Canberra author Karen Viggers has released a new book that dives into the mindset of parents and their children when brawls at junior sporting events occur. Photo: Supplied.
Days after an alleged brawl following a soccer match at Wagga’s Rawlings Park, a Canberra author has released a book that seeks to understand parental violence at junior sporting events.
Karen Viggers will visit Batlow Library to talk about her work Sidelines with local author Sulari Gentill at 10 am on Saturday 14 June.
“I had 14 years as a soccer mom standing on those bar lines watching my kids both play and referee soccer, and I wrote about soccer because during those years, I’ve seen a lot of interesting behaviour,” she said.
“Sometimes my own behaviour wasn’t perfect as well, but it was when a brawl broke out in Canberra at an under-11s game, which I heard about because my own daughter was trying out for the team, that I just thought, how can something like this happen?
“This is junior sport. We have so many good reasons for wanting our kids to participate in sports. So I started to think about all the sorts of underlying tensions of family life, home life and school life for kids these days and all those little pressures that can build one after the other and that simmer away and erupt in something like this on a football field.
“I started to write a novel about it and create some characters there.
“It’s not my story and it’s not my family’s story, but everything that happens in the book has happened. I’ve seen it happen in real life or heard about it.
“I don’t base my characters on real people, but there are threads of people that I know and threads of things that I’ve seen happen all through the book.”
Ms Viggers said she hoped the book would help parents think about why they wanted their kids to participate in activities.
“We want them to develop as a person and to get a whole bunch of positives from that experience. And yet sometimes we accidentally turn it into something else through our role modelling, our behaviour, and the pressure we put on them. So maybe we need to check our expectations a little and just let them have fun.”
Karen said she thought the pressures present in her experiences with soccer applied to other activities.
“Whether it’s soccer or music or academic performance, ballet or rowing, it’s all the same,” she said.
“Most parents are great, but there are a few parents that aren’t, and we don’t know what tensions and what problems people are bringing along with them when they come to watch a kids game.
“There’s really no excuse for offensive, insulting or volatile behaviour at a kids game. And I guess I wanted to explore that in this book.
“What are some of those motivations for people wanting to live vicariously through their kids?
“We’re all there for good reasons to support our kids, because we want them to have success, and we want to see them succeed.
“But, sometimes our own hopes and expectations can sort of warp what happens.”
She said she was looking forward to having conversations about similar scenarios in a safe yet constructive fashion.
“I think it’s very hard to reflect on ourselves,” she said.
“In fact, it wasn’t until a friend came up and tapped me on the shoulder at a game and said I was being a bit shouty, that I started to think about my own behaviour and how I was getting too invested.
“It’s a great opportunity to sort of ask some questions and or discuss some things that we’ve gone through and that I’ve noticed while writing each character in my book.
“It can be good to start thinking about what might be underlying this and how we can manage it better.”
Karen Viggers will be at Batlow Library at 10 am on Saturday 14 June.
