Today we have another article from Ethan J. Skolnick Lead Sports Writer covering the Miami Heat and the NBA and Dr. Andrea Corn a licensed psychologist.
In this video, they share tips on how to overcome fear and build confidence for youth athletes.
You want to be able to motivate youth athletes to overcome fear and build confidence by being helpful and making constructive suggestions, because intimidation and belittling is not going to be effective at all.
It is very important for parents who may believe their child is talented, or even for the coach who is trying to motivate through fear of failure, it is not going to work. It is going to have the opposite effect. If anything, that is going to undermine the child’s self-confidence.
They are still learning how to play these games. If Jason Taylor says, “Hey, we don’t get it right every time,” so why be so hard on the kid who is just learning?
Whether it is how to tackle, whether how to throw a pass, whatever the sport may be, you have to have that latitude to be accepting and so the child can accept him or herself.
We created a chapter basically on failure, because a lot of parents are afraid of their kids failing and they are afraid of how it reflects on them when their kids fail.
They are living vicariously through their kids, so they see this as some kind of shortcoming on their own part. They don’t treat the kids in a way the kids feel like they can recover from it.
I went to a lot of athletes to ask that question, “What was your biggest failure?” They were extremely happy to talk about it.
Mostly because they felt, almost uniformly again, that it was a defining moment in their lives. It did not take them long to come up with examples.
We have numerous examples from Chipper Jones leaving his bat out of his shoulder when he was in a championship game; to Shane Battier shanking a punt in front of 70,000 people in a punt pass competition; to Chris Mullin who would go on to the Hall of Fame scoring on his own basket when he was nine years old.
What we got from them on a consistent basis was that somebody was there to tell them it was alright. It didn’t mean that it was alright to fail and that you shouldn’t try to practice and get better, but that failure is a part of sports. There is a winner and loser in every situation.
The best baseball players in the world don’t get hits 70 percent of the time. The best quarterbacks in the world don’t complete 40 percent of their passes on a regular basis.
The whole idea was getting that message across to the kids that you are going to fail again, but next time if you want to give yourself a better chance to succeed, you have to practice. You have to put in the time. That was what we got.
What I think will help parents is again to understand that for every game that is played one team is going to win and one team is going to lose.
Children in elementary school and early middle can be very concrete thinkers meaning they see things in black and white.
If they lose, they feel like they are losers, but losing does not make you a loser. It is very important that parents make that point to children.
Yes, your team may have lost, but there can always be something constructive or positive that they can point out. “Look, you got to second base. Or look how many baskets you got to shoot. Or how many minutes you played.”
What they have to find is within the game things that they can bring out and tell their children to help their children not to just define it in these all or nothing terms.
There are going to be games where the team wins and the child did not play well or the child played superbly and their team lost. They have to be able to take away from all of these situations.
Rather than having the child fear failure and be so afraid of their team losing, in a way you have to embrace it. You have to help them understand that it is going to happen. It is going to be okay. There is going to be another day. You going to go out again and you are going to play.
Rather than being something to be afraid of and avoid, look at all the lessons that you learned. You need to learn how to be resilient.
You don’t want to just give up and quit. Because everything that happens truly on the playing field, is a metaphor for another classroom whether it is in school or later on in life.
You have to learn how to deal with adversity. You have to learn to deal with difficult situations such as a loss and a defeat, but it doesn’t mean you are defeated. It is just a game.
Ethan J. Skolnick is a Lead Writer covering the Miami Heat and the NBA. Prior to joining Bleacher Report and Turner Sports full-time, he had been a South Florida sportswriter for 17 years, covering all the major pro and college teams and just about every major sporting event for The Palm Beach Post, The South Florida Sun-Sentinel and The Miami Herald. In addition to his duties for Bleacher Report and Turner Sports, he still appears regularly as a co-host and Miami Heat analyst on The Ticket radio station based out of Miami, on 790AM and 104.3 FM.
Dr. Andrea Corn is a licensed psychologist whospecializes in the diagnosis and treatment of emotional and behavioral problems affecting children, adolescents, and adults. Areas of specialization include reducing anxiety, treating depression, unresolved anger, or learning how to better handle your relationships.
To order their book Raising The Game, click here.