The Nervous System of a Sports Parent
Neurobiology for your child’s game days
Posted November 19, 2025 | Reviewed by Davia Sills
One of the only things I think I’ve learned in what will, pretty soon, be decades, plural, of work in elite sport is that everybody is human. Everybody. Every Body. (Including the refs!) Which means that we affect each other. Neurobiologically.
I am—alas—not a parent, so I won’t presume to know what it feels like to see your child out on a field of play, being hurt physically or emotionally, getting acknowledged for good or ill or in between. Or not getting acknowledged at all. I won’t presume even to guess what it feels like in your body when this is happening.
What I will say is that you’ve got options—many of the same options as your athletes—for a reset, if needed. So let’s talk about your nervous system .
One of my favorite things about our respective tenth cranial nerves (the vagus nerve , which wanders from your brainstem up into your face and down through your throat, into your chest cavity, around your vital organs, all the way to your rectum) is that you can so vividly picture the vagus-to-vagus contact of a parent or caregiver and their baby. You’re holding that baby to your chest, where they can feel your heartbeat, and your arms and your heart and your eye gaze are connecting all along your baby’s vagal trajectory. You are neurobiologically tuning yourselves to each other. Which has got to be magical (and possibly also sometimes very fatiguing if or when one or both of you are sleepy , hungry, cranky, or having pain you can’t describe).
So when your child is out there on the field of play, and their face shows distress or their vocal tone indicates frustration, fatigue, or hurt, your nervous system is going to alert you in any number of ways. And that could look or feel like fight-or-flight signaling, or it could show up as some form of shut-down, a need to numb to or distance from what your nervous system might be reading as the threat of overwhelm.
If you’ve noticed these threat signals, however they show up in your body, you might get curious about how they read to your child (or your child’s coaches, teammates, refs/umpires/officials). And if you’re 100 percent certain they’re having the effect that you, your child, and their team all need and want, carry on. But if you have any uncertainty, you might develop a toolkit of reset strategies, many of which are the same as those your athlete might be working on.
I love the vagus nerve for resets, because there are so many potent points of contact for physical touch with your own hands or that you can touch with your breath (e.g., the sense of your diaphragm expanding in all directions, the sense of contraction as you exhale, and the sense of air moving through your trachea or your nostrils). Here are a variety of vagus-based strategies for small, tight spaces.
Eye contact with another parent or fan, or a hug, a high five, or a squeeze that sends some friendly vibrations through your fascia can also be potent. Athletes can use eye contact and physical touch to help each other reset, and all the rest of us can, too, because this is part of our human wiring: Eye gaze, period, is one of the most impactful interactions our human nervous systems can experience. Non-evaluative eye gaze with another being who is regarding us in our fullness can lower heart rates and blood pressures.
And even just one lengthened exhalation can create a physiological reset. And can make space for discernment in your nervous system. So you can decide what you need next and see, really see, what’s happening right now. Including what the officials need. Officiating, like any human activity, gets much fairer and more accurate when officials have some autonomic balance. If officials see or feel you breathing—exhaling fully and slowly—their human nervous systems might just take your cue. And the refereeing may improve. You may see a fresh facet of what the team and your child need.
Porges, S. W. (2022). Polyvagal theory: A science of safety. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience , 871227 . https://doi.org/10.3389/fnint.2022.871227 .
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Margaret Smith, Ph.D., is the sport psychology provider for Team USA Wheelchair Rugby.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.