Here’s a simple way to measure how effective you’re becoming as a sporting parent…
One of my favourite things to do is run workshops for parents to share ideas about how we can all become more effective at supporting our kids to get the most out of their time in sport. But when everyone walks out the door I often wonder, how hard will they try to break an old and less effective parenting habit and start to build a new one?
So, if you’re the kind of parent who is keen to try and create new habits, here’s one very simple way you can measure your progress…
- One of the crucial ways of helping to support your kids learning in sport (and any aspect of their life) is to use questions to ask about the opportunities they have in the upcoming game/camp/training sessions to work on the things they need to improve to help them reach their potential. The most important part of this process is remembering to follow-up to ask how it’s gone – “you said before the camp it was a great opportunity to work on …., how did you feel that went?”
- Noting down HOW OFTEN you follow up on questions you’ve asked will give you a good indication of not only of how good you’re becoming at ‘reminding’ them to think about the specific opportunities they have to improve, but crucially it will help you to build the habit of asking how it went so you have an opportunity to help support their learning in areas crucial to success
The next step is to work out how effective you are as you have these conversations but in terms of creating a new habit, frequency is always a good place to start!
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