be up Shits Creek without a paddle, okay? Trying to figure out what you're going to do in this situation. So there are many, many more examples of situations that I would group in a similar vein to this, right? You may have interactions with parents where, you know, an athlete has a disappointing result and then all of a sudden they're questioning everything that's going on with your program. You may have parents that are coming into you and they're talking to you about the opportunity, oh, this other athlete's your favorite and you like them so much more. And really what they're trying to communicate to you is their perception is that their child is falling behind. You may have parents that are asking for more training, specialization, or are going outside the bounds of your program for private coaching out of a impatience. And I think our assumption as coaches is we get really, really defensive in this situation because we think basically what the parents are trying to say to us is like, I know better than you, coach. And so I am going to do everything in my power to force you into this decision so that, you know, my kid is actually getting what they need. And I I want to reframe that. I don't think that the vast majority of parents who behave in this way are coming out of a place that their actual real like logical underpinning or emotional underpinning for it is I know more of the coach, I know what's best for my kid. They might even be saying that, right? I know my kid and X, Y, and Z, right? You know, all that stuff. They may be saying that, but it is coming out of an insecurity. And I think understanding that insecurity is the basis for really starting to wrap your mind around what you're going to do in this situation. Parents are increasingly seeing opportunities as scarce. I think it's important to understand that parents are not they're not wrong about opportunities growing more and more scarce. And they're not wrong when they look around in the society and see that they're or perceive that their success depends on securing whatever advantage they possibly can, and that they can't afford to fall behind, right? I think we can all see that for the vast majority of families, that is sort of the underpinning assumption that is driving a lot of this behavior. And because we work with populations, they're typically swimming families, they're upper middle class or just straight up upper class families, we can perceive a lot of this behavior as not only parents telling us that they know more, but as extremely entitled. And I have one really harsh truth. We as a profession have a role to play. And in some time, in some ways, we are we are creating that entitlement. Because how we respond to parents that are coming at us in this way from the other end plays a huge role in whether or not they are going to continue to do it, feel emboldened to do it, and whether it's going to scale to a problem that is just going to kind of overwhelm you as a coach. There's a self-reinforcing loop here. Parents are thinking and believing that outcomes matter enormously.

unknown 7:02

Right.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

We as coaches, we don't want them to focus on outcomes, right? We don't we know it's not healthy or even productive for the purpose of getting a good outcome to focus on outcomes. But we have parents that you know are saying, like, okay, great, oh, you know, all this talk about trust the process. My kid's a junior in high school, and everybody seems to know in their mind that, you know, where they're going to go to college next year. And so far, I don't, you know, I don't see any opportunity for my kid. And we're hearing it on the other end. Coaches were going, outcomes, all these carents, all these parents care about is results. And I think one of the things that we do, and it's it's not a wrong instinct from a business perspective. And you know, youth sports is a business, even if you're running a nonprofit club that is a business to a certain extent, there's this, you know, phrase, the customer is always right, and we feel like we gotta play into that a little bit. We gotta we have to we can't just pretend that that sentiment from parents on the other side doesn't exist, that it's not real. We address it in some ways or play into it, and I think there's a difference between those two things, right? Play into it a little bit because, hey, listen, I'm just being real, man. That's what parents care about. They want to see that their kid is on the team where people do really well, they want their kid to be a part of that, they want their kid to do really well, and so we need to market that a little bit, right? The more that we play into it on our end, the more the parents get confirmation that says, I was right, I was right, results are really what matter. And so you create this cycle. The parents get anxious, they want to intervene, the coaches reactively become more outcome focused or show that they're going to change their decision-making process based on that pressure. Parents get confirmation that not only was the fear that they were coming with correct, but also that their intervention is what they should do in response to that fear. And the pressure ramps up on the coach. And you, as a coach, I mean you have a sense that this is not the right way. You either become more defensive and you get into these battles, these knockdown, drag out fights with parents, or you end up giving in. So