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Looking for some coaching advise on dealing with a kid that refuses to participate in drills and is a distraction to the rest of the team. I have one of these on my Mite team and for the most part he is managable but last night he was in rare form. Here's a recap:

- Hitting kids with sticks (not hard enough to injur but enough to be a distraction).
- Taking his glove off and using it as a puck, skating right through the team drills we were doing.
- Going up to coaches and punching them as if he's Rocky Balboa (keep in mind we're talking about a 6 year old).
- Having to pick the pucks up off the ice because he refused to leave them alone when we were doing drills without them.

After completely ignoring us coaches for about 20 minutes I told him that if he hit another kid with his stick he was on the bench for 10 minutes. Of course he immediately proceeded to do it again and then refused to go to the bench. Having enough I physically picked him up and took him off the ice. I had to hold the door shut to keep him from coming back on the ice and he just stood there and watched the rest of practice through the glass. I didn't know if I was breaking any rules by physically removing him but at that point I didn't care.

I was expecting his parents to approach me after practice but they didn't say a thing. Now I hate to remove kids from practice but I was out of ideas at the time. Anyone have any tips or experiences that they can share that would be useful in dealing with situations like these? Thanks.

When I coach that age group it happens that some kids don't want to go along with the program. My beginning of the season talk to parents explains that I will work with those that want to participate in drills and if a kid isn't on board I won't force them to play. They can spend that time with their parents.

Prefacing it that way makes it very easy to handle your situation. Send him off the ice to his parents and explain, "Tim's having a little trouble leaving the pucks and other kids alone. Can you see if he wants to work on his hockey today? Hopefully he wants to."

Now the kid has to talk to mom/dad.

If you didn't have such a talk at the beginning, I think you now need to go to the parents and say, "Tim's doing great when he sticks to the hockey. I'm working with a dozen at once. Would you like to come on the ice during practices? Sometimes he gets a little distracted by the other kids and I'm not able to keep an eye on this."

Good luck. I'm sure you'll get other suggestions.

O-townClown wrote:When I coach that age group it happens that some kids don't want to go along with the program. My beginning of the season talk to parents explains that I will work with those that want to participate in drills and if a kid isn't on board I won't force them to play. They can spend that time with their parents.

Prefacing it that way makes it very easy to handle your situation. Send him off the ice to his parents and explain, "Tim's having a little trouble leaving the pucks and other kids alone. Can you see if he wants to work on his hockey today? Hopefully he wants to."

Now the kid has to talk to mom/dad.

If you didn't have such a talk at the beginning, I think you now need to go to the parents and say, "Tim's doing great when he sticks to the hockey. I'm working with a dozen at once. Would you like to come on the ice during practices? Sometimes he gets a little distracted by the other kids and I'm not able to keep an eye on this."

Good luck. I'm sure you'll get other suggestions.

Great advice. I would take this approach too.

He is 6 years old and should know better. If he won't listen, kick him off the ice and tell his parents that you are there to teach the kids how to play hockey, you are NOT there to babysit their their unruly children. It's not fair to you,and just as importantly, to the other kids to have you constantly wasting your time and theirs by focusing so much of your attention to one kid who refuses to listen.

If I'm the parent of that 6 year old, and I'm watching that practice, I would have dragged him off the ice myself and given the kid a little discipline.

Give him another drill to run by himself, like shooting pucks against the board

ORr passing with another kid (that is bigger than him).

OR skating backwards with a puck.

OR give the whole team a break and play pull away or tag or some small area game for part of them.

remember they are six, their minds wander and they need to fill it with somehting, some need to be interacting,

OR give him back to his parents.

I have been coaching Mites for three years now, and have had this type of situation arise a few times. Unfortunately, you are skating on thin ice when dealing with these types of kids, and must be careful on your approach. In this case, it seems the parents don't care that the kid is acting out, and in my opinion, the issue lies right there. If the parents are not raising there kid to be respectful, it will be tough to fix the situation.

My guess is these parents have never been exposed to hockey prior to their kid playing, and they do not realize that hockey is a little different than other sports. First, it is expensive, and if it were my kid wasting time like that, I wouldn't pay a penny to watch him do that kind of thing. It is a huge committment by families, and this must be stressed throughout.

I think the best approach is to talk to the parents, and find out if the kid really wants to play hockey or not. If he does, then the parents need to understand that while the kids are on the ice, they need to listen, pay attention, and do the drills so they learn the skills at an early age. If they don't learn the skills at this age, they never will. These are the crucial years in developing the skills needed, and while there will be lots of time to have fun on the ice during Mites, they need to understand that the time spent on drills is very important.

