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"Every coach wishes he had a team full of kids as good as their parents thought they were." - the coach
"The coach doesn't know what he's doing. I have so many better ideas." - the parent
"I just want to have fun." - the kid
The primary method to prevent many coach-parent issues during a season is conducting an effective preseason parents meeting.
Follow this link for a great outline for the meeting from NFHS:
Preseason Meeting Handbook
As a general concept, try to work with the parents to form a close community around the team. Look at it as "working with" parents, as opposed to "dealing" with parents.
Understand the parents only want the best for their children and expect for their view of the athlete to be skewed. You never know what type of bad experience they had with coaches in the past and you're a random coach that's now taking control of their son or daughter. Being a sports parent is a tough job - for educational resources for parents, follow this link.
For the most part, the parents will work with the coach and will support him or her. The coach can help this along by maintaining a very open line of communication with the parents. Most often, the problem arises when a line of communication is broken or ineffective.
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