Don’t “Should” on Your Kids

Mental toughness, grit, or resilience is two-fold. The first part is how we handle, deal, and cope with adversity and setbacks. The second part is how well we perform under pressure.

To define it in a healthy way for your child, emphasize that competition means against yourself, not anyone else. In this way you will be teaching your child not to compare themselves to others, which often results in low self-esteem. Teach them to have an audience of one and that is the only one that matters.

Failure is never fatal. It may feel like it for a while, but it is only a challenge. Keeping athletics in the proper perspective for our children helps them keep their problems in perspective.

Why do you want your son or daughter to participate in sports? • What do you want your child to become outside of sport? • How much value do you place on academics? • How often do we discuss winning and expectations as opposed to the effort?

Not knowing the solution is painful and uncomfortable. However, the only way to build mental toughness and improve is to find a way, figure it out, and make adjustments. Athletics is one of the last bastions of having to find a way and figure it out, because unlike the test examples above, an athlete’s test is the game. Unfortunately, many parents

Parents, we need to be their greatest supportive coach. It is our job to be the coach that we always wanted. Our actions shape their beliefs. We are the greatest influence on our children’s lives and in their development, stability, attitudes, likes, and dislikes. Children watch everything we do and learn by modeling behaviors and beliefs about our

Worth repeating: The worst time to discuss” performance is on the ride home. We may want to talk so bad that it is like acid in our mouth—they need to know what we think. We have great points, and they need to know how they can improve. All true, but we just cannot share them on the ride home.

When we should on our kids, we are establishing expectations, brutally reminding them of negatives, mistakes, and that they aren’t good enough. When kids fail to reach your expectations, they can suffer and feel like a failure. Shoulding on them creates expectations that that they may or not be able to reach.

When our body language is negative, we are demonstrating and showing that we don’t think the result is going to turn out like we’d hoped. We don’t have confidence or faith in our child.