If you want your child to come out of his youth sports experience a winner, (feeling good about himself and having a healthy attitude towards sports) then he needs your help! You are a vital and important part of the coach-athlete-parent team. If you do your job correctly and play YOUR position well, then your child will learn the sport faster, perform better, really have fun and have his self-esteem enhanced as a result. His sport experience will serve as a positive model for him to follow as he approaches other challenges and obstacles throughout life. If you "drop the ball" or run the wrong way with it, your child will stop learning, experience performance difficulties and blocks, and begin to really hate the sport. And that's the GOOD news! Further, your relationship with him will probably suffer significantly. As a result, he will come out of this experience burdened with feelings of failure, inadequacy and low self-esteem, feelings that will general�ize to other areas in his life. Your child and his coach need you ON the team. They can't win without YOU! The following are a list of useful facts, guidelines and strategies for you to use to make you more skilled in the youth sport game. Remember, no wins unless everyone wins. We need you on the team!
1. When defined the RIGHT way, competition in youth sports is both good and healthy and teaches children a variety of important life skills. The word "compete" comes from the Latin words 'com" and "petere" which mean together and seeking respectively. The true definition of competition is a seeking TOGETHER where your opponent is your partner, NOT the enemy! The better he performs, the more chance you have of having a peak performance. Sport is about learning to deal with challenges and ob�stacles. Without a worthy opponent, without any challenges sport is not so much fun. The more the challenge the better the opportunity you have to go beyond your limits. World records are consistently broken and set at the Olympics because the best athletes in the world are "seeking together", challenging each other to enhanced performance. Your child should NEVER be taught to view his opponent as the "bad guy", the enemy or someone to be hated and "destroyed". Do NOT model this attitude!! Instead, talk to and make friends with parents of your child's opponent. Root for great performances, good plays, NOT just for the winner!
2. ENCOURAGE YOUR CHILD TO COMPETE AGAINST
HIMSELF. The ultimate goal of the sport experience
is to challenge oneself and continually improve.
Unfortunately, judging improvement by winning and
losing is both an unfair and inaccurate measure.
Winning in sports is about doing the best YOU can
do, SEPARATE from the outcome or the play of your
opponent. Children should be encouraged to compete
against their own potential, i.e. Peter and Patty
Potential. That is, the boys should focus on beating
"Peter,� competing against themselves while the
girls challenge "Patty.� When your child has this
focus and plays to better himself instead of beating
someone else, he will be more relaxed, have more fun
and therefore perform better.
3. DO NOT DEFINE SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN TERMS OF
WINNING AND LOSING. As a corollary to #2, one of the
main purposes of the youth sports experience is
skill acquisition and mastery. When a child performs
to his potential and loses it is criminal to focus
on the outcome and become critical. If a child plays
his very best and loses, you need to help him feel
like a winner! Similarly, when a child or team
performs far below their potential but wins, this is
NOT cause to feel like a winner. Help your child
make this important separation between success and
failure and winning and losing. Remember, if you
define success and failure in terms of winning and
losing, you're playing a losing game with your
child!
4. BE SUPPORTIVE, DO NOT COACH! Your role on the parent-coach-athlete team is as a Support player with a capital S!! You need to be your child's best fan. UNCONDITIONALLY!!! Leave the coaching and instruction to the coach. Provide encouragement, support, empathy, transportation, money, help with fund-raisers, etc., BUT...DO NOT COACH! Most parents that get into trouble with their chil�dren do so because they forget the important position that they play. Coaching interferes with your role as supporter and fan. The last thing your child needs and wants to hear from you after a disap�pointing performance or loss is what they did technically or strategically wrong. Keep your role as a parent on the team separate from that as coach, and if, by necessity you actually get stuck in the almost no-win position of having to coach your child, try to maintain this separation of roles, ie. on the deck, field or court say, "'Now I'm talking to you as a coach", at home say, "'Now I'm talking to you as a parent". Don't parent when you coach and don't coach at home when you're supposed to be parenting.
