I am writing these blogs in this series to help parents, especially the ones who were brought up by boomers and were born the last year of boomers. I feel like we align more with the Gen x age group.

Raising Student-Athletes

Since I raised student-athletes as someone from this mindset of boomers, I made sure to do things differently. I made sure to listen to my child’s needs and their feelings. This part comes from my book, PARENTING SCHOLAR ATHLETES, CHAPTER 6, Shift Your Intention to Guide and Transform. My main intention of writing this book was to help other moms raising student-athletes. Also, I wanted to help moms raise independent and responsible individuals by sharing the spirit strategies and real-life stories of adversity that my girls endured.

Doing Things Differently

We were people who kind of feared things, so we made sure to bring up our children differently than we were brought up.

In this part, we are talking about how parents need to let go of control of our kids and let them speak up. Because we never had a chance as kids to explain ourselves or have a say, we want to be sure our kids and grandkids have this skill.

Help Them Learn to Communicate

Since some of us never had the chance to ask questions to our parents, we lack some self-esteem. Most likely, our parents didn’t want to hear it from us. They were actually trying to deal with all the baggage of their toxic upbringing. Many of our parents came from the depression era, came from other countries as immigrants, or suffered horrible traumas.

Help Them to Stick Up for Themselves

Although as a parent of a student-athlete, we want to help stick up for our kids or grandkids, we might feel the need to be involved when there is a problem and want to be the one to converse with the coach. What we might feel is that we are being helpful, but not necessarily.

It is really important to let them speak for themselves. We want to help them transform into the best people possible. It is crucial that our kids learn and practice speaking to elders with respect. They need to repeat actions of using kind words when they question something or ask for what they want. As they carry out this practice, it is important for them to know how to speak to their future college coaches.

Real-Life Adversity is the Lesson

Here is the story of adversity that my volleyball player had to endure. While playing at a tournament as a middle school player, she found herself standing on the sideline a lot since her original coach was absent. The assistant was in charge and funny how his daughter, who played the same position, played most of the games. She felt she was a good player, but couldn’t understand why this coach wasn’t playing her.

Because she couldn’t deal with the negative thoughts in her head, she became very angry and walked to the van after a particular game.

Practice Calming Your Child

In this situation, I learned there are things we need to let happen as parents. It is important to let them talk, let them feel their emotions. She wanted to quit altogether. In high emotional times in their sport or high-level class, flight may be the way they want to act. By letting her stay in flight of quitting, we learned how to maneuver through.

Steps to Help Them Get Grounded & Feel Their Feelings

First, I let her have her cry and let all her feelings come out. Next, I had her think about her future in volleyball as well as life without it. I began to ask her what she liked about her sport. While she went on about everything she loved, her face lit up while she listed all the things she loved about the game.

After that, I tried to show her what the future might hold for her. I reminded her there will be many more times where she will be on the sideline and this was practice for life. If she was smart, she wouldn’t take it personally, but use it as a tool to learn the true meaning of endurance. Be a parent who steps back allowing them to learn how to sustain and tolerate certain things that might not feel good, and persevere.

Let Them Go and Watch the Magic

Now that she gave herself permission to let out her frustration, she thought about how much she truly loved her sport and decided to speak to the coach. Although she would’ve loved for me to do it, she had to muster up her courage and go for it. I did let the assistant coach know she wanted to speak to him, but then it was all her. She practiced in the van with me before confronting him. Even though it turned out that he simply forgot to play her, it was a great starting point of practicing to speak to a coach in a responsible manner.

Communication Skills for the Years to Come

They must learn to speak up for themselves. Not only now to become a better player, to understand things in the world as you get older, but if you’re going to go play your sport in college, you have to be able to speak for yourself.

In addition to learning to speak to their coach, they need to be able to speak to their teachers in high school and professors in college. While playing sports in high school and college and missing lessons, it is crucial to be able to communicate your needs of extensions of classwork and papers due.

Let Them Be Responsible & Independent

Let’s help our children becoming these responsible and independent people that we want them to be. We need to let them go and we have to remember that maybe we are feeling a certain way like butting in and wanting to take over or do it all for them. But bottom line, our actions may be something that we need to work on.

To all the wonderful grandparents and parents, take a breath and know how wonderful it is when you let them practice this skill of communication and start taking things on their own. I watched mine start at age 11 and progress through high school and college. It helps them become wonderful communicators.

So be YOU, continue to show your love, and expand your heart.