Janis B. Meredith's Blog: JBM Thinks Sportsparenting, page 25

Why MUST Parents and Coaches Be Partners?

In an ideal season, parents and coaches work together; sports parents feel supported by the coach and the coach feels supported by the parents. Everyone–players, coaches and parents–benefit from a unified effort. However, we know that a parent-coach partnership can sometimes be a myth and the ones who suffer the most from it are the...

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Two Ways for Your Young Athlete to Face Pain

Is your young athlete facing pain right now? Maybe they are not getting the playing time they want, having trouble getting along with teammates, at odds with their coach, or disappointed with their own performance. The pain of disappointments and frustrations are inevitable in youth sports and you are left with a choice: How will...

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Is Your Child Ready to Play at a Higher Level? Here’s 3 Next Steps for You and Your Young Athlete

To every sports parent, I say, I hope your young athlete is enjoying their youth sports experience. I hope they are having fun, growing, making friends, developing skills, and learning valuable life-impacting lessons. I recognize, however, that for many of you, the youth sports experience has become more serious because in the process of learning...

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The Voices in Your Child’s Head That Are Enemies of Success

Your child’s success will not depend merely on their skills. Throughout 22 years of being a sports mom, I’ve seen my kids succeed and fail many times based on what was going on in their heads. All the skill in the world cannot stand up to the power of a mindset, and the voices that...

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The Day My Daughter Said, “I Quit!”

When youth sports gets hard, it’s no surprise that kids are tempted to quit. Nobody likes facing difficulty and through 22 years of being a sports mom, there were numerous occasions when our kids were discouraged and even if they didn’t say it, we knew they were toying with the idea of quitting mid-season. There...

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Why Your Child’s Failure is the Key to Success

One of the hardest parts of being a sports mom was watching my kids experience failure at something they’d worked so hard to achieve. It’s often painful for parents to watch their child’s growing-up process because that almost always includes watching their child’s failure. When parents think about failure, they tend to think of it...

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7 Rookie Sports Parenting Mistakes

Sports parenting mistakes will happen all along the journey, but there are errors that new sports moms and dads tend to make simply because they are inexperienced in the youth sports world. When I look back to my rookie days as a sports mom, I cringe at some of the early mistakes I made. I...

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5 Tips for Effectively Confronting a Coach

Confronting a coach is not a habit that I advocate when a parent is unhappy with playing time, position, or even coaching strategy. But I know that there will be times when you feel you must do it anyway for one of those purposes, or even for a reason that has nothing to do with...

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Why Athletic Talent isn’t Enough

Your child may be an amazing athlete, but athletic talent is not enough for them to achieve their goals. In a study that is rather long and tedious, author Daniel Chambliss addresses The Mundanity of Excellence as it relates to Olympic swimmers. His conclusions go against the grain of what we see a lot in...

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Screen Time and Athletes: What Should a Parent Do?

This post contains affiliate links. Screen time and athletes is a nagging issue that parents have to deal with today. Too much screen time for kids isn’t life-threatening, but the effects of digital media abuse can add up over the years and turn into bad habits that become harder and harder for parents to control....

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