3 tips for parents to encourage mental toughness

When my work first started to focus on helping young athletes reach their potential in sports and life, I was told by a business coach that I had to “brand” myself. He said that my brand should be about the benefit those who work with me would receive. I thought long and hard about this before landing on “Mental Toughness Trainer” and only went with it after defining what mental toughness means as I teach it.

Mental toughness is being focused, confident, determined and resilient, especially under pressure.
Sometimes, parents have reacted negatively to the term “mental toughness” – until I give them that definition, which really is about life skills that we need to grow up healthy. This is why we want our kids to play sports, right? Because sports is the vehicle that helps our children learn these skills.
Here are my top three ways parents can help their young athletes with mental toughness.

1. Prevent and dispel fears at every opportunity
Quite honestly, this is the bulk of my work as none of those qualities can grow in the soil of fear-based thinking. The No. 1 thing parents can do is to speak and show unconditional approval and love of their athletes regardless of performance. Disappointing the parent is what many children fear the most, and parents convey this in subtle ways they may not even be aware of.

When a young football player makes a mistake on the field, looks over at Mom or Dad and sees the disappointed facial expression, that creates fear. When Dad tells the young athlete on the way home from the game what he should have done differently, more fear is instilled.
Solution? Just keep smiling, cheering and telling your son how proud you are of him for going out there and how fun it is for you to watch. Period. Easy.

By the way, except for the rare individual, this goes for exceptionally talented kids, too. Coaching your own kid is like walking a field of land mines.


2. Remind your child of his strengths as often as possible
Humans have a fantastic ability to look at themselves and find what is wrong or lacking. It’s actually a survival mechanism. We need to balance that out by conditioning our minds to be aware of our strengths. This breeds confidence and allows for focus and determination.
Speaking of focus, does your kid play video games? How about commenting regularly about how well he focuses for such long periods of time?

Think that might be useful to remind him right before game time?


3. Ask, don’t tell
As a parent, there is a strong temptation to offer advice when you can clearly see what they are missing or doing wrong. When we do that without first asking them if they even want the advice, we are depriving them of a golden opportunity to learn resilience and the ability to figure things out for themselves, which is the whole point of parenting.

Now, having said that, I have run into plenty of kids who will turn inward on their problems, let them fester and create more problems for themselves. You have my permission to continue to ask if they want help, especially when you notice little signs of their discontentment.

But do this very carefully. Remember, it’s your kid’s job to pull away from you as they get older and establish independence, so there is a huge block to receiving advice from you. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard from parents that I teach the same things to their children as they have been teaching but the child only seems to get it from me.

That’s simply because I’m not the parent.

If you want to get through, deliver your advice – about anything –with zero judgment. Children know that they have this from me, and that’s why they listen and it sinks in.

Be specific and consistent. More than what you say, children pick up on what you do. Model what you want them to emulate and give them the space to learn it.

Source: http://usafootball.com/blogs/fundamentals-and-performance/post/9956/3-tips-for-parents-to-encourage-mental-toughness?utm_source=exacttarget&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NL