Rightly Ordered Parents as Fans: Sideline Behavior Rooted in Ordo Amoris
St. Augustine taught that rightly ordered love governs not only our private affections but also our public actions. How we behave as spectators reveals the true order of our hearts.¹
When love is properly ordered, we love our child as a person made in God’s image, we love truth and justice (including fair play and good refereeing), and we love the game as a lesser good — never allowing it to unleash vice such as anger, pride, or contempt for others.
Disordered love at games turns parents into obstacles to their child’s formation.
Rage at officials, trash-talking opponents, or gloating over victories shows that winning, status, or ego has climbed too high in our hearts.
Such behavior wounds our witness, embarrasses our children, and teaches them that sports justify uncharitable conduct.
Principles for Rightly Ordered Fan Behavior
- Love Your Neighbor on the Field and in the Stands Opponents, referees, coaches, and other parents are not enemies — they are fellow image-bearers of God. Your child’s excellence is not diminished by another’s success.
- Love Self-Control and Humility The stands are an arena for your own character. Emotional outbursts reveal disordered attachment to outcomes rather than to virtue.
- Love Your Child’s Character More Than Their Performance Your visible example — win or lose — forms them more powerfully than any post-game talk. Model the virtues you want them to embody.
- Love the Good of the Game Cheer for beauty in play, effort, sportsmanship, and teamwork. Let your encouragement point toward excellence ordered to higher goods.
Practical Guidelines for Game Days
What Rightly Ordered Parents Do:
- Cheer positively and loudly for your child’s team, especially for effort, improvement, and teamwork.
- Applaud good plays by the opposing team. This teaches your child respect and gratitude for worthy competition.
- Accept referee decisions with grace. If a serious error occurs, address it through proper channels, never by yelling.
- Speak words of encouragement that build up: “Great hustle!” “Way to recover!” “I’m proud of how you kept going.”
- Sit with composure. Your calm presence gives your child confidence and peace.
- Pray briefly before the game — for safety, integrity, and that all involved would act with virtue.
- Protect younger siblings and family members from toxic sideline atmospheres when necessary.
What Rightly Ordered Parents Never Do:
- Yell at referees, coaches, or opposing players. This is a failure of love and self-mastery.
- Criticize or coach your child publicly from the stands. Undermining the coach or embarrassing your child disorders trust and authority.
- Engage in trash-talk, boasting, or comparing your child favorably to others.
- Let the outcome of the game ruin your mood or family time afterward. A loss is not a tragedy when loves are rightly ordered.
- Pressure your child immediately after the game with performance analysis while emotions are high.
Reflection Questions for Parents (Post-Game)
- Did my behavior today reflect love of God, love of my child, and love of neighbor — or did it reveal anxiety over winning?
- Would my child be proud or embarrassed by how I acted?
- Did I model the virtues of humility, patience, and charity that I hope to see in them?
As a parent in the stands, you are not a passive observer. You are an active teacher. Your conduct either reinforces rightly ordered love or plants seeds of disorder.
When you keep sports in its proper place, the game becomes an opportunity for collective growth in virtue rather than a stage for personal or familial idolatry.
Let your sideline presence be marked by joy, dignity, and peace, a quiet witness that your deepest love belongs to God, and that all else, even your child’s athletic success, is received with open but properly ordered hands.
¹ St. Augustine, The City of God, Book XV, Chapter 22 (trans. Marcus Dods). See also On Christian Doctrine, Book I, Chapters 23–28, where Augustine explains how rightly ordered love shapes all moral action, both inward and outward.