The parents also need to understand that swinging sticks, shooting pucks, etc. is not only distarcting to the other kids trying to learn, but can also pose a danger threat. If this type of activity continues, the parents need to understand that their child will be removed from the ice until he can no longer act out.

Hope this helps a little. The parents are going to be your life-line on this...6 year olds don't always listen to anyone besides their parents.

Thanks for the replies. This particular kid has been a bit of a handful all season but has never been uncontrollable like he was last night. Normally I'm pretty confident in dealing with behavior problems on the ice but yessterday I found myself out of my comfort zone when he became completely unresponsive. Anyone know what the guidelines are for removing a kid from the ice that refuses to leave?

Maybe the medication wasn't dialed in. Remember, and I remind frustrated coaches of this frequently, some parents sign their kids up for sports exactly because they can't control them, or have ADD, etc. You always hear the gymnast parent say they couldn't take the kid bouncing off the furniture all day so they signed them up for gymnastics. Every team might have a player or two that are there specifically because they are hyperactive and the parents wanted to find a channel for the kid to let off steam. You're the lucky coach. All good suggestions from O-town.

The irony is that this kid probably has the best makeup to play hockey at higher levels. Passive kids that follow directions and respect order usually don't have the necessary screw loose to thrive when the game gets real rough.

O-townClown wrote:The irony is that this kid probably has the best makeup to play hockey at higher levels. Passive kids that follow directions and respect order usually don't have the necessary screw loose to thrive when the game gets real rough.

Based upon your logic OT you should of been a star in the NHL.

MoreCowBell wrote:

O-townClown wrote:The irony is that this kid probably has the best makeup to play hockey at higher levels. Passive kids that follow directions and respect order usually don't have the necessary screw loose to thrive when the game gets real rough.

Based upon your logic OT you should of been a star in the NHL.

He was.

Elliott just because he bought the jersey and had his name stitched on the back, that does mean he made it. But to become a STAR how did he do that.

I assume you're part of an association. In your place, if I was out of ideas I'd tell the parents that the athlete couldn't come back to another practice until they had a meeting with you and the president or whomever is responsible for that type of thing. You're there to help young hockey players develop skills. If ANY athlete takes too much time from doing that he or she is really harming everyone else. Mites get too little ice as it is. Get the association involved; you shouldn't have to be the bad guy or act alone. Thank you for taking your time to help Minnesota kids!

auld_skool wrote:I assume you're part of an association. In your place, if I was out of ideas I'd tell the parents that the athlete couldn't come back to another practice until they had a meeting with you and the president or whomever is responsible for that type of thing. You're there to help young hockey players develop skills. If ANY athlete takes too much time from doing that he or she is really harming everyone else. Mites get too little ice as it is. Get the association involved; you shouldn't have to be the bad guy or act alone. Thank you for taking your time to help Minnesota kids!

I have had few of these problems, usually, I ignore the troublemaker. He's bugging other kids: I seperate all of them. In my very little experience helping kids of this age learn the great game I have found that being VERY acrive and energetic keeps a lot of the kids interested. I will run a pretty up tempo practice, especially when I see that I am losing some of them. ......two cents....and maybe it ain't worth that...good luck

elliott70 wrote:He was.

Elliott says, jokingly.

Night Train wrote:Maybe the medication wasn't dialed in. Remember, and I remind frustrated coaches of this frequently, some parents sign their kids up for sports exactly because they can't control them, or have ADD, etc. You always hear the gymnast parent say they couldn't take the kid bouncing off the furniture all day so they signed them up for gymnastics. Every team might have a player or two that are there specifically because they are hyperactive and the parents wanted to find a channel for the kid to let off steam. You're the lucky coach. All good suggestions from O-town.

I agree. This sounds like classic ADHD. Do what you can at practice, have him shoot pucks to keep busy, keep him near you when you are talking, try to keep him from touching all the other kids and when his behavior prevents you from being a coach, send him back to mom and dad.
Chances are by 6, mom and dad are starting to hear the same things from other teachers, babysitters and parents. They need to hear he's disrupting practice from you, as well.
Most parents think "not my kid", but sometimes it IS your kid. Maybe they'll change his diet and that will work. Maybe they'll get him on meds and that will work. Maybe they'll just try to "discipline" him into paying attention (which won't work if he has ADHD, because his brain is truly wired differently). These kids don't want to be bad, they simply do not have impulse control. It is literally a missing part of the "executive function skill-set".
The point is, the best way to help this kid is to be blunt with his parents. If he does have ADHD, his life is just going to get harder until it's dealt with and the earlier somebody starts doing something, the greater the chance he'll have at succeeding in life. And hockey.
Good luck and thanks for caring.

I'm glad you mentioned food. Diet and nutrition is important at all levels of athletics including the little ones.

