Responsible Sports Parent Tip of the Week:
“After the game, see if you can listen in on the coach’s comments to the team. If the coach forgot to fill emotional tanks, make sure to fill that void.”
Sometimes coaches fulfill their coaching duties on the field, but may not extend those efforts to the post game speech. If so, we as parents need to step into this role of positive encouragement to keep our athletes emotional tanks full. What are emotional tanks? Emotional tanks keep youth soccer players going, and when empty, they can’t perform on the field to the best of their abilities.
Players with full emotional tanks are:
- more coachable and likely to listen and respond without resistance
- more optimistic
- better able to handle adversity
Responsible Sports has developed, with our partner Positive Coaching Alliance, a guide to target filling your athletes emotional tanks, how to strike the right balance between praise and constructive criticism, as well as three tips for you to use with your athlete.
Filling Emotional Tanks Tools: Tip #1
As parents, we have tremendous power to shape the way our children think about themselves. One way is through “You're the kind of person who...” statements. For example: “Missing that pass to the forward was tough, but I'm proud that you're the kind of person who learns from the mistake and picks yourself right back up. You handled it perfectly and stayed positive and had a great pass after that.”
- For more on “You're the kind of person who...” statements including examples on how to use this with your kids read Tank Filling Tip #1.
Filling Emotional Tanks Tools: Tip #2
We know that as parents, we sometimes have to correct our kids to help them improve. But we can deliver this feedback with usable information that helps empower our children. For example, “You need to focus!” contains virtually no usable information, but “Remember that coach wants you to keep head up when dribbling with the ball” contains very usable information.
Filling Emotional Tanks Tools: Tip #3When it comes to sports, we as parents can fall into the trap of thinking that it is our job to talk and our children's job to listen. We need to remember it is also our job to listen and to create space for our children to talk. Read these suggestions for talking sports with your kids.
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