What Your Child Athlete Needs You to Know About Youth Sports

The weather is shifting, and while some things are slowing down–Soccer Skills Academy is ramping up. Last weekend the emotions ran high. Looking around the field, it was easy to see and hear the mixture of joy, tears, and a general tone of intensity.

Youth sports is a wonderful opportunity and one we get to experience with our children for a limited amount of time. Not only do we get to gather as a community around soccer, we get to see the physical and emotional health of our children blossom as they practice skills necessary for life.

Kids get to practice overcoming obstacles and adversity, identifying personal gifts and limitations, celebrating growth and gains, learning to cooperate with many different kinds of people, honing technical skills and dealing with disappointment. Ideally, sports teach camaraderie and allow kids to build their self-esteem. 

Coaches and parents help children make meaning of their experiences. With a broad range of skills and personalities in our soccer community, it’s easy for adults to overfocus on performance. Who is “good” at soccer? Who is “not good?” And unfortunately, because this is how our society tends to work–highly competitively, our children are often thinking this way too.

Sports are emotional. And it’s important to remember the weight of our words, our tone, and our behavior before, during and after games. Our children are calculating every missed opportunity to pass, score, defend, cross, etc. They know when they have “missed it,” and some are hard on themselves. On the other side, children who rarely miss may overinflate the importance of any slight error. It’s easy for sports to become an aspect of a person’s identity, rather than a fun activity.

Our children naturally absorb every clue from us about who they are and how they are seen by the most important people in their lives. We have the opportunity to affirm that yes, they “missed it,” and emphasize their own internal sense of “not good,” or we can focus with absolute determination on any aspect of their “goodness,” while acknowledging that missing is normal, for everyone. 

And if it is a day for tears, and you are a naturally comforting parent–comfort them. Not all of us are. In that case, which is very normal, even a moment sitting calmly together before gently acknowledging how hard that must have been can go a long way. Some kids need to release many different emotions about the experience before they can connect back in at all. It’s ok to give them space. We can practice patience, watching for their signs of readiness to connect.

Early each season, it’s a good time for parents to check in with ourselves–about our own experiences with sports. As our children grow up; we, ourselves, are still learning, changing and growing. Considering the following questions can help us remove unnecessary pressure from our children. Taking time to prepare our mindset might help minimize both immediate and long term consequences like burnout, impaired self esteem, and a number of mental health conditions linked to athletics, even at the professional level.

YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE WITH SPORTS:  If you participated in sports, how was that experience for you? Were you well-supported to grow in your sport? Or were you exposed to stressful conditions that interfered? Do you miss your sport? What were your biggest gains and regrets? How were your relationships with any coaches you had?

EXPECTATIONS:  What are your child’s goals in their sport? What are your goals and expectations for your child? Do these match? And when you look at them, can you honestly say they are developmentally realistic for your child’s age and stage of growth? Have you discussed your expectations with your child’s coaching staff so all are on the same page?

IDENTITY:  Have you caught yourself hoping for (or demanding) precise execution of every skill? Do you find yourself harboring pride over your child’s natural athletic gifts, hoping to have the star player? Let me clarify–I’m not talking about the pride and satisfaction any parent might have for our children, as we watch them experience success and joy in life. It’s the kind of pride that merges with our sense of self. Have you somehow found your child’s performance to be a reflection of who you are? 

On the other side, have you felt embarrassment over your child’s skillset “not coming together” yet? It’s easy to slip into these states without even knowing it has happened. And when our children’s abilities become a part of who we are, we can get pulled into a number of actions that might interfere with our child’s experience of a sport. Try to catch these moments when they come up, and while there’s nothing abnormal about them, there’s also nothing wrong with letting go and separating our sense of self from our child’s performance.

EMOTIONS:  How do you deal with disappointment or other difficult emotions? How does your child? Can you make space for both of your processes after difficult games, or when your child has had an “off day”?

CONCLUSION:

“Experts say the most important thing parents can do is let the coaches, coach” (Anagnost-Repke, A. (2023). We Need to Stop Pressuring Kids to Be the Best at Their Sport. https://www.parents.com/fun/sports/we-need-to-stop-pressuring-kids-to-be-the-best-at-their-sport/)

And if there is something you’re not sure about, communicate directly with the coaching staff after you’ve had some time to think it through. 

It’s important to abstain from picking the game apart, or a child’s performance, after it’s over. One thing that can help is to consistently, earnestly share how much fun you had watching them play and learn their sport.

If they are open to talking, remember, keep it brief and positive:  What worked? Where did they shine? What do they want to work on? It can also sound like:

1) How was that game for you?

2) Is there anything you want to share about it?

3) Is there anything you want help working on before the next game?

Letting your child share as much or little as they want to, without pushing, helps a child feel their boundaries are respected. Through sports we can learn so much about our children and ourselves. Please know, our coaches and staff are here to support you and your children throughout the season.

-Tanya Beard, retired child and family psychiatric nurse practitioner and mom of a Soccer Skills Academy athlete