Getting your children involved in sports for their physical and emotional well being is an important decision many parents face. This blog is about how you as a parent go about positively encouraging your child’s involvement while being aware of your motivations, both conscious and unconscious.
Where things get messy is when we as parents fail to separate our wants from their wants and interests. While there may be an occasional good outcome for the children, it is often our methods that can cause un-intended consequences on our unsuspecting children.
There are several things we can do as parents to encourage and promote sports as a positive and healthy choice in our children’s life.
1.Be aware of your sports past and its influence on your children
When I was a kid, my mom made me play sports; soccer, golf and tennis. The sport I liked? Basketball. The sports my mom liked? Golf and Tennis.
The back story? My mom so wanted to play sports when she was young and her parents were poor Italian immigrants and didn’t support her. Her answer to her reality? Be sure that didn’t happen to her kids.
How many of you growing up had a strong parental influence when it came to sports? Where did it get you? Did you go on to become the high school star? Did you get a scholarship? Did you end up hating the sport? Your parents? And most importantly, how are you with your kids around sports? Like your parents?Or the opposite?
2.Encourage & Expose your children to individual sports as well as team sports
One of our jobs as parents is to simply introduce our children to a variety of sports giving them the opportunity to choose for themselves what they enjoy, without regard to whether it is a team or individual sport.When I was young there was little or no interest or awareness of non team related sports other than those my mother had interest in like golf and tennis. Individual sports often are absent the politics of team sports and everyone gets to play. This is important in the positive development of our children’s self esteem.
3.Acknowledge them for their participation
They don’t need to be the star of the team to deserve acknowledgment. Let them know it takes courage to try new things.Take every opportunity to let them know how proud you are of them. By communicating to our children how proud we are of them, it gives us as parents the opportunity to positively influence our children in a way we may not have experienced ourselves.
4.Let them choose the sports they like
This by far was the hardest thing for me to do.My dad played football and he didn’t influence me at all in any sport. He let me choose. My mother was hell bent on tennis and golf. Neither of which I liked very much and I caved in and played tennis and competed at the varsity level. The result? I don’t play it at all and use my experience of being turned off by a parent’s insistence to play a sport to not repeat the same experience with my kids.
5.Talk to them about your sports past
I shared with my kids my victories and failures of my sports past.This has the effect of letting them know that failures are ok. It also gives them a sense of what I was like as a kid in sports and helps them relate. What it also does is give them information to remind me of when I am more invested in their success than me(this happens when they are older).
6.Unhook from your failed sports dreams and ask them about theirs
One of the most common pitfalls we as parents fall into is this unspoken, unconscious intention that our kids can complete our failed sports dreams and/or heal our sports failures by their success.About the best thing we can do is engage them in what dreams they have by getting interested and asking them what their dreams may be. We end up sending the message that what they want matters more than what we want and that what we want is in line with their wants and dreams.
7.Let them know you love them regardless of their choices and regularly check with them as to their motivation(s) in a sport
Children simply need to know we love them and that they are fine just the way they are,sports or no sports. It is also wise to double check on their motivations for a sport. I usually ask mine routinely why they like the sport, who are they doing it for, and as hard as it may feel to me, I usually remind them not to play the sport for me.
8.Sit back and watch and you may be surprised!
Basketball, mountain bike racing, and football are the sports that my kids have chosen. I recently went to a mountain bike race with my two oldest and I raced too. Never in my wildest dreams did I envision going to a race with my kids and participating not just as a parent but as an athlete too!
9.Thank Your Parents for their influence in sports as ALL of it has served you!
Thank you mom for your insistence that sports be a part of my life. It is still so today. Thanks dad for giving me the space to find my own way.
4. June 2010 at 11:53 pm
This is an area we should all explore in ourselves. The writer is
modest. Happen to know he was and is quite the athlete, and has had the thrill of victory and recognition from sports. But he doesn’t tell his children that they have to live up to his accomplishments.
Many of us weren’t so lucky. I’ve seen parents that used sports to denigrate kids that they knew to be more talented than them in every way.
And I’ve seen parents who know better not teach kids the number lesson of sports — Keep Trying, as Failure is a Part of Success.
Nice analysis.