Being the (Sane) Parent of a Competitive Athlete | Three Strategies to Help your Young Athlete

Now that I’m writing articles for youth development athletes for a major sport publication, I have no doubt that I have a solid core of parents who read the column in order to see how they can help their young athletes be more focused and consistent athletes. I learned long ago in clinics that parents wanted more information to help them ease both their pain and their child’s pain. They told me that they felt helpless and hid behind trees and out of sight so as not to get caught up in the drama of hits and misses and meltdowns. 

I’ve been able to pull together some strategies on the spot, partly because I’ve been a parent of a young athlete myself and mostly because the strategies I teach are leadership tools and parents are leaders. I promised to give them only strategies, not advice on how to parent. And I promised it would empower both themselves and their child, and more importantly, give them something they could do to make a difference every practice and game. They loved it and it has been a part of my program ever since.

A new beginning

You can be this kind of high-performance coach for your child, even if you know nothing about shooting. Being emotionally connected to your athlete, you love him or her even when they display uncharacteristically bad behavior. Although it’s hard to step back from that connectedness, which can make the frustration even worse, the solution is relatively easy. Here are three strategies that will help you be a force for empowerment.  

Strategy 1: You the parent and emotional ballast

On the drive to practices and competitions, forget the frustrations of your work. Forget the frustrations of your child’s homework not getting done. Forget the memories of the latest disasters or competition meltdowns. Your number one role, besides being the chauffeur and financier, is to help your child to prepare for this next hour of training or hours of competition, whatever it is. And you won’t do it by carrying a load of unfinished business, unfinished disciplinary actions or unfinished negotiations. 

You’ll need to just be, but not just be anything. Be who you used to be when you raced dirt bikes and had fun and won. Be who you used to be when you won the beauty pageant and glowed. Be who you used to be when you first heard that violin you crafted played in concert. Be the you who used to coach a cheerleading squad. These are real “used to be” roles of some of the parents I’ve helped become the emotional ballast to their high-performing child athletes.

Similarly, like them, you know who you used to be at the moment of one of your wildest successes. You need to be that again, and just by remembering the best time in that role, you will be giving a huge gift to your child—your high-performing child.

Thinking of this kind of past memory changes how you feel. How you feel (good) changes your posture and internal physiology, such as your breathing. And most importantly, how you feel and how you look gets picked up by your young athlete (via their mirror neurons, if you have been reading some of the AIM to Excel articles).

It may take a few experiences with them, such as while driving them to the range for practice, but they will feel it (as you relive your experience). Ultimately they will react in neat and unexpected ways, because it will get you into what I call the Zone—and them along with you. And hey, they will perform better and might actually want you to watch them—as long as you stay in your wonderful Zone.

Strategy 2: The support

One of the hardest and most difficult things you can ever do is stay in this Zone for your child when they are struggling, especially after a poor result in a competition, a negative experience at school, or just a bad day where their hormones kicked in. As parents, we may demand good behavior all the time and forget that we were once kids and had our own fights with our parents. So here is the alternative, and it is kind of like a play.  

Project your difficult/stressed/hormone-driven child onto an imagined theatre stage along with yourself.  Stand back and take a good look at the relationship—oops, sparks may be flying. Go up to the mature one—you I presume—and move yourself to the Zone. And not a half Zone, a whole crazy Zone that you had years ago. With that done, step into your shoes on stage and look at your child from that perspective.  I believe that you will immediately imagine them quite differently.

Repeat the exercise until you see the desired changes. And then repeat this exercise 1.5 million more times over the course of your lifetime. It is a cool strategy that gives back way more than the effort it takes.  

Strategy 3: See the future

This last strategy is easy. It’s a visualization where you create an image of your child as being successful in the next competition. You also need to create an image of them being successful five years in the future, as well as seeing them being successful five years beyond that when they have finished college or are in a career, when all of this stressful competitive stuff is long past and you can imagine them doing well parenting their own kids. But there are two conditions. Just two. In every visualization you do, you must see them happy and healthy and secure and well raised by you and their community. And second, you must see the future with the addition of ample adrenaline when you do this kind of visualizing.

Conclusion

So you see, no advice, only strategies. Well, there is one piece of advice. These three strategies have worked for so many parents to help them create champions and build relationships with their child athletes, so just do it. That piece of advice will keep you sane and having fun while parenting a competitive athlete (in spite of all the drama they might bring to the sport).