A child loses the ball. Before they have even turned to chase it, they look across at the touchline.
I have seen that look many times. It lasts less than a second, and it tells you a lot about how that child feels about making a mistake. They are not checking where the ball went. They are checking what is coming from the people they care about most.
Touchline comments are meant to help. Most parents who call out from the side do it out of love, and plenty of what gets said is encouragement. But children do not weigh what they hear evenly, and the things that stick are not always the kind ones.
What touchline comments sound like from the pitch
When I was a young player, I did not like hearing it. Coaches and parents would call things from the side, and I found it a distraction. The touchline comments I reacted to most were the negative ones, or a negative reaction to something I had done. The kind words were there too, but they did not stay with me the same way.
As I got older, I got used to it. I learned to drown it out and put all my focus on the game. That took years, though, and I think it is a skill I picked up over time more than something I was born with.
Not every child picks it up. Some children use a comment from the side as fuel. Some take the same words to heart and carry them for the rest of the match. You cannot tell which one you have from the sideline, and the child may not tell you either.
Why children look across after a mistake
Most children who look across are doing one of two things. They are either expecting a comment, because that is what usually follows a mistake when they play, or they are looking for approval. Both are natural. Children want the people they love to be pleased with them.
The trouble is that a child who is looking at the touchline is not looking at the game. For that second, their attention has left the pitch. The next pass is already on its way, and the decision they needed to make about it is being made late.
If your child looks across often, it does not mean you have done something wrong. It means they have learned that what happens on the pitch matters to you. Over a season, the touchline comments a child hears become what they expect to hear. The question is what they expect to see when they look.
Fuel for some, a weight for others
There is some research on this. A study of 67 young players aged 12 to 17 in Australia, published in Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, found that negative parent behaviour from the sideline went hand in hand with more antisocial behaviour from the players towards teammates and opponents. Most of the young people said their parents were mainly positive, and the researchers are clear that it was a small survey that shows a link, not proof of cause. You can read the study on the Frontiers website.
It fits what I see on the pitch. How touchline comments land depends on the child. The same words fire one player up and make another go quiet. I wrote recently about the quiet child who gets blamed from the side for not communicating, and how a verdict like that can do more harm than the silence ever did, which you can read in my quiet football player post.
Mistakes are lessons
Mistakes are going to happen. Every player who has ever played makes them, and it is how we learn. It is how all of us learn, not only children.
What I say to my players is that they are not mistakes, they are lessons. They show us how to get better, how to improve and how to progress. So we do not dwell on them. We build on them.
That only works if the child can think about the lesson. A child who is bracing for touchline comments is thinking about them. The hardest part for a parent is dealing with what they feel in the moment their child loses the ball, because that feeling is real and it is going to arrive whether you want it to or not. My advice is to learn to contain it. Take a breath. Let it pass before it reaches your mouth.
What to say from the touchline instead
This does not mean parents have to go silent. Encouragement is welcome. The best touchline comments are about effort and about the child, and they ask for nothing back. A name, a clap, a “good effort”, a “keep going” all tell a child you are with them without asking them to change what they just did.
The instructions can stay with the coach. A coach is watching for what each player is working on, and can step in at the right moment with a question, an adjustment to the game or a quick demonstration. When a parent and a coach are both giving instructions, the child has two voices to follow and nobody they can think for.
The decisions belong to the child. That is where the learning happens, and it only happens if they are allowed to make them, get some wrong, and work out what to try next.
Try this for one match
Next match, count your touchline comments. Count how many were about effort and how many were about something that went wrong. You do not need to change anything yet, just count.
Then watch where your child looks after a mistake. If they look across, notice what your face is doing. It might be telling them more than your voice ever did.
If you would like to go further, I have put together a one page card called What To Say Instead, with the words that help and the ones to leave out. You can get it here: What to say Instead