The Gentle Art of Encouragement

When it comes to encouraging their athletic children, parents walk a fine line. Offer too little encouragement and your kids will think you’re uncaring. Offering too much, and you run the risk of appearing: a) insincere; b) unrealistic; or (worst of all!) totally embarrassing.

For most parents, the main purpose of encouragement is to increase your child’s confidence in their athletic ability. What are some ways to do this?

1. OPPORTUNITIES:
Create opportunities for success. There’s a simple word for this: P - R - A - C - T - I - C - E. The more your child practices, the more oportunities he or she has to do something right. Confidence comes from doing things. Before you can ride a bicycle or drive a car, you have to learn how. Success is addictive. The more successes you have, the more you want to try for.

2. BEHAVE ‘AS IF’ :
Teach your child to behave “as if.” This means acting confident, even when you don’t feel confident. When you adopt the behavior of a confident person - the posture, the actions, and the thoughts -you automatically feel more confident. By the same token, parents need to behave “as if.” You behave “as if” by showing faith in your child. Your belief can create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

3. LEARN FROM MISTAKES:
Help your child learn from their mistakes and then move on. This is probably one of the hardest things for kids to learn. It seems like they either want to dwell on their mistakes to the point of obsession, or else they don’t want to talk about it, don’t want to think about it, and certainly don’t want to analyze it to figure out how not to do it again. You need to help them understand that what matters is not doing something “wrong” or “badly.” What matters is recognizing the mistake and using it to do better next time.

4. SAFE ENVIRONMENT:
Provide your child with an environment where they feel safe to make mistakes. A lot of well-meaning parents try to protect their children from the pain of making mistakes. That’s like saying, “Let me carry you everywhere so you don’t fall down and hurt yourself.” Then there are parents who take the opposite tack. They try to “toughen” their children by criticizing every mistake. Ath-letes usually get all the criticism they need from their coaches. You want to encourage. You do that by giving positive feedback and pointing out your child’s strengths, not their weaknesses.

5. SEE THE GOOD:
Look for the “good” reason behind the mistakes your child might make. I remember when I was playing shortstop for Stanford in a game against our arch rival (Cal). It was the top of the ninth. Stanford was ahead by one run. Cal had runners on first and second with two outs. The batter hit a ball to my right. I managed to backhand it, but instead of holding the ball allowing the bases to be loaded, I made the mistake of going for the game-ending out. The ball went right over the first baseman’s head, allowing Cal to score two runs and go ahead by one. There will be times when your child, like me, will do something that - on the surface - appears incredibly stupid. But before you jump all over them, take time to ask them what their reasoning was. You may find that there was a method to their apparent madness.

Finally, I would encourage all parents to do what they can to help keep sports fun for their kids. Remember, a person rarely succeeds at something unless they enjoy doing it.

George A. Selleck, Ph.D. is a sports psychologist with degrees from Stanford, USC and Princeton. He has played, coached and consulted for both amateur and professional athletes . Dr. Selleck is author of “From the Bleachers with Love - Advice to Parents with Kids in Sports,” and “Beyond the Bleachers - the Art of Parenting Today’s Athletes.” These titles are available from Amazon.com or  Dr. Selleck at drselleck@earthlink.net.

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