The Four Areas of Confidence in Youth Sports a Parent Can Influence
In general, my research has found that the community of sports psychologist identify 13 sources of confidence in sports.
- Belief in a home-field advantage
- Belief in other environmental advantages (weather, time of day, etc.)
- Preparation
- Coaching
- Experience
- Belief in a process
- Past success
- Self-Awareness
- Support network
- Encouragement
- Seeing someone similar or close achieve success
- Recently seeing your opponent fail
- Belief in having a natural talent that provides an advantage
With this in mind, the best thing a parent can do to help their child develop confidence in sports is to focus on the 4 of these 13 sources that they can influence.
- Preparation
- Coaching
- Experience
- Self-Awareness
Preparation: Influence your child by providing them the means to prepare in a similar manner to one of their role models or a successful teammates.
Coaching: Influence your child by providing them with a coach with a proven track record of working with athletes similar to your child and one who is good at getting buy-in from young athletes.
Experience: Influence your child by developing a routine of reviewing video after competitions. Furthermore, these sessions must allow them to break down their performance and the performance of others as well as write down their lessons learned.
Self-awareness: Influence your child’s self-awareness by having them participate in the virtual coaching program I describe here. This program is specifically designed to help young athletes in 4th grade through high school know themselves and know what they want. In addition, the program will help them create a plan to go after it using the strengths and motivations that come natural to them. If you are interested in finding out more about this 8 week coaching program, contact me here.