As we prepare for the summer sports season, now is a great time to reflect back on your child’s athletic accomplishments from the past year, as well as look ahead and begin to develop new and exciting goals for this summer (Sport Success 360).
- The start of a new summer is a great time for re-evaluating athletic progress, gauging your child’s current interest in sports, and developing new goals for the upcoming year. Try to make time to sit down with your child, staying open-minded, and ask open-ended questions about how he or she feels (i.e. “Looking back at last year in soccer, tell me about how you think it went”). When your child responds, try your best to provide a positive, supportive environment – regardless of his or her responses.
- If your child responds to your inquiries in a less-than-enthusiastic manner, that may be a sign that your child may not be as interested in that particular sport as he or she once was. This is good information to know as a parent, but it may not mean that you need to immediately pull your child from that sport (although it is information to note). Instead, try to gauge if this is a temporary feeling your child has where a small break may be all that is needed, or if this is more of a chronic situation where your child would truly like to spend his or her time doing something else. Processing this decision out of season is highly recommended as emotions are typically not as high, offering you and your family more objective decision making abilities.
- If, on the other hand, your child does show positive emotion when talking about his or her year in sports, try to spend as much time as you can listening to her and share in this excitement. Again, use open-ended questions when discussing future goals and what your child needs to focus on for improved athletic success. As she talks, you might want to jot a few notes so that you will have something to work from when developing goals for the summer.
- Speaking of goals, helping your child understand the importance of goals can be a vitally important component to success – in sports and life. Work together with your child and try to develop specific, measurable goals that will challenge him to continue to work hard and improve. Goals that are too vague (i.e. “play your best”), not measurable (i.e. “get strong”) or hardly challenging (“just go out for the team”) will probably limit your child’s growth; however, each of these goals can be easily tweaked for dramatically different results (for example, working to lower a golf score average can be more easily accomplished by starting with a desired score to be achieved by a certain date, developing a weekly schedule of set practices, and balancing that schedule so that it is challenging, but not overly-demanding).
- Try to look for new, exciting opportunities for your child that you may have overlooked or chosen against in the past. Perhaps this is the year you allow your child to attend a sports camp, travel out of the area with his or her team, or even play on an elite team. It is relatively easy to contact your local sports league, school, recreation center, or the internet for different opportunities to discuss and process with your family.
- Finally, keep in mind the things your child enjoyed doing this year may not be the same things he or she wants to do next year. Child development is often quite rapid with plenty of peaks and valleys, and their personal identity can change, sometimes seemingly overnight. The focus on identity development is very normal for young people, so be sure to allow room for growth and change rather than fight against it. By supporting your child and accepting him or her regardless of their changing interests you can be confident more times than not good decisions will be made.
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