How Do You Respond To Your Athlete When Things Aren’t Going Well?
Intensive Parenting…
How Do You Respond To Your Athlete When Things Aren’t Going Well? Challenging and exhilarating moments around youth sports can happen at any moment. That is the beauty of sports. It’s hard to predict and hard to prepare for what can happen next. Our child could score the winning basket or turn the ball over to lose the game. They can overwhelm us with pride as we watch them help a fallen opponent up off the floor or exasperate us by arguing a call with a referee, as in how Caitlin Clark’s dad felt during March Madness. That’s what makes it so challenging as parents. There’s almost nothing we can control about youth sports. And in today’s culture of ‘intensive parenting,’ a term coined from the book Never Enough by Jennifer Breheny Wallace, our highly involved parenting style can make youth sports, shall we say…difficult.
An Open Letter to The Parents of Kids Who Get A Lot of Playing Time
You Just Know…
The unexpected twists and turns don’t just come during the games. They can happen anytime and anywhere. The text comes in, they climb into the car or they walk through the front door. You just know. There is news. Your parent sensor is activated. A change in their tone of voice, their body language, or the words they begin to type, or the bubble that hovers as they struggle to find the words. Deep breath, gulp. It’s coming.
Something bad happened at practice.
STOP
This is the very moment that matters.
The Next Steps Are Critical
What you do next will affect your child’s growth, confidence, and your relationship with them. We will get this wrong often, but each time we don’t respond appropriately, we push them away from us and one step closer to losing the joy and love of their sport. I know this sounds dramatic, but it’s essential to figure out the correct response, and it’s hard. As Wallace shares in ‘Never Enough’, our brains are wired to respond to positive ‘social status’ events: starting, making a good play, another parent telling you how helpful your child was at their house, likes on a social media post, good grades, making the winning basket, getting a role in the play. Positive feedback about our kids of any kind, even small ones – rewards us biologically with a cocktail of dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins. Conversely, when we are in a state of ‘status descent’: our kids are pulled from the lineup, yelled at, benched, bad grades, interception, not asked to a school dance, and fights with friends – we experience anxiety and distress. Our brain punishes us by releasing painful neurochemicals like Cortisol. This can cause us to do or say things not in our best interest or that of our kids. Anything from screaming at a referee, confronting another parent, sending a scathing email to a coach, or simply responding poorly to your child when they get in your car after the game.
The Text Came In Right After Practice
I was recently tested. It was a text. It came in at the end of a long day; I was tired, cranky, and at the grocery store. Typically, I don’t get a text right after practice ends, so I knew something was up as soon as I saw it pop up. “I’m not going to be playing much tomorrow {game day}”. This is the kind of news that activates our lower brain; our hearts start to beat fast, the cortisol gets released, our stress levels rise, and we want to take immediate action. This often leads to the blame game, and in the past, I would have blurted something out that I later regretted. We want to have an immediate answer or scapegoat. We want to blame them, their coach or any circumstance just to relieve the anxiety we are feeling. “See, I told you, you should have x, y, z….” {insert here any additional training or work they could have been putting in on their own}, or blaming a sleepover that affected their play. Or, we ask a million questions that seem leading as we try to figure out who to blame. What happened in practice? Were you goofing off? Who is in the starting lineup? Did you say something to the coach? Why is the coach mad at you?
Even though we may not outwardly say, “You have failed us in some way. I am disappointed in you,” this is the message we are sending. We struggle to hide our concern and fear, or worse, disappointment and anger, from our children, who are already feeling bad, sad, or even ashamed. These responses only heighten their feelings of insecurity and self-doubt. Our overreactions can also keep them from confiding in or connecting with us. They pull away when they need us most.
But there is a response that can be helpful, hold them accountable, and support them instead of adding to the negative feelings they are already experiencing.
How We Can Help
Instead of blaming them and blasting them with questions. We need to create space – even a few seconds, before responding. Stay on their side, but not allow them to get into a victim mentality. Then, move the conversation forward instead of living with them inside of the anger and the disappointment.
This would have gone very differently a few years ago, but here is how that recent difficult youth sports moment played out over text:
Her: I’m not playing much tomorrow
Me: Why do you think that
Her: I didn’t play one time today with the starters
Me: Ok
Her: I’m so frustrated
Me: I hear you, but maybe it’s not what it seems.
Her: So annoying
Me: I’m sure Coach has a plan, it doesn’t mean you won’t get in the game
Her: Yes it does
Me: Coach gave you feedback after last game that you needed to work on something, did you ever follow up on that
Her: Bruh. No. I understood what she meant, there was nothing to follow up on
Me: We lost our last two games. She is trying new things. She needed to figure something out, and this is the move she’s made. Focus on what you can control and how you can help the team.
Her: Ok
Me: What can you do
Her: Gonna be a good teammate. Maybe I can come in before practice tomorrow and work on some of the stuff coach mentioned
Me: I love that
Her: Ok
Me: I love you. Try not to feel down. It happens to everyone. Just be ready for your opportunity when it comes again
Her: Ok. I love you
What You Can Do To Get It Right
It took years of practice, and I still sometimes have a knee-jerk reaction to difficult situations. But when I do, I quickly apologize and share with my kids what I’m feeling or why I may have responded like I did. Sometimes, we don’t know why or understand it yet, and that’s ok, too, so long as you own the feelings and don’t put them back on your kids as their shortcomings.
The next time you find yourself in one of these situations, here are some basic strategies that can help. Most importantly, take a deep breath, create a little space, and then listen without judgment.
- Don’t take a side
- Don’t blame them, the coach, another player, or anyone else.
- Listen more than talk. Ask open-ended questions.
- Be supportive. Only focus on process/growth mindset feedback if any.
- Call them up instead of calling them out (Calling Up by JP Nerbun)
- Be on their side by being kind, loving, and patient.
- Guide any blame they voice back to questions that involve their own accountability.
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