Support for Parents of Youth Athletes
Freeing the Parent’s Mind – The Route to Harmony at Home!
How does this conversation help parents to effectively support their child to progress and learn?
It’s an incredible feeling to watch our kids excel at something, like a sport. We want them to feel the confidence and fulfilment of reaching their own potential. Yet when they face the inevitable losses, setbacks, or performance slumps, their reactions can range from getting discouraged, withdrawn, or apathetic, to self-loathing, wanting to give up the sport, or wanting to give up on life.
For parents, it can be excruciating to watch, and they often have no idea how to support them. The key for parents is to keep their own composure lead with strength, rather than reacting with their own frustration, intensity, or the urge to be controlling.
Parents that can find their own grace and resilience when their kids struggle tend to raise kids that learn to find resilience for themselves. The result is that over time, the ups and downs of sports take less of a toll on them and allow for their spark and motivation to come back.
Why would parents want to talk about this area of parenting?
We’ve found that when parents spend less time in frustration, intensity, and upset within themselves in the face of their kids’ struggles and challenges, their kids tend to recover their own equilibrium faster. Kids feed off the parents’ energy, and as parents wake up to that fact, the entire household doesn’t spiral down every time their kid loses a big game.
The benefit for parents is that they become less negatively affected by their kids’ ups and downs, they have a calmer household, and most importantly, they’re ultimately bringing out more resilience in their kids to take with them into the rest of life.