Socal United
SILVER ELITE
I am a coach. Unfortunately, this happens a lot more than you think as it seems many more of today's kids are under less adult leadership than days gone by. That said, I would want you to come to me first. Given that much of it takes place when I am the one in charge, it should start with me in regards to a solution. I think most coaches that care would do whatever it takes to try to address the situation in a diplomatic way without destroying any kids in the process. Many times, the 9 year old kid doing the bullying does not really see it as a negative as many times they are modeling behavior. There are lots of ways to deal with it, sometimes you just have to go to multiple steps to get the end result. I feel most times this can be done by the coach. Maybe I am a just naive....Thank you to everyone. I asked for your input and I do value everyone's shares. The age group is young enough to need supervision and old enough to know better. We have encouraged and tried to give our kid the proper tools to handle this situation and people like this. "Life Skills" right? We have 4 kids that play competitive sports, so we recognize the difference between mental toughness/competitiveness and straight up bullying. The escalation of the bullying has been gradual over 3-4 months but we have reached a critical mass where gender, level of play, learned behaviors or race quite honestly do NOT matter. There is no excuse for the targeted behavior. Changes will absolutely happen and it will be initiated by us the parents, as we won't allow these incidents to happen anymore.