WHEN “BENCHING” BECOMES A LESSON — AND WHEN IT BECOMES A RISK
Few things sting more for a parent than seeing their child on the bench.
You may wonder: is this about performance? Did they do something wrong? Is this helping them grow — or quietly hurting their confidence? The answer is rarely as simple as the moment feels.
A 2023 peer-reviewed study from researchers at the University of Toronto looked at exactly this question — how coaches, players, and parents in competitive youth sport interpret benching when it's used as a behavior-management tactic. What they found is worth knowing as a parent: the same act of "not playing" can be experienced as a clear, useful lesson or as something closer to a wound. The difference is almost entirely in the how.
What "benching" really means
In youth sport, benching is rarely a single thing. It can be a rotation. It can be a tactical decision. It can be rest after a heavy week. And — the focus of the research — it can be a coaching tool used in response to attitude, effort, or breaking team rules.
That last version is the one that hits parents hardest, because it sits at the intersection of discipline, development, and confidence. The act looks the same from the sideline. The meaning the player attaches to it can vary enormously.
On a balanced playing-time team, the bench is mostly logistical — a rotation in a fair share-out. On a results-driven team, the bench is more loaded — it carries information about ability, behavior, and standing. Knowing which environment your child is in changes how to read the moment.
Why it matters
Gurgis, Kerr, and Battaglia (2023, Sports) conducted an instrumental case study of one competitive (AAA) youth baseball team in Canada — interviewing twenty-one participants in total: three coaches, eleven players, and seven parents. They asked, in semi-structured interviews, about the behavior-management strategies coaches actually use and how each stakeholder interprets them.
Two findings stand out for parents.
First, benching was one of the most commonly reported behavior-management tactics — alongside excessive exercise and yelling negative comments. It is, in other words, a normal part of competitive youth sport, not an outlier.
Second, the authors found that participants regularly confused punishment and discipline, treating the terms as interchangeable. The researchers argue this confusion matters: punishment and discipline are not the same thing, and the difference shapes whether a behavior-management tactic builds a young athlete or chips away at them. The paper concludes that there is a real need to teach the sports community what age-appropriate behavior management actually looks like — because some punitive tactics have been normalized to the point that they no longer feel like a choice.
Translation for a parent: when your child is benched, it's worth asking — quietly, to yourself — whether what just happened was discipline (focused on the behavior, with a path back) or punishment (focused on the player, with no clear way through). Same action. Very different meaning.
Common gaps in how families and coaches handle it
A few patterns show up over and over.
No conversation, no clarity. The child sits. The game ends. No one names what happened or why. The story the child invents in the car is almost always worse than the reality.
No path back. Discipline without a return route stops being "this is what we're working on" and becomes "I'm in the doghouse." Kids feel the difference within one or two sessions.
Behavior tied to identity. "You played badly" lands very differently than "you didn't follow the team rule today." One is fixable. The other becomes something the child quietly carries around.
Parent reactivity. The car ride becomes a venting session. The child's interpretation hardens before they've had time to reflect, and the version they've now committed to is rarely the most useful one.
Mixed messages between coach and home. Coach is teaching one lesson. Parent is teaching another. The child stops trusting both — and starts hiding the experience from one or the other.
Rotations read as discipline. On a balanced playing-time team, normal rotations sometimes get interpreted as benching. Confirming the environment up front — is this a rotation team or a results team? — saves a lot of unnecessary worry.
How to approach it at home
You don't have to be the coach's spokesperson. You don't have to be the coach's adversary either. Your job is something narrower and more useful.
Be the interpreter, not the judge. Help your child make sense of what just happened, in a way that lets them keep working. Ask first, opine second.
Ask reflective questions. "What do you think the coach was trying to teach?" "What did you learn from that?" "Do you understand what they want to be different next time?" These give the child agency and slow down the leap to identity.
Separate identity from outcome. "Playing time doesn't define you." "Mistakes are part of growth." "Your value isn't measured in minutes." These aren't slogans; said calmly and consistently, they become the language your child uses about themselves over years.
Watch for warning signs. Benching is doing more harm than good if your child is becoming unusually anxious before games, says they're afraid to make mistakes, talks about feeling worthless or unwanted, or starts mentioning quitting. That's the point at which a conversation with the coach is appropriate — not to relitigate the bench, but to understand the pattern.
Ask the coach for clarity if you need it — once, calmly. A short, non-confrontational ask — "Can you help me understand what you'd like my child to work on?" — almost always goes further than a long email written the night of.
Resist the sideline replay. If you're going to talk about it on the way home, lead with feeling, not analysis. "How did that feel?" is a better opener than "Did you see what the coach did?"
Parent tip
The first conversation your child has about being benched is going to be with you. The language you use becomes the language they use about themselves. Don't rush to defend the coach. Don't rush to blame them. Ask, listen, and help your child make sense of it. That's the moment that turns a tough Saturday into a growth moment — or doesn't.
The goal
Playing time isn't just minutes. For a young player, it represents belonging, competence, and contribution. When it's taken away, even briefly, kids feel it deeply. Whether the moment becomes a growth experience or a confidence wound depends almost entirely on what surrounds it — the coach's communication, the parent's response, and how the child interprets the whole thing.
Your role isn't to shield your child from adversity. It's to help them interpret adversity in a healthy way.
That's what keeps them growing. And more importantly — that's what keeps them playing.
Sources:
Gurgis J.J., Kerr G., Battaglia A. (2023). Investigating Sport Stakeholders' Understanding of Behaviour Management within a Competitive Youth Baseball Team. Sports (Basel), 11(3):69. doi: 10.3390/sports11030069. PMID: 36976955. PMCID: PMC10056869.