5. HELP MAKE THE SPORT FUN FOR YOUR CHILD. It's a time proven principle of peak performance that the more fun an athlete is having, the more he will learn and the better he will per�form. Fun MUST be present for peak performance to happen at EVERY level of sports from youth to world class competitor! When a child stops having fun and begins to dread practice or competition, it's time for you as a parent to become concerned! When the sport or game becomes too serious, athletes have a ten-dency to burn out and become susceptible to repetitive performance problems. An easy rule of thumb: IF YOUR CHILD IS NOT ENJOYING WHAT HE ARE DOING NOR LOVING THE HECK OUT OF IT, INVESTIGATE!! What is going on that's preventing him from having fun? Is it the coaching? The pressure? Is it YOU??! Keep in mind that being in a highly competitive program does NOT mean that there is no room for fun. The child that continues to play long after the fun is gone will soon become a drop out statistic.
6. WHOSE GOAL IS IT? #5 leads us to a very important question! Why is your child participating in the sport? Is she doing it because she wants to, for herself, or because of you. When an athlete has problems in her sport do you talk about them as "our" problems, "our jump isn't high enough", "we're having trouble with our flip turn,� etc. Are they playing because they don't want to disappoint you, because they know how important the sport is to you? Are they playing for rewards and "bonuses" that you give out? Are their goals and aspirations YOURS or theirs? How invested are you in their success and failure? If they are com�peting to please you or for your vicarious glory they are in it for the wrong reasons! Further, if they stay involved for you, ultimately everyone loses. It is quite normal and healthy to want your child to excel and be as successful as possible. BUT, you cannot make this happen by pressuring her with your expectations or by using guilt or bribery to keep her involved. If they have their own reasons and own goals for partici�pating, they will be FAR more motivated to excel and therefore far more successful.
7. YOUR CHILD IS NOT HIS PERFORMANCE. LOVE HIM
UNCONDITONALLY. Do NOT equate your child's
self-worth and lovability with his performance. The
MOST tragic and damaging mistake I see parents
continually make is punishing a child for a bad
performance by withdrawing emotionally from him. A
child loses a race, strikes out or misses an easy
shot on goal and the parent responds with disgust,
anger and withdrawal of love and approval. CAUTION:
Only use this strategy if you want to damage your
child emotionally and ruin your relationship with
him. In the 88 Olympics, when Greg Louganis needed
and got a perfect l0 on his last dive to overtake
the Chinese diver for the gold medal, his last
thought before he went was, "'If I don't make it, my
mother will still love me".
8. REMEMBER THE IMPORTANCE OF SELF-ESTEEM IN ALL OF
YOUR INTERACTIONS WITH YOUR CHILD-ATHLETE. Athletes
of all ages and levels perform in DIRECT
relationship to how they feel about themselves. When
your child is in an athletic environment that boosts
his self-esteem, he will learn faster, enjoy himself
more and perform better under competitive pressure.
One thing we all want as children and NEVER stop
wanting is to be loved and accepted, and to have our
parents feel good about what we do. This is how
self-esteem gets established. When your interactions
with your child make him feel good about himself, he
will, in turn, learn to treat himself this very same
way. This does NOT mean that you have to
incongruently compliment your child for a great
effort after he has just performed miserably. In
this situation being empathic and sensitive to his
feelings is what's called for. Self-esteem makes the
world go round. Make your child feel good about
himself and you've given him a gift that lasts a
lifetime. Do NOT interact with your child in a way
that assaults his self-esteem by degrading,
embarrassing or humiliating him. If you continually
put your child down or minimize his accomplishments
not only will he learn to do this to himself
throughout his life, but he will also repeat YOUR
mistake with HIS children!
