Following last month's article on what to do if your child's opponent cheats, Dan Thorp discusses ways of dealing with the tricky situation when your child cheats.
Last month we discussed and gave advice on what you can do to help your child if they feel that they get cheated out of matches.
This month we’re going to tackle in some ways the more difficult version of that – what do you do if you feel that your child is dishonest on their line calls?
The most difficult thing about tackling this problem is that as soon as you broach the subject your child will feel that you are not supporting them and are against them in some way.
This will be difficult as many children feel that lots of things/people are against them when they play, so they look to their parents as supporters who are always behind them. The moment they perceive that you are taking another role it is likely to get quite lively!
Why do players cheat?
In all my years as a coach I have never met a child that I believed set out to win by cheating. My experience of children is that they have a strong understanding of right and wrong, and are quick to see injustice in situations. I’ve seen matches where a child has benefited from a few tight calls and then spoken to the child afterwards – they never appear to have any awareness that they made those calls. It is almost as if in the pressure of the situation they have done it subconsciously.
The fairly simplistic way that I see it is all children feel pressure to win and all have a natural sense of fairness. As the pressure they feel to win increases there is a point where it almost overrides their sense of fairness – and at that point if the opportunity arises they will do what they can to get the result they’re after. As I said, however, I don’t believe that we are dealing with ‘bad children’ here who set out to gain at the expense of others.
So as parents we can try to improve the situation by tackling both sides of this issue: firstly we can try to address why they are feeling such pressure to win and secondly we can try to help them develop their understanding of fairness in sporting situations.
Pressure to win
All children feel pressure to win; however, the magnitude of the pressure they feel and the source of the pressure varies from child to child.
Where does the pressure come from?
If children are feeling pressure from an outside source, such as from their parents, then that is clearly an unhealthy situation and will often result in behaviours such as cheating. If that is the case then the parents need to quickly and carefully review their actions if the situation is to improve.
However, it is unlikely that parents who put pressure on their children to win would bother reading an article about how to stop a child from cheating – so it is unlikely that this is the problem for those of you reading this article!
Other external sources of pressure to consider are:
- Friends and training partners; especially if they are winning matches and telling everyone about it!
- Coaches – hopefully not and if it is coming from the coach then that may be time to consider a few things...
- Selection / funding issues – this can be a difficult one. As much as we try to protect them from it children understand who has been selected and who hasn’t. They also understand if they have been selected for funding that it would look bad if they then had it removed.
- Many children put a lot of pressure on themselves. Children who are more ‘outcome orientated’ are the most likely to do this – to them the result of the match is of absolute importance and they also tend to link their feelings of competence to the result (as opposed to how they played).
Can you reduce pressure?
As with all these things half of the battle is figuring out what the cause is. Once you’ve done that then the solutions are often fairly obvious.
It’s difficult to stop children who put pressure on themselves from feeling pressure – you can’t just tell them to stop. The most important thing that we as parents can do is to ensure that we are always making it clear in everything we say and do that the things we value most and will reward the most are; working hard, coping with adversity, good behaviour and improving performance.
Developing sense of fairness
The best way to tackle this area is to avoid it becoming a direct conversation about them – and it is certainly best done a good time after a match that they have played. A child’s sense of fairness develops as their ability to see things from other people’s perspective improves and as they start to empathise with the people involved in situations.
A good discussion to have with your child could be about a tennis match that they are not involved in where there have been incidents around line calls. Ask them why they feel that the players have taken the respective actions that they did – and discuss why they might have done it.
Also, ask your child about how the two players would have felt during and after the match.
There is no need to try and make a particular point during this kind of conversation; it is just having the conversation that is the important bit.
I hope that this has given you a few ideas – as this is such a difficult situation to deal with. As with many of these areas around behaviour it does improve with age. One of the things that sorts it out in the end is that social groups become of greater importance to children, and they pretty quickly figure out that in order to achieve the social network that they are after they have to treat their potential friends positively.
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