October 15th, 2008
Do you feel frustrated when your young athletes seem to lack motivation and direction? Would helping sports kids set goals be helpful?
If so, you’re not alone. We often hear from sports parents and coaches who want to better understand how to help motivate their young athletes to work harder. They’re struggling with that very difficult balancing act: Trying to motivate without pressuring.
Here’s what one sports parent wonders about how he can help his daughter achieve her goals:
“I have a daughter who wants to play for UCLA and the US Olympic softball teams. She has great drive and desire, but I don’t think she realizes how hard she needs to work to achieve her goals. How can I help her achieve her goals?”
Another parent wants to help motivate her child without nagging her:
“How do you motivate a very talented player to consistently reach her highest potential? And how can I help my athlete be self-motivated to improve instead of being reminded/nagged all the time?”
When parents come to us with these questions, they often confuse pressuring their kids with helping them set goals. Are you one of these parents or coaches? It’s likely you are–no matter how
well-meaning your intentions are. It’s also likely that you feel frustrated and confused.
At one point is setting goals simply another way to pressure young athletes?
The answer is not obvious.
We’re here to tell you that helping kids set goals is NOT pressuring them—but it’s critical for you to follow our tried-and-true guidelines.
We just completed a new Kids’ Sports Psychology e-book, “Drive For Success: How Young Athletes Can Achieve Their Goals” written specifically for kids.
In order to reach for their dreams, kids do indeed need to set goals.
The process can improve their motivation, focus and dedication to their sport. Goals help athletes identify their weaknesses and structure practices so they’re as helpful as possible.
Your young athletes should set their own goals. You certainly can help them set their goals, but they should be their own goals, not yours. When kids set their own goals, they are more likely to take ownership in them and stick to them.
Setting goals, however, is tricky. Kids need both short and long-term goals. They have to be very careful about how they try to achieve them.
And you have to be careful as sports parents and coaches about how you try to help them achieve their goals. Yes, goals can become pressure—too much pressure.
Our newest e-book, “Drive For Success: How Young Athletes Can Achieve Their Goals” tells sports kids the secrets to setting goals in ways that improve their success and help them feel more
confident in sports.
If you join Kids Sports Psychology, you’ll have access to other mental training e-books to improve kids’ confidence and success in sports including:
- Focus to the Max! How to Focus in Ways that Get You “In the
Zone” & Improve Your Performance
- How Young Athletes Can Think and Perform Like Pros by Using
“Get Ready” Routines
- Mental Imagery: Using Your Imagination In Your
“Get Ready” Routines
- 10 Ways of Thinking That Hurt Kids Confidence
- Six Steps for Helping You Kick Fear of Failure and
Perfectionism: A Workbook for Sport Kids
- Teaching Athletes to Get in the Flow of Sports
- 12 Pregame Tips to Trust What You’ve Learned in
Practice
You can read more about our e-books written specifically for young athletes by visiting this link:
Sports Psychology Ebooks For Children in Sports
Thanks,
Dr. Patrick Cohn & Lisa Cohn
p.s. If you’re already an exclusive member of Kids’ Sports Psychology, you can login and download your new e-book here:
Drive For Success: How Young Athletes Can Achieve Their Goals
Tags: Pressure and kids in sports, sports psychology for children, youth sports and psychology
Posted in goals for kids in sports, pressure from parents, pressure in sports, pushy sports parents, youth sports psychology | No Comments »
October 15th, 2008
Here at the Ultimate Sports Parent and Kids’ Sports Psychology, we receive many letters from parents who are confused about how much they should pressure their kids.
In fact, it’s not an overstatement to say they agonize about this topic…Agonize, you might ask. Yes. There’s lots to agonize about when it comes to pressuring your kids in youth sports.
Here’s what parents ask:
- Should I make my child go to practice when he doesn’t want to?
- Should I insist that my 9-year-old daughter try playing a sport?
- I can see many ways my daughter’s basketball could improve.
