Going to a high school soccer game with Jay Goldstein is like having lawn seats at a concert. Stuck on the grass at Merriweather Post Pavilion or Nissan Pavilion, you're reduced to watching people watch a concert. With Goldstein, you're watching -- and listening to -- people watch a soccer game.

But that's exactly why Varsity asked Goldstein if we could take in a game together. A 44-year-old doctoral student in sports psychology at the University of Maryland, Goldstein had a study published this year in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology about parental behavior at youth soccer games.

We chose a boy-girl doubleheader, Bethesda-Chevy Chase at Einstein on Oct. 6. "What should we expect?" Varsity wondered on the short walk from the parking lot to the Einstein field.

"Hopefully, a lot of positive cheers supporting both teams, which would probably be the case with most parents," replied Goldstein, who coaches a youth team and has a 4-year-old daughter who is starting to kick the sport around a little. "I do expect to hear the occasional blind referee calls every now and again. And hopefully not too much directed at their own children. With expectations of high school ball and the potential of scholarships . . . you never know what it will bring."

During the 2004 spring season, Goldstein surveyed 340 parents of 8- to 15-year-old youth league soccer players of various skill levels in the Washington area. He found that 52.9 percent of parents reported experiencing anger during a match, mostly toward a referee or their child's own team. Discourteous opponents, hostile remarks or gestures, coaches and illegal play were among other irritants.

Of the parents who reported feeling angry, 38.8 percent vented, with reactions ranging from muttering comments to encouraging other parents to confront other spectators (one case).

Goldstein suspects the actual percentages are even higher, because respondents, particularly the ones he dubs THOSE (Tempestuous, Harried, Overwrought, Self-absorbed and Emotional) parents, tend to underreport negative behavior.

He also found that parents who were more ego-defensive or controlling -- who saw their children as an extension of themselves and tended to take things personally -- were more inclined to get angry than parents with higher self-esteem who were not as affected by forces out of their control.

He linked "sideline rage" and road rage because, as his study concludes, "in both settings, one's ego is easily threatened . . . [and] no spectator at a sporting event is more highly identified with a team than a parent watching his or her own child play."

Traffic woes and youth soccer. How much more Washington can you get (without involving the federal government or the Redskins)?

Goldstein, a Baltimore native, used to schedule youth soccer tournaments for a living, some with as many as 400 teams. That repeated exposure piqued his interest in parental behavior. Then one incident brought it to a head:

He had organized a tournament in Prince William County. During a match, one boy tackled another, and their tangled bodies rolled out of bounds, into the mother of the boy who had been fouled. The mom struck the aggressor in the chest. After seeing a parent hit an opposing player at a youth soccer game, Jay Goldstein researched what went into "sideline rage."  After apologizing to the player, she was escorted from the facility. On the way out, she explained to tournament organizers that her dog had been euthanized the day before and that she was not herself emotionally.

"At that point, that kind of started these wheels turning," Goldstein said, "as to what takes a normal, sane person that is a very honest and very polished professional, and in any given situation the stressors become so much you just lose it. Parents have the best of intent. They want to be very positive and encouraging. Somewhere, something goes wrong, and they just lose that perspective."

Consider, too, Goldstein said, "the mentality of the 12th man" that trickles down from the college and professional levels in which spectators are supposed to be lustily engaged in cheering their boys or girls on to victory.

That might be fine for FedEx Field. But not the Germantown SoccerPlex. At many youth soccer facilities, there are no bleachers, so parents sit or stand along a sideline, a lot closer to the action than at high school matches that take place on football fields with bleachers.

Back to the B-CC-Einstein soccer games. Varsity was half-heartened and half-disappointed to witness no repugnant parental behavior among the modest smattering of parents. There was a "Get in her face!" goading from a father and your garden-variety offerings of "What was that?" "Sir, he hit him after the play!" "You honestly didn't see that?" "Card him!" and "That's malicious!"

Goldstein could have done without all that, but he liked a lot of what he heard and saw. Parents were cheering positively for their sons and daughters, but also for their teams in general and not against the opposing team. Parents from both teams clapped when an injured Einstein player was helped off. And parents were chatting about things other than the match, which hinted that they kept soccer in some sort of perspective and treated the game as a community activity.

To help combat disruptive parents, some youth soccer organizations, including the Washington Area Girls Soccer League and the National Capital Soccer League, are using team sideline liaisons to police and, if necessary, discourage parents' verbal aggression.

Those monitors are often armed -- with lollipops. They are the so-called Dum Dum Brigade.

If a parent is sucking on candy, he or she is less able to yell, and the sweet serves as a reminder that the game is about the kids playing it, not the adults watching it. It has the same physiological effect as deep breathing, Goldstein said.

Gee, remember the good old days, when it was just orange slices for the kids? Now it's suckers for the adults. Varsity's lollipop doctrine: Issue lemon (yellow cards) for minor infractions and cherry (red cards) for major ones. The red tongues and ruby lips will serve as a scarlet letter of sorts.

"So you get a bag of the Dum Dums, and if by midseason you're out of 'em, there's a problem," Goldstein said with a laugh. "If there's a person who has three or four of 'em, that could be an issue. Maybe they need the [big] colored ones with the swirls."