I'm not so sure that every "hyperactive" kid has ADHD. It's my opinion that too many parents are either to afraid, or don't care, to discipline their children. When I was a kid, if and when I acted as stupid as this kid, I got cuffed upside the back of my head by both the coach AND my dad. And, you know what? I took notice and straightened up....Nowadays, we have to figure out what is the correct "method" to remove the kid from the ice. What has happened to us as a society???

Parents, take control of your kids....

All good suggestions. We had another practice last night and things were much better. Defense's comment about keeping practices up tempo is a very good one. I didn't mention this before but I am only an assistant coach on the team and I think that part of the problem is that the head coach has already "mailed it in" and is just waiting for the season to be over. We've been running basically the same drills for the last few weeks and at this point I think most of the kids are just bored. This is the time of year when the season can start to drag (especially with mites) and you really need to dig deep to stay motivated and finish the season strong.

I also like Elliot's comment about teaming him up with a bigger player. This is something I've never thought of but it makes perfect sense. Even though a kid may not want to listen to you he still often looks up to the bigger kids on the team. I can see where teaming him up with a big kid might help engage him in practice again.

Thanks for all the replies. I was looking for some new ideas and definitely found some.

I have coached mites for what would equate to nine seasons worth of mite skating.

I have concluded that many parents of children who act the way you describe sit in the stands (if at all) and watch, without identifying that their kid is out of control. The worst behavior on the ice has been from kids whose parents are almost oblivious of their child's behavior off ice and on ice.

This is in large part a communication problem and perhaps a policy issue. Associations need to have clear policies covering behavior. Parents need to clearly understand that bad behavior (one rotten apple) will not be tolerated because it can spoil the bunch. When a child refuses to follow direction, one warning should be given. Second offense, the child should be put on the bench for 5 minutes. If they do it again, then they are done for the day. This is a bit of an issue given many associations run zone drills for mites, so it requires one set of zone coaches to tell the other zone coaches what is going on, so the child doens't get a free pass from zone to zone.

The distraction this causes isn't worth the trouble. It causes issues for the parents in the stands whose kid is getting hit, or also getting in trouble because of responses to the problem kid. In my experience from both coaching and watching, the response is often times what gets noticed.

Everyone needs to think about the mite behavior as it moves through the levels. An out of control mite, who might also be a bully, is a real problem in a squirt locker room, especially if coaches are lax in their supervision.

Point is, bad behavior is not tolerable and if policies/practices are clearly communicated, any coach should only have to follow the policy and warn, sit, remove. Common sense is good too, which means the assocation has to make choices for coaches too.

I was talking to a parent the other day who was so impressed by how our kids were so well behaved and payed attention on the ice. I looked at hime like he was nuts. I went on to tell him about all the continuous distractions we are dealing with.

There is definitely a different perspective from the bleachers than the ice.

Most parents may not realize that there is a problem unless it is really egregious since most are in denial anyway when it comes to their kid.

have him try figure skating

jBlaze3000 wrote:Looking for some coaching advise on dealing with a kid that refuses to participate in drills and is a distraction to the rest of the team. I have one of these on my Mite team and for the most part he is managable but last night he was in rare form. Here's a recap:

- Hitting kids with sticks (not hard enough to injur but enough to be a distraction).
- Taking his glove off and using it as a puck, skating right through the team drills we were doing.
- Going up to coaches and punching them as if he's Rocky Balboa (keep in mind we're talking about a 6 year old).
- Having to pick the pucks up off the ice because he refused to leave them alone when we were doing drills without them.

After completely ignoring us coaches for about 20 minutes I told him that if he hit another kid with his stick he was on the bench for 10 minutes. Of course he immediately proceeded to do it again and then refused to go to the bench. Having enough I physically picked him up and took him off the ice. I had to hold the door shut to keep him from coming back on the ice and he just stood there and watched the rest of practice through the glass. I didn't know if I was breaking any rules by physically removing him but at that point I didn't care.

I was expecting his parents to approach me after practice but they didn't say a thing. Now I hate to remove kids from practice but I was out of ideas at the time. Anyone have any tips or experiences that they can share that would be useful in dealing with situations like these? Thanks.

I feel like it has been long enough now and I just want to apologize on behalf of my kid. I probably shouldn't have fed him all that candy before practice. My bad.

The key to this whole exercise is to
1) Identify the kid that has a problem. My guess is ADD but since it involves not such other savory things maybe ADHD
2) Minimize the amount of time the identified kid stands in line. Skate him, have him go retrieve the pucks, have him do anything but stand in line.
3) See how that works.

It works trust me.

PWD10 you might be on to something, but I like muck's idea better. Cuff them upside the head and kick them off the ice. Have the parents take control of their kid and make them behave. Then send them back on the ice all fixed.

That just seems neater and quicker to me.