Teaching Young Athletes to Choose What’s Good Over What Feels Good
Every parent wants their child to make good choices. Fundamentally, this comes down to teaching how to choose what’s good over what feels good. For athletes this often means maturing to the point where they choose training over playing video games, for example.
When it comes to developing this maturity, the point often overlooked is the environment. For instance, when kids have temptation all around it’s nearly impossible to practice self-control. Adults can’t even do this, let alone kids. That is why the only way a parent can help their child mature is to consistently put their kids in situations to make good choices so that it becomes habit.
Change The Environment Instead of Nagging
The last thing you want to do as a parent to achieve this end is to be a nag. If you have to nag, it means your child’s environment is encouraging bad choices. When your child is repeatedly facing situations where bad choices are the first option then it’s your fault not theirs.
If you want to help your child make good eating decisions for example, then remove all the bad food from the home. This is obviously a burden to the entire family but you can’t expect your child to do something you aren’t willing to do. You won’t have to nag them about eating right when eating right is the only option.
If you want to help your child make good screen time decisions, then remove the TVs and other devices from their bed room and implement common sense parental controls. In addition, work hard to provide alternative entertainment options based on what is innately motivating their desire for screen time.
Teaching a young athlete to choose what’s good over what feels good comes down to parental decisions like these. There is no way around this.