There’s Pink Shirt Day. Then there’s the North Van parents in the stands at a minor hockey game who ably demonstrated last week why we have so much work still to do.
It was only three days after the annual anti-bullying love-in, which aims to remind us all to “make nice,” that local hockey parents were banned from a game in Burnaby over their decidedly ungracious verbal high sticking.
And rightly so.
One of the primary ways kids learn how to conduct themselves is from the behaviour they see modelled by their parents.
All the pink shirt school assemblies in the world will be for naught if parents can’t learn to curb their own hot-headed boorishness.
An internal investigation is now underway on what happened to send the parents to the penalty box. Reportedly it involved haranguing of teenaged referees at a hockey game for 11- and 12-year-olds.
We wonder in whose world is it OK for adult goons to harass and belittle children who are themselves still learning their role in the game.
Parents of future NHLers would do well to heed the signs now posted at many arenas reminding them that the game they are watching is just that – a game played by kids – and that referees are human.
It may be a small group of parents who are actually responsible for the verbal rock ’em-sock ’em incidents like the one last week, but they send exactly the wrong message to everyone involved. They also give hockey and the culture that goes along with it another black eye.
– Guest editorial from the North Shore News
