How to treat children in a coaching environment

[TheRedEngine]

I have started working in a sporting teaching environment with children. One of the instructors has a habit of giving a child a high five, then ‘down low’ but moving his hand away so they miss and saying ‘too slow’. I know I would have hated being treated like that at that age (and possibly even now too!). I can just hear my seven-year-old self complaining to my parents about this person.

The teaching guidelines specifically say children should not be humiliated.

Is this acceptable behaviour? Or indeed something I should be adopting because it’s ‘funny’?

All children seem to be addressed as ‘buddy’ which seems horrific but then I haven’t been a child for several decades.

And a group of children were told to hold out their hands as though they were carrying two ice cream cones. Instructor asks one of them ‘what’s in your cones?’ child says ‘… strawberry and…’ and whilst thinking instructor says ‘too slow, let’s go practise.’ Again, I think this is not a very pleasant way to behave towards any human being, let alone a strange child.

Thanks for your thoughts!

I teach primary and coach. The teacher/pupil relationship is very different to the coach/ participant relationship.
It isn't school, or like school, a fact you don't seem to have grasped!

Your updates are hilarious!

If real, you are surely in the wrong job.

I feel so sorry for this other coach. And the children you coach, frankly.

Geez, I bet you’re fun.

Teacher sounds like an idiot.

Go outside and touch some grass. Unless that’s too low?

The relationship my children had with their sports coaches was entirely different to the relationship they had with their teachers.

Coaches are not an authority figure in the same way teachers are, it’s not the same relationship or situation.

Even coaches they had that were actually teachers in their day jobs, didn’t treat the kids like pupils.

I had one very outgoing and one very shy child, neither of them would have had any problem with what you are describing.

And to be frank, if they had done I would have felt that I immediately needed to work on teaching them some resilience.

You don't get the moral high ground on language use whilst using a dramatic term like "horrific" for "Buddy," your linguistic crime is much worse.

I also think it's quite offensive to think your "Spidey senses" being triggered has anything to do with safeguarding training. These are not safeguarding things. If you (as a 7yo) had gone home complaining about Too Low, your parents' job was to teach you to stop whining, not to complain to the coach. You take yourself incredibly seriously, which is fine, but your expectation that everyone else has to as well, is not fine.

Maybe you'd be better suited to a more serious, less fun work environment, there's probably a role you'd be perfect for, but this doesn't sound like it.

@TheRedEngine

They see the children for an hour, then never again. And you are objecting to them using the word buddy.

What alternative would you accept? Fatty, Foureyes, Spotty , Stinky?

The coach is using a neutral, friendly word instead of finding an identifier for each child. I wouldn’t expect a class teacher to use buddy, but this is a very different situation.

Unclench and relax buddy. Focus on the quality of the coaching.

And do pop back in a week or two and explain your system for learning names quickly and accurately. Sticking name labels on the children back and front is not allowed.

I am with you OP.

You will have seen if the 'too slow' feels and looks like low level humiliation. I agree, it is low level power play.

I am not a fan of 'gender neutral' but male assuming terms.

My kids did a sports class when they were around 5 to 6.. it was for kids who didn't easily find their way into other sports.. one exercise was a simple, stop, go game where if they were last, they were out.. the coach used to say goldilocks.. and then point out the kids who moved.. it was a power play, the unwritten rules of the game were being manipulated by the adult. Funnily enough, his classes were no where near as successful than another coach who ran the same framchise in a nearby location.

Hi i am guessing from your updates you are screamingly autistic

your rigidity and safeguarding training are not helping you relax and enjoy your job

i am a teacher and see and hear teachers say and do things that are not linguistically correct “ we was” always makes me cringe our P.e teachers are old school tough nuts making kids tun and go faster etc - its not humiliating - its teaching

if you want to do things differently, go ahead and role model what you consider to be good practice and report anything you consider a safeguarding problem … you will go far but you will not be well liked

What the hell is ‘screamingly’ autistic? I’m AuDHD but how do I know if I’m ’screamingly’ so?

Calling kids inclusive terms such as buddy and folks seems to have seeped over from
America. I’m noticing it more and more. I don’t like it but only because wokeisms irritate me and this shit sounds like more of that.

The high five thing I see as banter. Some kids love all of that. My child would like it I’m sure. The other example about ‘too slow’ again seems like bants, look at the child’s face when it happens and that’s the best indicator as to whether his style is hitting the mark or off base.

I say “alright my love? “ . To kids all the time and as i am from Bristol have to restrain myself from adding the “ er” at the end

i know its a bad habit and that one day will slip out in front if someone like you and i will get told off

🙄

I think the OP needs to check the definition of horrific. Holocaust- horrific, calling a child ‘buddy’ not so much. He has probably changed it form ‘guys’ to ‘buddy’ as in this gender sensitive time someone would definitely take issue with ‘guys’ now.

This is going to end up being reposted and discussed elsewhere on the internet.

Buddy isn’t a word that comes naturally to me but schools often have buddy systems to help a new student settle into a new school. Our children will have watched more international content than us (YouTube etc) so may feel like buddy is more natural than mate or dude which was popular when I was at school. It’s like the word truck increasingly replacing lorry over the years.

I watched a documentary a few years ago which said that children in a learning setting should be referred to as a neutral group because using “girls and boys” leads to unconscious sex bias to appear. In one scene a nursery worker sat down and interacted with a baby dressed as a boy the later a girl. The worker would offer the toys that “matched” the clothes so the girl would be offered a baby and the boy would be offered a robot.

The “You’re too slow” thing was around when I was at primary in the 80s. It’s only unacceptable if it’s targetted at one child and the teacher encourages everyone to laugh or something.

Would you accept kids doing the “you’re too slow”
with their peers?

Wow you are being sensitive, how would you like them to talk to children, business talk?

Saying down low too slow is not humiliation...

I have three sons, all late teens /young adults now. When boys are aged about 8-14, buddy is a common way for adult men to address them. They are in that transition phase between little boy and male peer, and I have generally seen it as a useful halfway house until they're old enough to be "mate".

Since the coach meets these DC now and only now, I wonder how @TheRedEngine would have him address them?

There is no way he could know their names (I am good at names but not that good) and no point anyway if he will never work with them again.

I am not keen on “guys” (gendered language) so as a classroom teacher I would use “folks” (or just “year 8!”) when talking to the whole group. I mean “everyone” is good but won’t work for one child. Mate? Pal? not so horrifically [sic] American?

It sounds very much like you don't like this coach ( do you see them as loud and brash, in contrast to your more reserved persona?)and you are letting this cloud your professional judgrment. The too slow thing has been around for years but is also about quick responses and reflexes, really useful in sports. Using amercanisms is hardly a sacking offence.