Children and young people will experience a number of highs and lows within school, sport and life at home. The role for us in their support network is to help them process how those experiences make them feel and how those feelings influence their thoughts about the experience. This will help them to be more proactive around similar experiences in the future.
The highs…
There will be a number of experiences that young people perceive as highs, or positive.
When these happen, we may notice that it gives them a boost in terms of:
Enjoyment
Motivation
Confidence
Developing practical skills
There will be moments when we need to help children understand the good things they are doing and take time to celebrate (some are just keen to move on to the next goal, or want to focus on improvements).
Alternatively, there may be times when we need to help them learn about keeping their feet on the ground or being a more gracious winner.
How does your child currently respond to the highs?
The lows…
On the flip side, there will be a number of experiences that young people perceive as lows, or negatives.
When these happen, we may notice that it knocks them in terms of:
Enjoyment
Motivation
Confidence
Developing practical skills
Support through challenges that arise will help children navigate their emotions and learn from the experience. We need to try and take opportunities to reinforce unconditional love and acceptance regardless of performance and provide stability without conditions in line with your values as a family.
How does your child currently respond to the lows?
Balancing objectives and goals…
There will be times when we have to balance the aims of our sport performance with wellbeing and/or learning life skills.
We won't always achieve the outcome goals that we aimed for but we can take so much value from every experience to help us move forward.
Sport experiences can help us to cope with and make sense of many everyday life experiences as we learn to transfer our knowledge across environments.
This content has been developed as part of our #itsmyjourney project with Valleys Gymnastics Academy
Very helpful