Work out first whether this is a difference of opinion or a welfare concern, because the two need completely different responses and they get conflated constantly. A disagreement about where your child bats or which position they play is not the same category as a coach who humiliates children, and treating them the same way costs you credibility on the one that matters.

If it is a difference of opinion

Assume you are wrong about the sport. Not because you always are, but because the coach watches your child in an environment you do not see, alongside players you cannot compare them to, with information you do not have. Parents consistently underestimate how much of this is invisible from the sidelines.

Then ask rather than assert. What are you working on with them at the moment. What would you like to see more of. Coaches respond well to that and badly to a verdict, and you will usually learn the reason for the thing you disagreed with inside two minutes.

The triangle

Parent, coach and child, and the child in the middle of it. A young person who knows their parent thinks the coach is wrong now has to choose whose instruction to follow, and they will usually manage this by half doing both.

That is the real cost of an unresolved disagreement, and it shows up as a player who looks confused rather than as a player in the middle of a dispute. Whatever you conclude, do not make them the messenger and do not make them the judge.

How to raise it

Never at the venue, never immediately after a game, never in front of your child or anyone else’s. Ask for five minutes during the week. Bring one thing rather than a list. Say what you have noticed rather than what you think they have done wrong.

When it is a welfare concern

Different rules entirely. Shouting at children, singling one out, physical punishment, comments about weight, anything that makes your child not want to be there.

That does not go to the coach in a quiet word. It goes to the club or organisation’s designated welfare or safeguarding officer. Every affiliated club in the UK is required to have one, and most national governing bodies elsewhere require the equivalent. Ask for their name.

You do not need to be certain and you do not need proof. That is what the role exists for.

When to move

If the relationship is beyond repair, if the environment is doing your child harm, or if you have raised something properly and nothing has changed. Moving is a legitimate answer and clubs survive it.

Moving because your child is not being selected is usually the wrong answer. It teaches them that the fix for a hard patch is a new setting, and the same hard patch tends to follow them.