The parents charged with attempted murder for making their child do too much sport

We live in a nation where sports players are revered as heroes and where news reports about parents getting into fisticuffs at their children’s sporting matches are common place.

And it makes me wonder if we’re taking our obsession with sport just a little too far. Especially when it comes to our kids and our own thwarted sporting ambitions. Where do we draw the line between parents being firm with children during sports training and those who become abusive?

Here seems like a pretty good place: police in South Africa charged the parents of a 10-year-old girl with attempted murder after she was forced to do continuous laps of a dam.

The arrest came after witnesses reported seeing the parents assault the girl after she became tired and wanted to stop.

The 38-year-old mother and her 31-year-old husband had been watching their daughter swim from the sidelines. The couple appeared in Bloemfontein Regional Court on Monday and face up to 10 years in prison.

Local news station SowetanLive stated that lawyers representing the parents want more details relating to the charges stemming from that day in October last year.

The girl is currently in foster care.

For anyone who has read books written by the world’s most successful athletes, the majority include descriptions of over-bearing parents determined to make their child the next tennis, swimming, running or soccer star. My favourite book from this genre is Open by Andre Agassi. I wanted to read it to see how parents can inspire their children to greatness. In Agassi’s case, it took borderline abuse to get him to an elite level and the tennis star spent most of his adult life trying to come to terms with the path his life had taken. He eventually reached a point where he forgave his father, realising the pressure came from a place of love.  However the scars remain and he and wife, tennis champion Stephanie Graff have vowed their children will never pick up a tennis racquet.

I’m going to make a series of assumptions now and feel free to refute them, but from what I’ve observed at my children’s soccer games it seems the parents who place the most pressure on their children to excel in sport either played sport competitively themselves as children or think pressuring their children to be the best they can be is good parenting. Sometimes they take it too far.

A lot of these parents are part of the coaching staff. There is a lot of yelling during games. When this happens I just cringe. Then I wonder, if that’s how they yell at their kids in public, how much pressure are their children under in private?

As parents, we are all trying to do the best for our children but sometimes we don’t get the balance right. My boys play soccer and my daughter does ballet. Sometimes I do have to drag them to training and yes I have yelled out during games but at the end of the day, if they really hated it, I’d pull them out. However then I’d worry that I was teaching my children to quit, to not try, to give up.

So do I force them to continue? I just don’t know.

How do you strike a balance when it comes to health and fitness with your kids?