To think that, discipline wise, school, home and sports should stay separate?

[Lweji]

My son's football coach is holding a meeting today with parents where I expect he'll propose effectively punishing players for bad grades or bad behaviour at school or at home. (He hinted at it last game and put one player on the bench with this reasoning)

I disagree with this and plan to tell him and everybody.
Home should be where the buck stops and most behaviour issues should be dealt where they occurred, with parental support.
Behaviour at home should be dealt with there and parents that seek to punish in other contexts look weak. They should be able to talk to their kids. In this case they're 12 year olds.

OTOH, they can only benefit from a sports activity.

I understand it can be complicated if the sports is the only thing they really care about, but I can think if other ways to deal with behaviour that are more direct consequences of it.

What are your views? I'd like either to present good arguments or be convinced they're right and I'm wrong.

But surely those who are prone to bad behaviour need to know it will have an impact on the rest of their life?

I'd be worried about labelling.

Different environments and people can make a huge impact on behaviour - and people can be very slow to drop labels they attach.

Also my children like having things outside of school - especially when school for whatever reason isn't going as well as usual. Plus it gives them a chance to been seen differently.

My eldest is considered very quiet at school - it's constantly mentioned though she joins in things and contibutes to discussions. Her guide group initially saw her as this but now she'd considered lively though still well behaved and even a leader. It's been good for her confidence and self perception.

The parents could just stop sending them if they need a serious sanction.

Plus sometime when my children’s grade have dropped it’s not to do with them and effort so punishing them wouldn’t have been helpful – offering support and looking at different ways of teaching it have helped.

In DS's case though, the cadet leader was obliged to hand out the punishment against her wishes due to her employer contributing financially to the cadet group. The mooning wasn't done at a group of girls, or in malice, the circumstances behind it were such that it was, in my view, just a puerile horseplay that he got involved in as part of a group. He learnt the lesson by being given a detention (and a big telling off when he got home).

If the cadet force had not been linked to the school they wouldn't have known about it and he wouldn't have been punished. If he had mooned during cadets, I would have expected them to deal with it and punish him. I wouldn't then expect school to give him a detention as well.

For what it's worth, I am not minimising what he did, he was given a massive bollocking for it and he wouldn't do it again. But he didn't need to lose his cadet stripe because of it. The detention was sufficient, like all the other boys involved. They didn't get any further punishment so it seemed much less fair that DS had two punishments.

Has he done this before? if not why are you expecting him to do this?

Before you go in all guns blazing do listen to him. He may be saying that he is happy to support a parent who does use it as a threat (and it may be an effective discipline for some children who care about nothing else). So if you come to him and say that ds has behaved badly and so you're not bringing him to match/training he will support that, even if it means he has a weaker team.

It could also be in reaction to something that's happened last year or earlier in the season. Child being called a swot, parent saying their child isn't doing his homework because he's choosing to go and play football instead.

Yes, I would agree that I wouldn't like that set up on the face of things, but I'd go and listen and find out what his reasoning is and if there is a specific reason why.

Before you go in all guns blazing do listen to him.

I'm not going all guns blazing and I've explained what I think he'll propose and why I think he will (do read my posts first ).
I just want to reflect on the subject and be prepared to address it properly, or even to change my initial thoughts, although it seems that most people here agree with me, at least in principle.

Supporting a parent is fine as long as it something like 'Bob, your parents won't let you play this week if you don't do your homework so please don't let yourself and the team down and do you homework' But that is as far as it should go.

Thank you for all your thoughts, btw. Very useful points of view.

Quick update, in case anyone cares , we've had a good debate in the meeting.
They've toned down the request for the grades. It's for any parents who want to work on that aspect with the coach.
Peace has been restored.