Coming Back After Injuries in Youth Sports
One sports mom writes us to say her 12-year-old soccer player is too timid, backs off too often, dwells on her weaknesses, and performs better in practice than during games.
Part of the problem, the sports mom says, is that her daughter is coming back from an injury.
“She seemed scared to get back to play, not because of injuries, but I think it was better on her self confidence to say “I am hurt” than to go out and fail. Now she is slow, rusty, and the self confidence is worse than ever.”
This sports kid—who has plenty of successes in her sports history — suffers from a lack of confidence, and it’s important to get to the bottom of it.
It’s possible she’s a perfectionist and she’s afraid of failing. Maybe she’s surrounded by critical coaches and parents, and focuses on what they say, instead of on her strengths. Maybe she’s filled with doubt.
First of all, her parents and coaches need to be as positive as possible. It sounds like that’s just what her mom is doing:
“I tell her that her mantra can be ‘I don’t give a rip if I mess up, I am gonna work for it.’ I tell her she has every right to put her foot on the ball – to try and fail is to learn. I do praise her and never coach.”
But even this impressive behavior on the part of this sports mom isn’t helping.
To begin with, this sports mom needs to uncover what’s behind her daughter’s lack of confidence.
Here are the likely suspects—the common confidence busters for sports kids:
- They hold high expectations
- They call themselves negative names
- They tell themselves “I can’t” statements
- They harbor goofy believes, such as “I only score if I’m wearing my red headband.”
- They doubt their abilities.
- They worry about what everyone thinks of them.
What’s the answer?
In our Confident Sports Kid workbook and CD program, parents and coaches can use our evaluation tools to uncover what’s hurting their sports kids’ confidence. They can then tackle each of the possible confidence busters in the 7-day program.
They learn how to communicate with sports kids, how to identify whether their behavior is hurting kids’ confidence, and discover important tools for boosting kids’ confidence and success.
The result: almost immediate boosts in confidence for sports kids—and improved sports parenting skills for parents!
You can learn more about the program here:
The Confident Sports Kid Workbook/CD Program
Use this program to help uncover your kids’ confidence busters and address them with practical strategies that yield quick results!
Related Articles on Youth Sports:
- Getting All the Goodness Out of Youth Sports
- Setting Goals for Young Athletes
- The Importance of Goal Setting in Youth Sports
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Help Young Athletes Boost Confidence in Sports!
Every day, we receive letters from parents like you who want their children and teens to excel in sports. However, these parents can see fear, doubt, and frustration on the faces of their kids who struggle with the “inner” game of sports. But these parents have no idea how to help their kids overcome the worries, expectations and self-defeating thoughts that prevent their young athletes from feeling confident and successful.
You can benefit from our 15-plus years’ of work in sports psychology and sports parenting research. Now, you can tap into our secrets to sports success through a cutting-edge, 14-day program that helps young athletes overcome the top “mental game” challenges that sports parents face—and the top challenges young athletes face.