9. GIVE YOUR CHILD THE GIFT OF FAILURE. If you
really want your child to be as happy and as
successful as possible in everything that he does,
teach him how to fail! The most successful people in
and out of sports do two things differently than
everyone else. FIRST, they are more willing to take
risks and therefore fail more frequently. SECOND,
they use their failures in a positive way as a
source of motivation and feedback to improve. Our
society is generally negative and teaches us that
failure is bad, a cause for humiliation and
embarrassment and something to be avoided at all
costs. Fear of failure or humiliation causes one to
be tentative and non-active. In fact, most
performance blocks and poor performances are a
direct result of the athlete being preoccupied with
failing or messing up. You can't learn to walk
without falling enough times. Each time that you
fall your body gets valuable information on how to
do it better. You can't be successful or have peak
performances if you are concerned with losing or
failing. Teach your child how to view setbacks,
mistakes and risk-taking positively and you'll have
given him the key to a lifetime of success. Failure
is the PERFECT stepping stone to success.
10. CHALLENGE-DON'T THREATEN. Many parents directly
or indirectly use guilt and threats as a way to
"motivate" their child to perform better.
Performance studies clearly indicate that while
threats may provide short term results, the long
term costs in terms of psychological health and
performance are devastating. Using fear as a
motivator is probably one of the worst dynamics you
could set up with your child. Threats take the fun
out of performance and directly lead to your child
performing terribly. IMPLICIT in a threat, (do this
or else!) is your OWN anxiety that you do not
believe the child is capable. Communicating this
lack of belief, even indirectly is further
devastating to the child's performance. A challenge
does not entail loss or negative consequences should
the athlete fail. Further, implicit in a challenge
is the empowering belief, �I think that you can do
it".
11. STRESS PROCESS (skill acquisition, mastery and
having fun), NOT OUTCOME. When athletes choke under
pressure and perform far below their potential, a
very common cause of this is a focus on the outcome
of the performance, i.e. win/lose, instead of the
process. In any peak performance, the athlete is
totally oblivious to the outcome and instead is
completely absorbed in the here and now of the
actual performance. An outcome focus will almost
always distract and tighten up the athlete insuring
a bad performance. Furthermore focusing on the
outcome, which is completely out of the athlete's
control will raise his anxiety to a performance
inhibiting level. So IF you TRULY want your child to
win, help get his focus AWAY from how important the
contest is and have him focus on the task at hand.
Supportive parents de-emphasize winning and instead
stress learning the skills and playing the game.
12. AVOID COMPARISONS AND RESPECT DEVELOPMENTAL
DIFFERENCES. Supportive parents do not use other
athletes that their child competes against to
compare and thus evaluate their child's progress.
Comparisons are useless, inaccurate and destructive.
Each child matures differently and the process of
comparison ignores significant distorting effects of
developmental differences. For example, two 12 year
old boys may only have their age in common! One may
physically have the build and perform like a 16 year
old while the other, a late developer, may have the
physical size and attribute of a 9 year old.
Performance comparisons can prematurely turn off
otherwise talented athletes on their sport. The only
value of comparisons is in teaching. If one child
demonstrates proper technique, that child can be
used comparatively as a model ONLY! For your child
to do his very best he needs to learn to stay within
himself. Worrying about how another athlete is doing
interferes with him doing this.
13. TEACH YOUR CHILD TO HAVE A PERSPECTIVE ON THE
SPORTS EXPERIENCE. The sports media in this country
would like you to believe that sports and
winning/losing are larger than life. The fact that
it is just a game frequently gets lost in
translation. This lack of perspective frequently
trickles down to the youth sport level and young
athletes often come away from competition with a
dis�torted view of themselves and how they
performed. Parents need to help their children
develop realistic expectations about themselves,
their abilities and how they played, without robbing
the child of his dreams. Swimming a lifetime best
time and coming in dead last is a cause for
celebration, not depression. Similarly, losing the
conference championships does not mean that the sun
will not rise tomorrow.
Article Provided by USA Swimming