Janis B. Meredith's Blog: JBM Thinks Sportsparenting, page 21

What Do You Do With Your 7,000 Words?

Words kill, words give life; they’re either poison or fruit–You choose! Every day, you will speak at least 7,000 words (some people a whole lot more!). Those words are your imprint on the world. They dictate how people perceive you – and largely define you. How many of the words that you spoke yesterday made...

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What’s Your Game Plan When Life Throws You a Curve Ball?

Do you have a game plan for handling turmoil? For facing an unexpected curve ball that life can sometimes throw at you? No matter how much you’d like to, there are things in life that you simply cannot control. Whether it’s a job loss, a divorce, kids who don’t make the cut on the team,...

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How to Use Your Most Power Parenting Tool

The tongue is probably your most powerful parenting tool. If you’re like me, you have days when you use it wisely and generously and feel great about your parenting skills and patience. And then there are those days that you wish you could press re-wind and take back words that you said.  Sometimes those were...

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7 Parenting Defaults That Suck You In Before You Realize It

All of us are creatures of habit. And it’s no different in parenting. The longer we do it, the more we find ourselves defaulting to behaviors that we do without thinking twice. Good or bad, they’ve become a way of life. The problem with defaults is that they are usually the most basic, the most...

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Choosing a Safe Sport For Your Child

How do you choose a safe sport for your child? There are many experts who will tell you how you can choose the safest sport for your child. This article by Dr. David Geier, an orthopedic surgeon and author of That’s Gotta Hurt: The Injuries That Changed Sports Forever directs parents to check out the Healthy...

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What Is Your Child’s Motivation?

Teaching kids motivation to work hard and do the right thing is a huge challenge for many parents. The list of tactics includes bribery, threats, comparison, cajoling, and shaming. Those “solutions” are short-term at best, but the long-term answer to how do I motivate my kids is much more complicated. I recently asked parents in...

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4 Reasons That Competition Turns Ugly

Competition always evokes emotion. Some athletes and parents don’t necessarily show it but believe me, it’s there! Emotions during youth sports range from excitement to anger and unfortunately, they often hang around to hinder your child’s performance. Negative emotions can cause your child to lose intensity, get tense in their muscles, have difficulty breathing and...

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What Doing Crossfit Has Taught Me

When my millennial children suggested I try crossfit, I laughed. Even when they informed me that there was a 70-year-old woman named Ruth taking a class, I still brushed off their invitations, convinced that I was too old to start something I’d never tried. I had visions of trying to keep up with Herculean strength athletes and...

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5 HUGE Parenting Challenges You Face Daily and How to Keep them From Driving You Crazy

Parenting challenges greet you every morning, and they come in all shapes and sizes. It may start with “what’s for breakfast” and proceed to “we’re gonna be late for school!!!” It may continue throughout the day with a text that says, “I’m sick” or a call that says, “your child is in the principal’s office.”...

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Why It’s Good For Families to “Run Away” from It All

Every now and then families need a break from the crazy schedules and demands of life. When you barely have time to talk to each other, when it feel like it’s been forever since you actually had fun together, or even a sit-down leisurely family meal, running away may be the very thing you need....

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