many of us complain that parents are too focused on outcomes, and yet, once again, we are playing a role in creating this self-reinforcing loop. Okay, so where do we go wrong as coaches? Number one thing that I see a lot of coaches doing wrong is they communicate effectively around something only after the conflict begins. So if a parent on your team is first learning how decisions are made when their child is denied something, right? Whether it be membership in a group or we use the example that I started again. If if you know, if my friend had said, you know, I'm not bringing so-and-so to this national level meet and then explained, and my criteria for bringing somebody to a national level meet is you've got to be consistently coming to practice, you've got to be coming to practice pretty much every single time. What the parent hears on the other end is that you've just made a careless decision and you're justifying it after the fact because they don't know how the decision was made. I understand the information environment we're in, and there's probably a lot of people who are listening to this who are going, like, I told them I put it at this communication, we had a meeting, we did this. I don't envy the position a lot of coaches find themselves in. But to the extent that parents don't seem to know how decisions are made, you as a coach have to reevaluate how you are communicating and find a way to get through to them. Find a way to communicate to these parents proactively so they know what is going on before you are making decisions that have the potential for conflict. Otherwise, you're gonna get caught up in these conflicts where you're defending all these individual decisions. Why are why does my kid not get to go to this meet? Why are they in this group? You know, why are they getting this level of attention, this that or the other thing? And even if you are able to explain perfectly rationally to them in the decision why these things are happening, if it happens after the fact, if they don't understand it before, your chances of success are much lower. Okay. That's number one mistake. Number two is giving in. I've talked about this already, but I want to really hammer this point home. Giving in to make the conflict disappear. Here's the thing about giving in it may end the conflict, the specific conflict, but it creates a bigger global problem. Think about all the stuff that you are communicating beyond even what I've already said to a parent when you just give in to this kind of frantic pressure. Number one, that your original decision is not a final decision. Everything is up for debate. Okay, so if you are uh giving in in a lot of these situations, you're inviting people to second guess everything that you do. That's what you're doing. That's what you're training them up on that. And you're telling them that their pressure that they're exerting you on you is actually part of the decision-making process. And even further than that, they're learning that, okay, I actually need to intervene to protect my child. Because if I don't, other parents are going to do it, they're gonna influence the decisions of the coach, and my kid might lose out. And so as a coach, you end up surrendering control over the decision, but you're taking all the responsibility for the outcome. Giving in is only going to embolden the other side not only to second-guess all your decisions, but they're gonna leave you holding the bag on the outcome of all those decisions. They're not gonna, you know, after they beat you over the head and pressured you, they're not gonna go like, oh, you know, that was collaborative and we did that together and we share the responsibility together. That's not gonna happen. Okay. So what can we do instead of making those mistakes? These are hard processes to develop. I'm gonna do my best to explain them. I'm not gonna be able to give you the full final solution, but I'm gonna I'm gonna give you the outlines of what I think you can do. And that is instead of telling parents what not to do, right? Don't be so crazy, don't you know, come at me like this. Come back to an understanding of where they're coming from and give them something to do. What do I mean by that? You want to be so clear, so consistent, so unrelenting in your communication that there is really no room for ambiguity about what you consider your role as a coach and what you consider their role. And really, I would say for the parents' sake, it's more important for them to understand what their role is because if they truly take it seriously, they're not gonna have a lot of time for interfering on your side. Okay. So what would I say some basics about what the coach's role is? You're there to make training and developmental decisions. You're gonna decide how practice codes, you're gonna decide what track people are on to get development. Your job is to explain the principles governing those decisions. For the love of God, you do not need to get into the weeds on explaining those, but figure out a parent appropriate version so that they can coherently understand on some level the principles of what you're doing. And so if somebody else asks them, like, hey, why is your kid doing such and such on you know, this swim team, they could tell somebody else why, right? That's what you want to accomplish. And that's definitely the coach's role. You want to be able to communicate what progress should look like. So many times the athlete may be