Your Role
Local baseball is an entirely volunteer organization. Each league depends on adults like you to organize and conduct every aspect. Not only do adults serve as administrators, volunteer coaches, and umpires they also help with field maintenance, fund-raising, concessions, and numerous other special projects. Your willingness to exchange time and effort for your child's benefit and enjoyment is very important to the functioning of your local league. Cheering your daughter or son on from the stands is one important way to be involved, but we invite you to do even more by volunteering to help run your local Little League program.
Keeping Winning in Perspective
Are you able to keep winning in perspective? You might answer with a confident yes, but will you be able to do so when it is your child who is winning or losing, when your child is treated a bit roughly by someone on the other team, or when the umpire makes a judgment against your child? Parents are sometimes unprepared for the powerful emotions they experience when watching their sons and daughters compete.
One reason that parents' emotions run to high is that they want their children to do well; it reflects on them. They also may believe that their children's failures are their own. Parents need to realize that dreams of glory they have for their youngsters are not completely unselfish, but they are completely human. Parents who are aware of their own pride, who are even capable of being amused by their imperfections, can keep themselves well under control.
Being a Model of Good Sportsmanship
Flying off the handle at games or straining relations with the coach or other parents creates a difficult situation for your child. Just as you don't want your daughter or son to embarrass you, don't embarrass your child. It's no secret that kids imitate their parents. In addition, they absorb the attitudes they think lie behind their parents' actions. As you go through the season with your child, be a positive role model. Please remember:
-If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn.
-If children live with hostility, they learn to fight.
-If children live with fear, they learn to be apprehensive.
-If children live with praise, they learn to like themselves.
-If children live with approval, they learn to like themselves.
-If children live with recognition, they have to have a goal.
-If children live with honesty, they learn what trust is.
Note: From "Great Projects Report," Baltimore Bulletin of Education, 1965-1966, 42 (3).