Sports are known to have positive effects on mental health as well as physical health. Sports improves self-esteem, self-perception and mental endurance. In addition, young people's participation in sports supports their initiative, leadership, academic success and goal-oriented determination.
Parents play an important role in functionally and emotionally supporting adolescents' sports careers. Recent research has focused on examining the contribution of parents in the development of talented athletes. The rewarding and understanding attitude of parents in young people's participation in sports plays an important role, especially in the enjoyment they get from sports. Parental support is effective in young people joining and continuing in sports clubs.
Parental involvement in the youth's sports life includes supportive and suppressive behaviors of parents. parental support; While it includes behaviors such as creating opportunities to participate in sports activities, providing sports materials, participating in training and competitions, providing emotional support, rewarding, giving feedback and being a role model, parental pressure; It includes negative attitudes, indifference, and excessive criticism ( Dorch, Smith & Dotterer, 2016 ). Some parents have unrealistic expectations for young athletes and invest too much, tying their self-worth to their child's success in sports. Research in this field reveals the importance of parents in the development of young athletes.
Parents' support to the athlete can be provided in three ways; being a resource provider, interpreter, and role model. As a resource provider, the parent provides the necessary equipment and transportation for the youth to participate in sports. Dunn et al (2016) found that athletes who grew up in families that invested a large portion of the family economy in sports felt more parental pressure and enjoyed sports less. Parents may pressure their children to work hard so that the money they spend does not go to waste. These negative attitudes reduce the child's desire to continue sports.
As an interpreter, the parent's view is Their jobs and expectations are related to the stress and anxiety experienced by the young person. Parents' verbal reactions include supportive, rewarding or suppressive, critical and controlling comments. Parents' positive attitudes towards losing or poor performance determine the young person's enjoyment of sports.
As role models, parents can guide young people in terms of improving their sports skills, participating in challenging exercises, and communicating with people such as coaches and teammates during the sports process (Lauer, Gould, Roman & Pierce, 2010). Many studies show that young people's enjoyment of sports, their performance and self-confidence are associated with positive support from parents. On the contrary, the parents' negative and critical attitude, pressure, excessive emphasis on winning and controlling behavior reduce the young person's motivation and performance in sports participation.
In a study conducted with Dutch adolescents, the relationship between participation in sports, parental factors and socio-cultural variables was examined. It has been observed that participation in sports is higher among boys than girls. On the other hand, it is known that male athletes receive more pressure from their parents than female athletes. Adolescents who report that their parents are physically active are twice as likely to participate in sports as adolescents whose parents are not physically active (Toftegaard-Stockel, Nielsen, Ibsen & Andersen, 2011). These results emphasize the importance of parents being a role model for the athlete.
Knight and Holt (2014) found in their study that parents' and children's sports-related goals are related to the parent's suppressive or supportive attitude. However, the time of the parent's behavior; before the competition, during the competition and after the competition) may differ in terms of supportive and suppressive attitudes perceived by children. While young athletes want honest and balanced feedback from their parents after the competition, they want them not to focus on negative comments and criticism.
In South Korea, middle school and high school students' participation in sports is highly supported in order to produce elite athletes. On the other hand, the young horse Individuals face various psychological stressors that will affect their sports performance. Park (2015) emphasized the role of self-confidence both during the preparation for the competition and during the competition. In a study conducted with Korean adolescents participating in sports, a significant positive relationship was found between parental support, parental attachment, and self-confidence. It has been observed that young athletes who have established secure attachments with their parents and perceive more parental support have higher self-confidence (Park, 2015). The role of the parent not only supports the athlete, but also contributes to increasing the athlete's self-confidence.
Another study was conducted with 81,857 school-age children between the ages of 9 and 17 within the scope of the Youth Research project in China, and the relationship between parents' support for physical activity and children's participation in sports was examined. Various questions were prepared to measure parents' support for the child. For example; 'Do you encourage your child to participate in physical activities?', 'Do you accompany your child when he/she participates in physical activities? Do you make financial investments for your child's participation in sports?', 'Do you share your information about the health benefits of sports with your child? ', 'Would you be a model for your child about doing sports?'. As a result of the study, parents' various support mechanisms; It has been found that children who have encouragement, accompaniment, financial support, follow-up, monitoring and participation are more likely to participate in sports (Liu et al., 2017).
As a result, parental support is important for the child's enjoyment and success in sports. Positive behavior of parents; The parent's focus on the child's general development, motivational and constructive evaluations of the training, decreasing demands on the child, and reading and understanding the child's situation well help support his development in sports.
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