5 Things to Never Do as a Junior Tennis Parent

If you want your child to have a great experience competing, there are a few things I believe parents should never do.

And I know that sounds pretty strong.

But most of the mistakes parents make in junior tennis are not because they do not care. It’s usually the opposite. They care so much that they try to help in every possible way, at every possible moment, even when they have no tennis coaching experience. If there’s an opportunity to help their child grow, improve, and be happy, parents are usually going to jump at it.

And that’s where things can get complicated.

Sometimes the things we think are helping are actually making the experience harder for our child.

Here are six things I would encourage every junior tennis parent to avoid.

1. Never Talk Negatively About Another Junior Player in Front of Your Child

Your child is going to compete against a lot of different players.

Some will be better than them. Some will be worse. Some will have personalities that your child likes. Others will not. Some will also make line calls that you and your child disagree with.

That’s part of competing.

But when you talk negatively about another junior player, you’re teaching your child that it’s okay to talk badly about other kids when they’re not around. And eventually, that kind of behavior can become a habit that your child carries with them well beyond the tennis court.

The skills your child develops as a junior are skills they’re going to carry with them into the rest of their life. That’s why the way we teach them to treat other people matters just as much as how we teach them to compete.

Tennis is supposed to teach us how to compete against people while still respecting them.

Your child can dislike playing someone. They can be frustrated by how someone plays. They can even have a bad experience and disagree with many of their line calls. All of those feelings are completely normal.

But they do not need you to teach them to talk badly about that person.

Let them learn how to compete against someone without learning to disrespect them.

2. Never Ask Why They Still Struggle With a Certain Shot

This one seems harmless.

Your child misses the same forehand a few times and you ask, “Why do you still struggle with a shot you practice so much?”

Or my favorite, “How can you miss so many easy volleys?”

You may think you’re asking a simple question, but what your child can hear is, “You’ve been working on this forever. Why can’t you figure it out? You must not be very good at this shot.”

And now a simple question has turned into a confidence killer.

Tennis is hard. Really hard. There are technical changes that require thousands of repetitions, and sometimes those changes take months or even years to become natural. Heck, even top pros like Coco Gauff and Alexander Zverev are still working on their serves and forehands.

There are days when a player feels great and days when nothing seems to work.

Your child does not need you making a difficult problem sound like an easy one. They need to know that improvement takes time. They need to know that struggling with something does not mean they are bad at it. And sometimes, the best thing you can say after they struggle is nothing at all.

3. Never Go Against What Their Coach Is Teaching Them

You do not have to agree with everything a coach says, but if your child is going to work with a coach, there needs to be trust between the player, parent, and coach.

When you tell your child to do something completely different from what their coach is teaching them, you’re putting your child in the middle. Now they have two voices telling them what to do, and eventually, they have to decide which one to trust.

That’s not fair to the child.

And it can create a bigger problem. If your child starts believing that your advice is more important than their coach’s, they are naturally going to listen to their coach less. Now the coach is trying to teach one thing, you are telling them another, and your child is left trying to figure out who they should listen to. That can make the entire coaching relationship frustrating for everyone.

If you genuinely believe the coaching relationship is not working, have an adult conversation with the coach. Talk about it away from your child and try to understand what the coach is seeing and why they are teaching what they are teaching.

But once your child is on the court, let the coach coach. When your child is at a tournament, let them work on the things their coach has been help them with.

And if you no longer trust the coach, find a new one.

4. Never Talk About Their Opponent’s UTR or Ranking

I’ve seen parents do this before matches all the time.

“Your opponent is a 9.2.”

“They are ranked higher than you.”

“You should beat this kid.”

It may seem like useful information.

It’s not.

If the opponent has a higher rating, you can create the expectation that your child is supposed to lose. If the opponent has a lower rating, you can create the expectation that your child is supposed to win.

Either way, you’ve given your child something they now have to manage that has nothing to do with playing tennis.

Their job is to compete against the person on the other side of the net.

Not their UTR.

Not their ranking.

Not what you or anyone else think should happen.

5. Never Talk Your Child Out of a Big Dream

This might be the most important one.

Junior tennis players are going to have big dreams.

Some will want to play college tennis. Some will want to play professionally. Some will want to win a major tournament.

And sometimes those dreams will seem unrealistic.

That’s okay.

Let them dream.

When the Baltimore Ravens won their last Super Bowl, one of their players was asked why he was talking about winning a Super Bowl at the beginning of the season when they weren’t the favorites. His response was, “If I can’t even talk about winning the Super Bowl, how am I ever going to believe it?”

The so-called “impossible” things only become possible when you are willing to talk about them. When you start talking about a big goal, you start believing in it. When you start believing in it, your motivation changes. Your rate of improvement follows. And suddenly, something that once seemed impossible starts to come into focus.

And if they never accomplish that dream, the journey will probably come with some painful moments. There will be tears. There will be disappointment. There will be moments when you wonder if it was all worth it.

But when those tears are wiped away and they look back on what they did, they may realize they accomplished far more by chasing that dream than they ever would have by only chasing the realistic goals.

Because the value of a big dream isn’t always whether you accomplish it. It’s who you become while trying.

So let them dream big.

You do not have to convince your child that their dream is possible. But you also do not need to convince them that it is impossible.

Your fears belong to you.

Their dreams belong to them.

Let them have them.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, your child is going to have good days and bad days on the tennis court. They are going to lose matches they thought they should win, struggle with shots they have practiced a thousand times, get frustrated with other players, and sometimes question whether they are good enough. That is all part of competing.

Your job as a parent is not to make those moments disappear.

It’s to help your child learn how to handle them. Give them room to figure things out. Give them confidence when they need it. And give them the freedom to make this journey their own. Because tennis is temporary. The person they become because of it isn’t.