Intention
This blog post will delve into the core reasons behind challenging behaviors in children, equipping parkour coaches with a deeper understanding and compassion. Learn how to build nurturing relationships, manage groups effectively, and create an empowering environment for young trainees. Enhance your coaching techniques and ensure every session is a positive experience for both you and your students.
The Challenge: Undue Attention and its impact
Coaches frequently face the challenge of handling children who seem bent on seeking revenge. This quest for retribution can manifest in subtle or overt ways, like the child trying to harm or retaliate against others, causing disruption and distress within the group. It's not uncommon to witness students exacting revenge on peers, perhaps in response to a perceived slight earlier in class, or by resorting to destructive actions like damaging equipment. Such behaviors, driven by a retaliatory impulse, can deeply hurt and disappoint the coach, sparking emotions of fear, anger, and concern for the entire team.
Why Coaches React the Way They Do
When confronted with these revenge-seeking behaviors, coaches often feel compelled to restore order and ensure the safety of all participants. Their immediate reactions may include:
Implementing Punishments: Taking away privileges or setting consequences.
Using Stern Reprimands: Directly confronting the child about their behavior.
Withdrawing Attention or Affection: Ignoring or distancing themselves from the child in hope of reducing the revengeful actions.
These instinctual responses, though stemming from a genuine concern for the group's well-being, might inadvertently intensify the child's feelings of isolation or rejection, inadvertently propelling the cycle of revenge-seeking behavior.
The Vicious Cycle
Despite the initial response, the problem runs deeper than the surface. When the coach reacts, the child might pause their revengeful actions momentarily. However, without addressing the underlying reasons for such behavior, it's typically a short-lived truce. The cycle often becomes: child seeks revenge → coach reacts → child temporarily stops → child identifies new avenues for retaliation and revenge → child acts out again.
Central to breaking this cycle is recognizing and addressing the child's hurt feelings and ensuring they genuinely feel understood. Often termed as "first step understanding," it's crucial for coaches to delve into the emotional underpinnings of a child's behavior rather than merely reacting to their actions. Our first inclination as coaches might be to discipline or punish, but true resolution lies in empathy and understanding, allowing the child to express their feelings and helping them navigate those emotions in a constructive manner.
What's Driving the Behavior?
To truly address and transform revengeful behavior, understanding its roots is paramount. Deep-seated beliefs frequently fuel these actions:
"I only matter when I retaliate or hurt others."
"I'm only significant when causing disruption or harm.""
Such convictions hint at a profound feeling of alienation or insignificance, pushing the child to seek attention and validation through negative means. At the heart of these actions lies an inherent human desire: the need to belong. Everyone, regardless of age, yearns to be an integral part of a community or group. This behavior, as disruptive as it may seem, is a manifestation of the child's unmet social needs of belonging and contributing. When these vital needs go unfulfilled, children may resort to any means available to them, even if those means are disruptive or harmful, just to feel that they have a place and a role within the group. Recognizing and addressing this core need for connection can pave the way for more positive and constructive behaviors.
Empathetic Responses: Coaching Strategies that Address the Root Cause: (Expand)
Resources
Resources for Head Coaches Head Coach: The Unsung Hero The Importance of Non-Verbal Communication How to Handle Discipline in a Parkour Gym
Four Types of Common Misbehavior Undue Attention Power Revenge Assumed Inadequacy
Communication Skills for Coaches First Step Understanding Transparent Communication Clean Slate Listening Sincere Sharing Powerful Requests Trustworthy Promises Expressing Commitment Generous Invitations
Disclaimer & Attribution:
The content within this resource is inspired by Rudolf Dreikurs’ 1960s model on misbehaving children. The application, examples, and perspective shared are also informed by two decades of personal experience as a Parkour Instructor. While Dreikurs' foundational principles guide the understanding, the interpretations, applications, and nuances presented here are unique to the lens of parkour coaching.
This work, supplemented with personal insights and experiences, is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This means you are free to use, share, and adapt this content, but must provide appropriate attribution, not use it for commercial purposes, and share any derivative works under the same or similar license.
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