Should I go to training as well?

Come to the matches, skip the training sessions. Training is the child’s and the coach’s space, and a parent watching means the child performs for you instead of practising. The exception is if you have a job to do — then you are there as a leader, not as an audience.

My child wants to quit mid-season. Should I say you finish what you start?

Ask why first, and listen to the whole answer before you respond. The reason is more often social than sporting: a teammate, a coach, a position, a feeling of not being good enough. If the reason can be fixed, it is worth fixing before deciding the question of quitting. If the answer is that football is not fun any more, that is a valid answer and not a character flaw.

Can I train with my child on my own?

Yes, if the child asks. Extra practice the child asks for is development; extra practice you propose every week becomes an expectation they cannot say no to. The difference lies in who takes the initiative, not in what you do on the pitch.

For parents

Being a football parent: what helps and what hurts

8 min read

Most of what helps is about holding back. Your role is larger than you think — a review of 29 studies covering more than 9,000 young athletes found that how a parent supports matters more for a child’s motivation than how the coach does. But that influence runs both ways, and support and pressure are two separate forces: piling on praise does not cancel out pressure.

What matters is not what you say, but when

Research on youth football shows that the behaviour a child wants from you depends on the moment. What is supportive in the car on the way there is wrong in the car on the way home. So there is no single right way to be a sports parent — there are four situations, and they ask different things of you.

The situations are: the week before, the minutes before, the match itself, and the hours afterwards. The first three are easy. The fourth is the one that decides whether the child wants to go next time.

One sentence before the match

Say one thing, and make it about something the child controls. "Have fun. Work hard. See you afterwards." Then you stop talking about the match.

What not to bring up in those last minutes: the opponents, the league table, what the coach said last week, or anything the child should be thinking about in their game. All of that is tactics, and tactics are somebody else’s job.

On the touchline: cheer for the team, not for your child

Children aged 7 to 14, asked to describe how they want parents to behave, describe something researchers call attentive silence: present, watching, but quiet. That sounds passive. To the child it is the opposite — it is the proof that you are there for them and not for the result.

When young athletes are asked what they actually want to hear, attitude, effort and sportsmanship come top. Technique and tactics come last, especially from a parent without real experience of the sport. Nor do they want you cheering so loudly that the attention moves to you.

Applaud. It goes further than you think.
Cheer for the team collectively, never with instructions to an individual player.
Comment on actions, not people: "good that you tracked back" rather than "well played".
Never criticise the referee, the coach or another child within earshot. If you have a genuine issue, take it to the club, without your child in the room.
If you are also the coach: say out loud to your child when you switch roles, and give no extra feedback at home.

The car ride home

The car is not a neutral place. Researchers who interviewed 27 young athletes and their parents found that the car is where the criticism arrives, precisely because it is private and nobody has to make eye contact. Parents deliberately saved what they did not want to say in front of the team for the drive.

The children in the study liked talking about the match — when they were happy with their own performance. When they were not, almost anything landed badly. And of course that is exactly when you feel the need to say something.

So make silence the default, and agree it in advance when nobody is angry or upset: the match does not get analysed in the car. If the child wants to talk that is fine, but the initiative is theirs. Offer food and something else to talk about. "Was it fun?" is your entire repertoire until the child opens up.

What children actually find fun

When researchers mapped what makes sport fun for young people, the top of the list looked like this: being a good teammate, trying hard, and having a positive coach. Winning came in at number 48 out of 81. Good-looking kit came dead last.

That matches how Swedish sport is meant to work. The Swedish Sports Confederation’s guidelines for children’s and youth sport cover all activity up to and including age 19 and rest on five principles: safety, participation, joy, versatility and health. Participation means the right to express an opinion and have it respected — article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which has been Swedish law since 2020.

In practice that is the principle that fails most often. In a survey of 426 Swedish athletes aged 15 to 17, many reported a strong sense of belonging but little actual influence over training and playing. Not one of those who saw themselves as the weakest in the team felt they had much influence at all.

The question you ask once a year

Ask once a season, before signing up for the next one: do you want to keep doing this? And say in the same breath that both answers are fine, so the question is not a test. Follow it with "what was the most fun this year?" and "what do you want more of?".

Hold back the excessive pride as firmly as the disappointment. Both tell the child the same thing: your mood depends on how it went. Instead be openly proud of the things that never show up in the statistics — training in the rain, backing up a teammate, coming back from an injury.

Common follow-up questions

Should I go to training as well?: Come to the matches, skip the training sessions. Training is the child’s and the coach’s space, and a parent watching means the child performs for you instead of practising. The exception is if you have a job to do — then you are there as a leader, not as an audience.
My child wants to quit mid-season. Should I say you finish what you start?: Ask why first, and listen to the whole answer before you respond. The reason is more often social than sporting: a teammate, a coach, a position, a feeling of not being good enough. If the reason can be fixed, it is worth fixing before deciding the question of quitting. If the answer is that football is not fun any more, that is a valid answer and not a character flaw.
Can I train with my child on my own?: Yes, if the child asks. Extra practice the child asks for is development; extra practice you propose every week becomes an expectation they cannot say no to. The difference lies in who takes the initiative, not in what you do on the pitch.