A strong body, a strong mind.
The benefits of participation in sport are well documented. But as the recent Netflix documentary on football legend David Beckham shows - the influence of family can be difficult.
DAVID:"I think I was able to handle being abused by the fans. I think I could handle it because of the way my dad had been to me".
MUM:" I used to think he was too strict. I used to say he is too young. Leave him. Let him be happy. "
DAVID:" I used to hear my mum turn around and say to my dad, stop talking to him. Stop shouting at him, stop telling him off."
Dr Mary Woessner [[wess-neh]]is a lecturer and Researcher in Clinical Exercise Science at Victoria University.
She is one of the researchers involved in a study looking at the frequency of violence, experienced by children in Australian community sports.
"All of our research is really focused around the sporting context. So that could be a violent experience by a parent, around the sporting field, about the sporting performance, or even on the way back from matches. So we're talking about behaviors that are often considered just normal behaviors like critiques after the game. But when they go excessive, excessive shouting, ignoring the child after a poor performance, those kinds of behaviors that we don't really think about as being abusive, per se, but actually have can have some serious long term impacts."
Recent data collected by the researchers revealed that parental abuse against children in Australian community sport was experienced by one in three respondents.
A total of 886 respondents were surveyed for the analysis.
The majority of respondents were women at 63 per cent, and about a third were men at 35 per cent.
Eighty-two per cent of those surveyed experienced violence in sport as a child, with psychological violence the most common form of abuse at 76 per cent followed by physical (66 per cent) and sexual (38 per cent) violence.
Dr Woessner says abuse experienced in elite and community sport can have many similarities.
"I think oftentimes, we think there's this imaginary line between community and elite sport where performance matters more at the elite level, but we see that children are being pulled in for elite pathways as young as five and six years old. So that performance mentality and this idea of needing to be tough are critical on children can actually start much earlier. So we're seeing behaviors happening at the community sport level, that are absolutely happening at the elite level, and those two are absolutely linked."]]
Psychological abuse by parents include a range of behaviours, such as humiliation, insults, excessive criticism and ignoring a child following a sport activity.
Behaviour such as forcing children to train to the point of exhaustion is also a type of abuse.
Associate Professor Sam Elliott, is a Researcher in Sport Psychology, Coaching & Youth Sport at Flinders University in South Australia.
He is about to release preliminary research into the parent and child relationship in sport focusing on young people aged 18 to 25 years who were involved in sports.
"There's some really key elements in our analysis right now, where psychological abuse in sport, perpetrated by parents towards their own children, leads to estranged relationships with abusive parents or at best difficult relationships to maintain. We also know that the victims no longer played in those particular sports, or sport altogether. And we also know that these young people have developed a range of mental health illnesses as a result of childhood sporting experiences, which were violated by psychological abuse at the hands of their parents."
Professor Elliott says there are similarities with other forms of psychological abuse but also some unique differences.
He says in this dynamic, at least one family member, one parent is the primary perpetrator with the other parent acting as their supporter.
He says sometimes the other parent may be trying to help interpret or make sense of the abuse and inadvertently permitting the abusive behavior.
And it's often part of abuse occurring across multiple achievement domains like school, as well as domestically with the end result often a permanent disengagement from sport.
"Some of the examples of the parents psychological abuse are really troubling. We've had examples where young people will jump in the car after a game and their parents will turn around and they will verbally abuse them for their performance. They will physically grab body parts and wobble them to insinuate that they are not a particular body shape or size. There's a lot of behavioral manipulation in terms of foods that children are and are not allowed to eat as a direct result of how they perform. And these types of things in the research tells us that they are really setting a situation to undermine not just children but young people's self esteem, their self worth and their ability to make sense of performance, effort and continuation in sport."
As with most types of abuse the question remains - why would a parent treat their child in this way and what can be done about it?
Dr Woessner again.
"I don't think it's a willing thought that they're thinking of in terms of breaking a child down. In fact, I think it's just because this has been normalised in sport for so long. Critiquing is the way that we see as helping people get better, but it can very easily slip to the other side. We know more broadly, that verbal abuse can have similar long term psychological impacts, to experiences of child sexual abuse. But we just don't talk about the impacts of verbal abuse the same way, I don't think parents are trying to do anything wrong. In fact, in many instances, they're probably trying to help. It's just about really thinking about the potential impacts of the language and the way we communicate."
Professor Elliott says beyond personal responsibility for perpetrators, there also needs to be an understanding that the behavior does not occur in isolation, but in a broader and more complex social space.
This raises the issue of collective responsibility on how well clubs are working to protect vulnerable children.
The Australian Institute of Sport says sporting organisations must understand their responsibility in relation to child safety and identifying and responding to Child abuse.
Listeners seeking support can call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Kidsline on 1800 55 1800.
