You can hear him from the parking lot. Every mistake gets a name attached to it, and the name is your kid’s. The boy who used to beg to go to practice is quiet in the back seat now. He’s not tired. He’s scared.
Hi, I’m Sammi. Welcome to the Hey Sammi Podcast. Every day I read one question from a real sports parent and answer it like a friend would.
Today, the coach who yells and the kid who’s starting to flinch. This one’s from Ray in Charlotte. He writes, my son’s coach yells at the kids when they make mistakes. My son is starting to play scared. What do I actually do about this?
Ray, first let’s get one thing sorted. Loud isn’t the problem. Some of the best coaches my kids ever had were loud. The question is what the yelling carries.
“Get back on defense!” screamed across a gym is information. “What is wrong with you?” is humiliation. One is coaching at high volume. The other is a grown man using a kid to manage his own frustration. And you already know which one you’ve got. It’s right there in your letter. He’s playing scared. Here’s the part the toughen-up crowd gets wrong.
Fear doesn’t build players. A scared kid isn’t learning, he’s hiding. He stops trying the hard pass because mistakes cost too much now. The yelling is making him worse at the exact thing the coach wants him better at.
So before you do anything, talk to your son. Not a sit-down. Something casual, shoulder to shoulder in the car. Ask him what Coach says when somebody messes up.
Get the actual words. Kids compress things. In both directions. Sometimes it’s worse than you think. Sometimes your kid heard one bad sentence on one bad day. You want facts before you spend any capital.
And while you’re gathering them, watch the other kids at practice. Is the whole bench tight, or just yours? If every kid out there plays like the ball is a live grenade, it’s the coach.
If it’s mostly your son, the yelling might be landing harder on him than it’s aimed. That doesn’t make it fine. Some kids shake it off, and some kids absorb it. Yours is absorbing it. And coaching a sensitive kid isn’t a flaw in the kid, it’s a skill the coach either has or doesn’t.
Then, if it’s what you think it is, ask the coach for 10 minutes. Not after a game. Never after a game. Everybody’s still full of adrenaline, and there’s an audience. Midweek, private, calm.
And don’t open with an accusation. Open with your kid. Something like, he’s been playing tentative lately and I’m trying to figure out why. What are you seeing? You’re not filing a complaint yet. You’re giving one honest chance for him to hear it.
I’ve sat on bleachers biting my tongue through a whole season, so I know what this costs. Some coaches truly don’t know how they sound. A few of them fix it. I’ve watched it happen. But if he shrugs, if you get the toughen up speech, if nothing changes in two weeks, then you don’t have a conversation problem anymore. You have a decision.
You can’t change how a grown man coaches. You can decide whether your son spends another season flinching. And pulling your kid off a team like that isn’t quitting.
It’s the job. Nobody else at that gym is coming to protect him. That one’s yours.
One last thing, because I know it’s tempting. Don’t tear the coach down in front of your son while he’s still on the team. He has to show up Tuesday and look that man in the eye. Carrying your anger in his gym bag makes that heavier, not lighter.
Handle the adult stuff where the adults are, because he’s watching how you deal with this too. Calm, direct, face-to-face with the person who upset you. That’s the lesson inside the lesson. He’ll use it long after he’s done with this sport.
Try this: In the car, ask him what coach says when somebody messes up, and listen without reacting. Silence is gold.
