The following was posted recently by the Chairperson of Eastern Freestyle and is something all parents of competitive athletes — of all ages and levels — should read, just to keep everything in perspective!!

How to be a Winning Parent…

This document is a favorite of mine. Let your kids own their sport – be a supporter, a fan and the bill payer!! We can’t thank you enough for all that you do to support our athletes – but, please, just do that. No need to solve the world’s problems at the bottom of the course/venue. Nothing will ever be perfect in freestyle or the world – except your child!!

1. Your child should never be taught to view his or her opponent as the “Bad Guy”.

2. Encourage your child to compete against himself/herself.

The ultimate goal of the sport is to challenge oneself and continually improve. Winning in sports is about doing the best that you can, regardless of the outcome or the results of your opponent.

3. Do not define success and failure in terms of winning and losing.

If a child competes his/her very best and doesn’t achieve their goals, you need to help them feel like a winner.

4. Be supportive. Do not coach.

Coaching interferes with your role as a parent and supporter of the team. Be your child’s best fan – provide support, encouragement, empathy, transportation & money – but leave the coaching and instruction to the coach.

5. The more fun an athlete is having the more he/she will learn and the better they will perform.

If your child is not having fun – investigate! What is keeping them from having fun? Is it the coaching, is it pressure or is it you?

6. Whose goal is it?

Is your child competing because they don’t want to disappoint you, because they know how important the sport is to you and are these goals and aspirations theirs or yours? It is quite normal and healthy to want your child to excel and be as successful as possible, but you cannot make this happen by pressuring them with your expectations or by using guilt or bribery to keep them involved. If they have their own goals and reasons for participating, they will be far more motivated to excel and therefore far more successful.

7. Remember the importance of high self-esteem in all your interactions with your child-athlete.

Athletes of all levels and ages perform in direct relationship to how they feel about themselves. Make your child feel good about himself/herself and you’ve given him/her a gift that lasts a lifetime.

8. Give your child the gift of failure.

The most successful people both in and out of sports do two things differently. First, they are willing to take risks and therefore fail more frequently. Second they use their failures in a positive way as a source of motivation and feedback to improve. Failure is a perfect stepping-stone to success.

9. Stress the process, (skill acquisition, mastery and fun), not the outcome.

In any peak performance, the athlete is totally oblivious to the outcome and is absorbed in the here and now of their actual performance. An outcome focus will almost always distract and tighten up the athlete insuring bad performance. If you truly want your child to succeed, help get his/her focus away from how important the contest is and have them focus on the task at hand. Supportive parents de-emphasize winning and instead stress learning the skills and participating.

10. Avoid comparisons and respect developmental differences.

Comparisons are inaccurate and destructive since every child matures and develops differently.

11. Teach your child to have perspective on the sports experience.

The sports media would like you to believe that sport and winning and losing is larger than life. This lack of perspective frequently trickles down to the youth sport level and young athletes often come away from competition with a distorted view of themselves and how they performed. Parents need to help their child develop realistic expectations of themselves, their abilities and how they played without robbing the child of his/her dreams.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at 3:46 pm and is filed under Council Team Announcements, Devo's Announcements, Freestyle Announcements, Hopefuls Announcements, J1/J2 Announcements, J3 Announcements, OMARA Member Announcements, Snowboard Announcements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.