- Should I tell her my ideas after a game? Or would this feel like pressure?
- I often tell my son to score 15 points before a game. My hope is to get him psyched, but lately I’m not so sure I’m helping. What do you suggest?
- My kids got mad at me yesterday for shouting positive things from the sidelines. I thought I was supporting them, but now I find out they think I’m pushing them too hard. How should I behave?
To help answer some of these questions, we recently checked in with Ryan and John, 20-year-old Division 1 wrestlers, about how their parents raised them.
Ryan and John discussed how parents can support their kids, based on their own experiences as wrestlers:
Understand the difference between support and pressure. Support means attending matches, cheering kids on and videotaping–if kids ask.
Don’t get too technical or over-coach your sports kids. Leave that up to the coaches.
Don’t push young athletes to enroll in sports. It should be their decision.
Help out the coach in any way you can. For example, if he or she needs someone to keep score, ask to help.
Sports parents, you have every reason to agonize about your effect on your child’s sports experience. How you behave is critically important to helping your young athletes feel confident and happy.
Right now, you can find ways to end your confusion. And take the wrestlers’ suggestions one step further. You can learn much more: how to positively motivate your young athletes and how to communicate with them and their coaches.
You can listen to audios about how to talk to young athletes so they’ll listen to you, as well as other audios from sports experts.
And that’s not all, visit Kids Sports Psychology and you can immediately download many sports psychology e-books for your kids, videos about perfectionism and other topics, plus sports psychology articles. And a bunch of other programs!
Yes, you have good reason to agonize. But you also have a way of ending your agony and confusion. Visit Kids’ Sports Psychology today to learn how to improve confidence and success in young athletes:
Kids Sport Psychology Free Tour
Thanks,
Dr. Patrick Cohn & Lisa Cohn
p.s. Parents complain to us that they don’t know how to support their kids’ mental game. We’ve addressed this problem by making mental training easy to learn and understand for kids. See how today:
Kids Sports Psychology Free Tour
p.p.s. New e-book coming soon for members: Goal Setting for Young Athlete
Posted in pressure from parents, youth sports psychology | 1 Comment »
September 22nd, 2008
What are the extra and all-important benefits of sports for kids? That’s a question Dr. Steve Horan, an expert in community health improvement, asked himself after many years of being a coach and sports parent.
”As you look at the numbers, so many kids drop out at age 13 and 14 for many different reasons,” he says. “So I began to ask myself, ‘What value can we deliver through youth sports above and beyond the value that is delivered to the excellent athlete?’”
He realized that sports can help kids develop important traits and skills that transfer to other parts of life, he told us in a recent interview…
Through sports, young athletes can value wellness, learn how to hold onto their ethics in a competitive environment, develop good relationships with parents and coaches, become more self-directed, learn how to be team players, and learn how to be leaders, he says.
However, he says, young athletes don’t develop these social and emotional assets without some help from parents and coaches.
“Parents and coaches have to be very vigilant to ensure that sports have this desired goal of character development,” says the founder of sports parent.net.
Parents need to be good consumers, he says. They need to make the right decisions about coaching their own children and finding the right programs for their kids. The goal, he says, is helping kids become happy and productive adults.
Here at the The Ultimate Sports Parent and Kids’ Sports Psychology Kids’ Sports Psychology, we agree. We have loads of resources that address this issue.
First of all, in our Ultimate Sports Parent workbook, we tell you just how to choose the right coach.
Our workbook teaches parents to:
- Be sure to interview the coach.
- Ask about his or her philosophy.
- Ask him about how he or she handles playing time
- If you think he or she is a bad fit for your child, keep looking. If you can’t find a suitable coach, consider forming your own team.
But that’s not all, at Kids’ Sports Psychology, we also offer loads of tips for how to help ensure your kids reap all the social, emotional and mental game benefits of playing youth sports.
