Parental Transitions

I love parents. I love parents for giving their children the opportunity to recognize and develop their athletic talents. Parents frequently are the vehicle for the child athlete to be introduced to sport. Parents most often provide early stage emotional support, encouragement, help the athlete become exposed to teams, coaching, competition and arenas where they develop their skills. It all begins as fun and for the most part stressless. Where parents often get stuck in the process is seeing too clearly the potential of their athletic child without having conversations with the developing athlete about what his or her goals for the future may be.

One of my favorite stories is in the book, "The Life You Imagine." The book is about the New York Yankees baseball star Derek Jeter. One of the stories of Derek is when he was 8 years old he walked into his parents bedroom and told them he wanted to play for the Yankees. Right there and then his parents started talking with him about planning to make his dream a reality.
With his parents over time he created a plan for success. They didn't push him, they guided him, showed him options and helped him make choices. Yes, Derek Jeter started out with immense talent but these other pieces needed to be in place for his long term success.

Some tips for parents are to ask the athlete particularly when they are 11/12 years old, what are the goals? How much soccer, tennis, baseball, basketball, name any sport, does the athlete wish to participate in? Things for a parent to notice, how well balanced is the child athletes life in regards to having time to hang out with their peers socially? Is the child athlete still enjoying the process? Or is it becoming a job? When it takes on the energy of a job many adolescents start to rebel. They let coaches and parents know that the workouts aren't fun anymore. Losing or feeling like all their time needs to be spent practicing during the off season to regain their spot on the high school team isn't fun.

When parents sign athletes up for events or teams because the parent sees it as a good thing towards moving to the next level they miss an opportunity. When the parent talks to the athlete and offers them an opportunity to participate in an event or club sport etc. outside of the regular season and the athlete sees it as an opportunity then the situation works.

It is easy to sit in the bleachers and pick apart a child athletes strengths, weakness, needs. It is much more complex being the developing athlete on the playing field who is expected to win or be successful enough to play varsity sports or win a college scholarship. The transition piece for the parent is to invite the athlete into a discussion as to how he/she wishes to be involved in sport during the coming year. Lay out the choices and options and engage the athlete in a discussion regarding what they hope to achieve and how much time, effort, energy is probably necessary to make it to the next level.

So what is the transition piece for the parent? The parent brings the player to the athletic environment and supports their development. But it is the athletes future, their time, their energy, their performance, their motivation to improve and continue to compete. As the athlete matures he/she needs to be invited to make more choices for the future of their athletic development. This builds a healthier more trustworthy parent/child athlete relationship.