Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

The process of trying to get it “just right” for your kid is a legitimate source of anxiety. I call this type of anxiety “Goldilocks” anxiety.

For example, one day you may worry that you’re being too hard on your kids. Then, a few days later you worry that you’re being too soft on them. Your hope is that you can eventually get it just right as Goldilocks did in the children’s story The Three Bears.

If you have gone through this back-and-forth process of trying to get your parenting style just right, you’re not alone. This form of Goldilocks anxiety is common for parents, especially sports parents.  With social media making the choices of other parents visible for all to see, we can’t help to worry about how our own choices compare.

It’s very hard not to use social media to compare ourselves to what other parents are doing. Especially when parents are constantly posting about their kid’s national competitions, camps, and private coaching sessions with nationally known experts and specialist.  You can’t help but to privately ponder in your mind questions like this:

• Do I need to send my kid to more national competitions since the other parents are sending their kids to one every month? Or am I sending my kids to too many national competitions and burning them out?
• How about that camp all the elite kids are attending? Should I send my kid too? Or is my kid going to camp too often and not spending enough time with their academics?
• That private coach is working with several national champions. Am I hurting my kids if I don’t get them private coaching too? Or is this private coaching costing too much money. Should I stop sending my kid and spend that money elsewhere?

How Sports Parents Can Get It Just Right

Undoubtedly, these questions and worries are valid. Moreover, parenting anxiety is a legit source of stress. In an interview on parental anxiety, former clinical psychologist and author of The Anxiety Toolkit,  Alice Boyes, PhD, provides a number of suggestions on how to deal with parental anxiety. Coupling her suggestion with my experiences as a sports parent and mental skills coach I have come up with 6 tips that you can act on today.

1. Don’t ignore your desire to want to get it just right for your kids. Acknowledge each of your fears of not getting it just right separately and address each one with logic.
2. As you address each fear of not getting it just right with logic, do the research to learn the real risks and facts of either doing more or doing less.
3. For each of the fears use a consistent decision-making process for deciding how you will confront them with reasonable action that both you and your spouse agree upon. Avoid making exceptions to the rules you come up with. Exceptions just lead to more anxiety in the future.
4. As part of your process, bullet point the pros and cons of parenting your child in an overprotective way. Doing more is often a form of either snow plow parenting or helicopter parenting. These overprotective parenting styles have additional consequences.
5. Accept that every decision won’t be perfect. If you don’t like the outcome of one of your parenting decisions, change your process instead of worrying about the decision itself.
6. Consider using the principles of Strengths Based Parenting developed by Gallup. For example, decide what camps, tournaments, and private coaching your child needs based on investing in their strengths instead of their weaknesses.  Research shows that the best way to help your child is to develop their strengths and manage their weaknesses.

If you want help with this process, please don’t hesitate to contact me.  Also, you can learn more about me and how I can help your sports family here.