As our kids trek back to school this week, you can guarantee that the usual avalanche of forms for parents to sign will roll back in the door with them at 3 o'clock.

Class lists, IT permission slips, camp forms, computer waivers, resource material lists.

In this pile, will also be sports registrations. And instead of just ticking boxes and squiggling signatures, wouldn't be great, if, as parents, we could use this opportunity to sit down and have a decent chat with our kids about behaviour and attitudes in sport.

Why? Well because it's clearly still a problem in this country.

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Two weeks ago a woman was verbally abused at a cricket match in Wellington. Not only was she harassed, groped and called "a stupid dyke", but the uncouth sports fans surrounding her were also verbally abusing the Pakistani cricketers standing near the boundary.

So sexism, racism and homophobia, all in one match. Classy.

Pressure then, of course, seems to always get sheeted the way of the sports bodies themselves to police this kind of behaviour. Good luck to them with that. They shouldn't have to.

Like most things, it would be good if we could start with our own backyard and what's happening in our homes and local clubs. Start at the coal face.

I spoke to a social worker in Kaitaia yesterday who works with families in poverty in the Far North. It was distressing to hear what he's dealing with day in day out.

I asked him about what he made of the Government's new child poverty reduction measures. He said he didn't understand it, thought it was fiscally impossible to fix and that actually it wasn't just a government problem, it was everybody's problem.

And the same applies here. Behaviour at sports grounds is everybody's problem.

We need to try to nip vulgar behaviour and bad attitudes in the bud at school-age level, before we churn out kids who become adults who think it's OK to hurl abuse at people.
But that means we also have to role model it.

Too often I've been on the sideline at my kids' sport games and seen the most foul-mouthed rants and off-the-chain behaviour from parents. Parents who seem to think that a casual Saturday morning soccer match is a world cup final. Parents who think their little Timmie is the next Ronaldo. Newsflash – he isn't.

I remember seeing a sign on the field at one of my son's sporting fixtures, which said, "A reminder to parents, this is a game. The coach is a volunteer. The umpires are human, these are kids, sport is meant to be fun." Never a truer word said.

If we as parents can't remember that, then what hope do we have of our kids not growing up to become one of the boorish dickheads abusing people in the stands at cricket matches.

So instead of just signing the forms and permission slips, let's have a chat about why they're playing it (fun) and what is deemed acceptable behaviour.

And then let's model it on the sideline, not just for our kids' benefit, but for every other sports fan who may sit next to them in a few years' time.