Coaching your own son or daughter

Many new coaches find themselves coaching their own child. How do you keep your personal and coaching relationship separate?

Wear two different hats

At home and in the car to the training or a game, speak as a parent would. And that means, encourage them about the things they are doing well and support them when they are disappointed about the game. Don’t give them tactical or technical advice, unless they ask for it specifically.

At the training field, praise, encourage and feedback as you would any player. Don’t say anything that refers to their home life. Any sanctions that need to be used should be the same as would happen to any player.

Use the other coaches

If there’s something that needs perhaps a bit more bite, both in praise or criticism, ask another coach to say something to your child. That removes any hint of bias, plus it makes it easier to talk about it after the event.

Your child is the best player…so what

This doesn’t matter. You should be rotating the players as much as possible. Just because you’re the coach doesn’t give you the right to award extra favours to your child because you are putting in the hard work

Don’t talk about other players or coaches

Hard though it might be, you have to be vigilant on talking about other members of the team away from training. That’s probably the hardest task.