This past weekend, an unhappy parent at a Philadelphia youth football game became disgruntled with the amount of playing time his kid was getting. He attacked the coach and threatened him with a gun (see the following link for the full story).

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/15832557.htm#recent_comm

When the referee saw the gun, he herded the five and six-year-olds to a safe distance and had them huddle on the ground. Thank God one authority on the field thought of the kids and their safety first. The coach wasn’t helping, he allowed himself to be drawn into a confrontation with the parent that resulted in the brandishing of a .357 Magnum in full view of five and six-year-old kids. Shawn Henwood, the referee was later quoted: ``I cried thinking about the kids, I can see snapshots of their faces in my mind. ... They were dazed. Their eyes were wide open. They saw what was going on. Are they going to want to play ever again?'' Perhaps not, but psychologists will tell you that if the violence continues, a safety device in the brain will help the kids become desensitized to the violence. Another coach, Jermaine Wilson said, "We get parents like that all the time ... just an unfortunate situation." If we allow our kids to become desensitized to the violence and start to see it as normal, then the inevitable next step will only cause the problem to multiply as the kids start to emulate their parent’s behavior.