reaching a period of plateau and the athlete's completely caught off guard by it, the parent is completely caught off guard on it, and there's been no communication from the coach ahead of time, and now the coach is explaining the plateau. This is a whole nother philosophical point. I understand a lot of coaches don't want to do that because you think if you talk about a plateau, it'll make it more likely. I do not think that's true at all. Please talk about things that are potentially going to happen in these athletes' lives proactively. That's my advice. You as a coach, your job is to hold really consistent boundaries. You are you are the adult of adults in a team situation. And to that end, it's really, really important that you hold consistent boundaries and you don't look wishy-washy in the face of all the pressure that you're facing. Um and crucially, okay, last step, and it's gonna this sort of goes hand in hand with some of what the parents are talking about, you want to invite relevant information without surrendering the decision-making process. I'm gonna probably say a little bit of what I mean by that as a transition into the parent role. I'll give you an example from my own life. When I have a problem with my kids, whether it be on a sports team, whether it be in school, I'm noticing something with them. You know, I want uh one time I could just tell my daughter like she didn't want to go to school. Every day it was like, I don't want to go to school, I don't want to go to school, I don't want to go to school. And I had a kid that every other day had been pretty excited to like bop off to school. So I reached out to her teacher. Now, was I upset? Yeah, I was worried. I had fear, but I was able to pull myself together enough to communicate with this teacher and just say, hey, here's what I'm observing with my kid at home. Here's what I'm seeing. You know, I had this kid that was happy, that was wanting to go to school and all of a sudden she doesn't just want to go. I want to get this information to you because I don't know what happens at school. I don't have any information really about what's happening in the school environment. But I want to, you know, compare notes with you and see what you're observing, and maybe together we can we can figure out a way to help her. Okay. It went really well. We were able to get to the bottom of it. I won't bore you with all the details, but I think you as a coach want to make it very clear and and train parents up. Give them this active role. I want you to share information with. And I think the important distinction you want to make is please share information with me that you know is uh is around stuff that I cannot see. I'm not around your kid when they're not at the pool, when they're not out of practice for my team. So to the extent that there's relevant information that's happening outside of this environment that you think I need to know, please share that with me. But where I think you want to hold the boundary is that information is for them to give to you so that you can make different decisions in your environment based on a broader data set. That information is not for them to tell you what to do. Get into some of the parent responsibilities or roles here. Parents really need to know that they have a role to play in terms of supporting athletes emotionally, and that means actually resisting that urge to immediately analyze or fix around performance. And this is instinctual. Anybody who's listening to this is a parent, you know your kid's upset, something makes them upset. You want to fix it. That's instinctual, right? Now, part of developing emotional regulation as a parent is not acting immediately on that impulse and just launching in to analyze and fix seek and destroy mode. To that end, parents are have a huge role to play in terms of just observing how's my kid doing? How motivated are they? How are they behaving? How's their health overall? Because they are seeing them outside of the athletic environment. As I said earlier, they share those observations. They have a huge role to play in terms of helping athletes to tolerate disappointment and uncertainty. And you, as a coach, you're the one who's going to tell them that they have that role to play. They're not going to instinctually understand that that is what they should do. And finally, they have a role to play in encouraging the athlete to communicate directly with the coach. And you know, I think so many coaches have this frustration where they are receiving communications from the parents that they believe should be coming from the athlete. This is where I think you've got to hold a really strong boundary. There's one thing I've left out in this. What is the athlete's role? We talk about coaches, we talk about parents. How can athletes make this whole system work a little bit better? One of the most important pieces is that for the athletes, when they are practicing, when they are performing, it's very much like the information that they have to share is very much experiential, right? When they dive in the water and they come back out, I know every coach hates to hear that didn't feel good, but that is an athlete that is trying to describe to you their experience. They don't have a lot of tools for describing it well. And so they're defaulting to something that's very vague and not very helpful to you as a coach. But again, try to teach them how to describe their own experience. Number