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What you do is spend quite a few minutes before the game alone in the car remembering your very first ever officiating experience. If you were an adult at that time, you think back to the games you've worked with a very,very new partner who was a teenager. Don't tell me you've never worked those before. Remember the uncertainty, the self-consciousness, the lack of conviction and understanding. Feel again the confusion about the various interpretations of rules that you'd heard from various sources.
Then you remember what people said to you that was encouraging, helpful or uplifitng in those situations.
Those are the only words you're allowed to say to this guy, or to anyone else about this guy.
If you've really never felt the kinds of insecurity this fellow is working through, you go to him and offer to be his partner for a couple of his games that your son won't be playing in. But then when you're back to being a parent, nothing but encouragement and praise.
In the lower levels of play, there's no acceptable reason to critique the refs, unless you're their direct supervisor.
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