Kids Who Lose Confidence
What can sports parents do when kids’ confidence dips when performing in front of others?
Truth is, you don’t have control over what is happening inside your kids’ minds—whether they feel pressure or not. However, you can teach them tools for managing—or eliminating—the pressure they feel.
Here’s an example… A parent tells us that she has a 12-year-old soccer player who is considered one of the top players in Cyprus in his age group. But being among the top can generate pressure.
“How can I improve his confidence–especially when he knows he is being watched by important persons (such as a coach to select the best for promoting to a better level of training groups).
His confidence drops when too many people are around him and there is somehow some external pressure.”
First of all, this player is most likely worried about letting down others in this situation. He needs to understand that focusing on others is a distraction and can undermine his confidence.
He’s likely focusing on what others think about his skills, rather than the task in front of him. He needs to stop thinking about others and focus on his game and his own strengths.
Second, this player is likely afraid of failing. For certain kids, the more success they experience, the more they’re afraid of failing. This causes them to tighten up, avoid making mistakes and stop playing with the creativity and risk-taking needed to excel.
Kids who are experiencing fear of failure need to understand what’s causing the fear. For example, they shouldn’t think they are expected to perform great or score the most goals, for example.
Instead, they need to focus on the process, which help ground them in the here-and-now. A process goal in soccer might be to make quality passes or pick a specific target before every shot on net.
These tips are just a few of the many resources we share at Kids’ Sports Psychology. For example, kids and parents struggling with pressure might check out:
- “Kick Fear of Failure and Perfectionism,” an e-book for sports kids.
- “Appreciate Your Talents: How To Avoid Making Comparisons,” also an e-book for sports kids.
- “When Tennis Kids Pressure Themselves to be Perfect,” an article.
But that’s not all. We provide many more e-books, audios, videos, articles, Q and As and forums to help you be Ultimate Sports Parents and help your kids take control of their confidence.
If you become an exclusive member of Kids’ Sports Psychology, you have access to all of them.
Here’s an example of what folks are saying about our resources:
(The Ultimate Sports Parent program) was well worth the money. It changed me and how I work with my 8-year-old son in baseball and basketball and even school work.”
–Robert, a sports dad
Help your kids be proactive with their confidence. Like this dad, you can help kids transfer our sports psychology tips to other parts of their lives!
Help Young Athletes Overcome Perfectionist Challenges in Sports!
Sports Parents’ Top Dilemma: Helping Young Athletes Kick Perfectionism And Fear of Failure will walk you through the problem and arm you with practical solutions.
The Sports Parents’ Top Dilemma is a two part program. It includes:
- A 23 page E-book that identifies the challenge, explains why it is harmful to young athletes and gives step-by-stop sports psychology tips for helping kids.
- A 21 page kids’ sports psychology workbook that is intended to help you kids identify beliefs and expectations that are the root of perfectionism.
Now you can learn how to help young athletes overcome the difficult cycle of perfectionism, fear of failure and loss of confidence!
Sports Parents’ Top Dilemma: Helping Young Athletes Kick Perfectionism And Fear of Failure
What are parents saying?
“Your Information Had Been So Helpful”
“After listening to a couple of your podcasts and reading your “10 tips to confidence in youth sports,” most of the challenges you make note of apply to my 14-year-old son. He’s got all the physical ability, but the more mistakes he makes, the worse it seems to get. So reading and listening to your information has been so helpful and validates what I have observed in him for the past few months. Thank you so much!”
~Brenda Felder, Everett, WA
Help Your Young Athletes Overcome Self-Doubt In Sports!
The Confident Sports Kid helps young athletes improve confidence quickly and overcome common confidence killers that destroy motivation and fun in sports!
This is a 7-day program for sports parents and kids to boost young athletes’ performance, happiness and success… in sports and life!
The Confident Sports Kid program is actually two programs: one that teaches sports parents how to boost their kids’ confidence, and another that teaches young athletes age 8 to 12 how to improve their self talk, avoid negative thinking, overcome expectations that limit confidence, and much more.
Read more about The Confident Sports Kid
What are parents and coaches saying?
“Each Race He Was More Calm, Composed, And Relaxed”
“I just wanted to say thank you for your wonderful programs. My son Kai was one of the fastest 10 and under swimmers in Southern California and after he “aged up” to the 11-12 group he really lost confidence swimming against the much faster and bigger boys. He started with the Confident Sports Kids series and really enjoyed each and every lesson. He then started the Composed Kid series and built on the important building blocks that he was using from the first series. I so happy to report that Kai was able to swim to best times in each and every event he swam at the biggest and most important meet of the year in So Cal, the Club Championships. Each race he was more calm, composed, and relaxed. The final race was one that he was ranked last and one of his goals was to try for top 16…he was 49th! He cut over 4 seconds off his time ending up in 17th. He was ecstatic to say the least.”
~DD Bartley
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