one. Number two, teach them how to ask questions directly. Teach them that when they ask direct questions, they're going to get direct answers, not elliptical. You know, wishy-washy, passive-aggressive answers from you. Teach them that asking questions directly gets direct answers from you. You should absolutely give them opportunities to participate in decisions. Does that mean you should give them free autonomy over everything? No, don't do that. But it's also almost equally as bad to give them no role in making decisions for themselves, because that is not going to develop any kind of independence in them as an athlete. And finally, for them, you want to encourage them to develop the capacity to handle setbacks without immediate adult intervention, without your immediate intervention, without their parents' immediate intervention. So the practical message that you deliver to parents is I don't want you to ignore your instincts. I want you to pay attention to the things you're uniquely positioned to see. How your child's feeling, whether their behavior has changed, and whether something is happening outside the program that I need to understand. Bring me those observations. Let me make the training decision and let's help your child learn to participate in this together. Again, important for you to model for the parents that there's a collaborative part to this. Collaborative doesn't mean that they make training decisions, but collaborative does mean that you guys share information so that you can both make the best possible decisions. I want to emphasize several things that are important for you to communicate before you get into how decisions are made. Now, do you need to walk them through every scenario, every possible situation they can find themselves? No. Again, the conversation should be based on principles. When you talk about some of these big concepts, consistency, being part of a team, athlete well-being, training, they should have a good understanding of what you mean and how you're making decisions around those. The second thing that you want to be really proactive about communicating to parents is what they should do when they're concerned. When the alarm bells go off for them, when that fear provokes them, you should take pains to create a process for them. Okay? Number one, separate an observation from a proposed solution. So their instinct will be to go towards fixing the problem. You want to say, okay, first thing we do is just collect observations. I collect what I've been observing, you collect what you've been observing, and we start there thinking about anything else. Number two, part of the process for parents is whenever they perceive a issue, for lack of a better term, with you as a coach, their first port of call should be that the athlete approaches the coach. And three, when you actually come to some kind of shared understanding, you, the parent, the athlete, about what you're gonna do in response, it should be clearly communicated what that actually is, what you're gonna do, and invite them to see when there's gonna be a follow-up. Say, like, okay, here's what we're gonna do, and let's talk in six weeks and see how this is going. Let's talk in four weeks, whatever time frame you think is appropriate to where you're really gonna have something to talk about. And I think you have a real big opportunity as a coach to lead on this. And finally, you should try to really proactively communicate that not only are you trying to help people become the best version of yourself, but the bricks below that is you're helping athletes to become better decision makers. You're helping them to become more independent. You're teaching them actually the process to becoming more consistent, you're teaching them resilience. You're teaching them how to communicate because the communication is a big part of what they're doing, and you're teaching them how to sustain engagement over the long term. This is so much more effective than lecturing about the process. Show them what the process is. What is your process? What do you see it being? So if we return to the story in the beginning, I think what I would suggest to anybody is if you're finding yourself in these situations where there's a crisis after the fact. I call it firefighter mode. You're finding yourself there, have a process for working backwards from the beginning so that you decrease your chances of finding yourself in that desperate conflict where you don't really have a lot of good options. Once you're already, you know, you're digging in your heels, coach, a parent is digging in their heels, there's not a lot of good ways out of that situation. And so your focus and your energy will be naturally pulled towards the specific situation itself where it should really be on making changes to the environment so that situation is less likely. Guys, thank you so much for listening to the podcast. If you want to reach out to me, if you want coaching, if you want to work with me, if you want me to come talk to parents on your team, I would love to come out and help you guys explain some of this. I do that as well. If you want me to work with an athlete, Christycoach.com is my website, CRDSandis at gmail.com. And my Instagram is Christy underscore coach. You can find clips of this podcast, all sorts of amazing interviews with some of the best minds of our sport, trying to pick their brains and learn. It's been a pleasure, and I'll see you guys again in a week.