Janis B. Meredith's Blog: JBM Thinks Sportsparenting, page 82

Mental Toughness and The Imposter

Does your child struggle with mental toughness in sports? I can’t count the number of times I wished that mental toughness could be bottled and sold like vitamins that I could hand out to my child every morning with his breakfast. The other day I read a chapter* that shed some light on the idea [...]

In the Spotlight: Helping Your Child Deal with Extra Attention

Living in the spotlight can have disastrous results. Lindsay Lohan. Miley Cyrus. Need I say more? Obviously, most of us do not have kids who will be in the spotlight to that degree. But there could seasons when your child is garnering a good deal of attention as he plays youth sports–or sings in the [...]

Good Sportsmanship: How to Foster it in Your Kids

Good sportsmanship is one of the benefits to getting your kids involved in playing youth sports. Some people define good sportsmanship as the “golden rule” of sports — treating the people you play with and against as you’d like to be treated yourself. Your child demonstrates good sportsmanship when he shows respect for himself, his [...]

Age Fraud in Youth Sports: How Bad is the Problem?

Is age fraud a problem in your youth sports world? There were many times when my kids were playing sports when I had real doubts about the age of some of their opponents.  Age fraud means that the athlete–mostly likely the athlete’s parents–lies about the age in order to either gain a competitive edge, appear [...]

8 Ways to Help Your Child Cope With Sports Pressure

Is your young athlete feeling sports pressure?   Is he struggling to cope with the demands of competition? First let’s say that not all pressure is bad. In fact, two types of stress have been identified: Distress is a bad type of stress that arises when you must adapt to too many negative demands. Continuous struggling [...]

Making Mistakes in Sports: how does your child recover?

Making mistakes in sports is part of the game. Every athlete needs to know, believe, and act upon this fact. To have any kind of success, an athlete must accept that making mistakes in sports is inevitable, and he must then realize that his ability to handle those errors will result in him moving forward [...]

Bad Officials: what’s a sports parent to do?

What are bad officials? Is it someone who makes a call we disagree with? Someone who doesn’t call enough fouls or penalties? Someone who is thin-skinned and can’t stand a little bit of disagreement from the spectators? I think if we are being honest, we would say that the term “bad” official is not really [...]

Parents and coaches: How are their jobs different?

Parents and coaches should be on the same team in youth sports. They should both be all about helping kids grow, learn, and have fun in competition, but that is where the similarities should end. The Coach’s Job Although a coach may have a child on the team, his job during practice and games is [...]

Raising children: a job you can’t do alone

Raising children is a monumental job, one that, quite honestly, is more effective if you don’t try to do it all by yourself. Part of a parent’s job, I believe, it to surround your kids with other adults that will be good role models who will pour something positive into their lives. My husband I [...]

Teaching kids to work: 10 ways to get them laboring

Teaching kids to work: a good discussion on Labor Day, don’t you think? As parents, we are reminded on this day that the ability to work is a privilege. But how do you convince your kids of that? Teaching kids to work is one of the many challenges of parenting. But with these 10 suggestions, [...]