For example, at Kids’ Sports Psychology for sports parents of young athletes, we include videos, articles and ebooks about these topics:
- How to boost young athletes’ confidence
- How to help kids stop worrying about what others think of them
- How to help kids kick perfectionism (a trait that often leads to lowered self-confidence)
- How to help kids improve their motivation
You can learn these sports parenting skills and much more at our new website that helps you instill confidence and positive mental game skills in young athletes:
Boost Your Kids Confidence and Success in Sports-Sports Psychology for Children
Thanks,
Patrick Cohn & Lisa Cohn
p.s. At Kids Sports Psychology, you can also download our popular program, “Parents’ Top Dilemma” to help sports kids kick perfectionism and fear of failure. You can read more about the Kick Perfectionism Program here:
Kick Perfectionism in Young Athletes
Posted in perfectionism in sports, sports dropouts, sports parenting, youth sports psychology, youth sports tips | 1 Comment »
August 21st, 2008
Your sports kids may show a fair amount of talent, but are seemingly not interested in meeting their potential. Many sports parents want to know how to motivate their kids, yet not pressure them.
You’re unsure how much time you should spend reminding your kids that they need to attend practice. You feel like you’re nagging.
What’s the answer? How do you get them excited about playing sports?
How do you motivate talented kids who feel as if their coaches don’t appreciate what they have to contribute?
These are all great questions–and ones we receive often from sports parents.
Parents should be concerned about their kids’ motivation in sports. Motivation is one of the keys to success in any endeavor. Athletes can have all the physical talent in the world, but if they can’t act on it with enthusiasm, commitment and dedication, they won’t realize their full potential.
You can learn how to improve your sports kids’ motivation–without burdening them with pressure or high expectations! Sound impossible? Read on!
We’ve just completed a brand new e-book, “How to Motivate Young Athletes,” that tells you just how to do this. More on that later.
First of all, you may not know what motivation looks like in a young athlete. These sports kids love to practice and compete. They get a kick out of working on their weaknesses.
Motivated kids get fired up about competition and expect a lot from themselves. They’re dedicated, committed and want to compete. What’s more, when things get tough, they keep on trying.
Our top tips for raising motivated athletes are all about understanding why kids play sports to begin with–and finding the right sports team that meets these desires.
For example, some kids are natural competitors. You need to ensure they are in a situation that allows them to compete. These kids will get bored if all they do is drills and work on technique.
Other kids play sports to socialize. They need to have fun with their friends.
Some kids simply love to learn. They need coaches who are focused on helping them improve.
Other athletes enjoy the feeling of “flow” they get while playing sports. They like the sense of being totally immersed and “on.” Coaches who challenge kids and help them achieve their potential will allow these athletes to find that feeling of “flow.”
Our new ebook covers these tips–and many more. You have to be a member of Kids Sports Psychology to get our new e-book.
If you join kidssportspsychology.com, not only will you receive our new e-book about how to motivate young athletes, you’ll have access to many others, including:
-
Ten Ways of Thinking That Hurt Kids’ Confidence
-
Teaching Athletes to Get in the Flow of Sports
-
How Young Athletes Can Think and Perform Like Pros by Using “Get Ready” Routines
-
Mental Imagery: Using Your Imagination in Your “Get Ready” Routine
-
Focus to The Max! How to Focus in Ways that Get You “In the Zone” and Improve Your Performance
Again, to learn more about our Kids’ Sports Psychology e-books written specifically for young athletes visit:
Kids Sports Psychology Age-Specific E-books
Thanks,
Patrick Cohn & Lisa Cohn
p.s. At Kids Sports Psychology, you can also download our popular program, “Parents’ Top Dilemma” program to help sports kids kick perfectionism and fear of failure. You can read more about the Kick Perfectionism Program here:
Parents’ Top Dilemma: Helping Young Athletes Kick Perfectionism and Fear of Failure
Kids’ Sports Psychology members can login here to download the new e-book on motivation:
How to Motivate Young Athletes
Posted in pressure in sports, sports parenting, youth sports psychology | No Comments »
