Questions about psychological strength and wellbeing
How can I enhance my child’s self-esteem?
Children’s self esteem is based on their feelings of self-worth in four key life domains (i.e., academic, physical, social, and emotional). Although sport can help in the development of self-worth (and physical self-worth in particular), it is important to ensure you provide your child with opportunities to develop their self-esteem through sport and other areas outside of the sporting domain (e.g., volunteering, social activities, and hobbies).
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How can I help my child develop confidence?
Young athletes’ levels of confidence can fluctuate over time as they often base their confidence on a small number of uncontrollable sources (e.g., demonstration of ability over others). As a parent you can help your child to develop high and stable confidence by increasing the range of controllable sources from which they can draw confidence (e.g., perceptions of high quality preparation or recognition of personal improvements).
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How can I help my child manage stress and anxiety?
Sport can often trigger feelings of anxiety (e.g., nervousness, worry) when children are placed in a situation they find demanding or stressful (i.e., first competition, important match, or taking a penalty kick). You can help your child address these feelings by introducing them to basic strategies to manage their anxiety (e.g., deep breathing) or by helping them to accept that anxiety is normal and potentially helpful to performance.
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How can I help my child stay motivated?
In order to feel motivated children need to experience feelings of autonomy (i.e., that they have a choice), competence (i.e., that they are good at their sport) and relatedness (i.e., they have close relationships with coaches and other players). As a parent, you can enhance your child’s long-term motivation by involving them in decision making and by emphasising that their success in sport is not about winning but about how they compete and how hard they try to make personal progress and improvements.
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How can I help my child focus?
In order to concentrate on their sport, your child will need to be able to mentally shift from irrelevant thoughts (i.e., schoolwork) and distractions to the specific actions that are relevant for their performance. During the lead up to competition, you can help your child to achieve this by directing their attention to specific and relevant actions (e.g., what they have been working on in training) and also ensuring they warm up thoroughly. You can also encourage them to develop basic routines and/or trigger words (e.g., ‘watch the ball’) to help them (re) focus during competitions.
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What are the best things I can do to develop my child's psychological strength and wellbeing?
We think there are 7 main things you can do to help develop your child's psychological strength.
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