Numero Seis – WHOSE GOAL IS IT?

A very important question! Why is he/she participating in the sport? Are they doing it because they want to, for them, or because of YOU. When they have problems in their sport do you talk about them as “our” problems, “we are not performing well”, “we’re having trouble with our fitness” , 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 competing to please you or for your glory they are in it for the wrong reasons!

Further, if they stay involved for you, ultimately everyone will lose. 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 them with your expectations or by using guilt or bribery to keep them involved. If they have their own reasons and own goals for participating, they will be far more motivated to excel and therefore far more successful.

Seven – YOUR CHILD IS NOT HIS PERFORMANCE-LOVE HIM/HER UNCONDITIONALLY

Do not equate your child’s self-worth and lovability with his performance. The most tragic and damaging mistake reported that parents continually make is punishing a child for a bad performance by withdrawing emotionally from them. A child loses a game, misses a tackle and 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 1988 Olympics, when Greg Louganis needed and got a perfect 10 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-Sports player

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 they have 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!

STEP NINE- 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”.

STEP ELEVEN – STRESS PROCESS, 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 them focus on the task at hand. Supportive parents de-emphasise 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.

Thirteen – TEACH YOUR CHILD TO HAVE A PERSPECTIVE ON THE SPORTS EXPERIENCE

The sports media would like you to believe that sports and winning/losing is 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 kids sports and young sports players often come away from competition with a distorted 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. Scoring a hatrick and losing is a time for celebration, not depression. Similarly, losing the league does not mean that the sun will not rise tomorrow.

Sports Psychology tips taken from Dr. Goldbergs Excerpts – Thank you Dr.G