Sports have the potential to be one of the great learning experiences in your child’s life. Long after they have forgotten the final scores, the lessons your children can learn from sports can last a lifetime.
Letting Go of Inhibitions
For one thing, sports are a great way to help children open up and share their feelings. This can be especially helpful for kids who are holding in a lot of emotions, to their detriment. Such is the case with Regina George in Mean Girls, who spends the movie being aggressively territorial as the consummate Queen Bee before getting some of that aggression out at the end by playing lacrosse.
The same goes when it comes to preparing for those tryouts. If your child feels overly tense, aggressive, or worried, not only will they likely underperform, but they’ll be more likely to overreact to any shortcomings as well.
For the Love of the Game
While it can be easy to get lost in a world of bright lights and big endorsement hopes, you have to remind your child that sports are first and foremost about the love of the game. Without that passion, they won’t do well at the tryout, and won’t feel good about it afterward.
Building Confidence
Doing well in any field when you don’t believe in yourself can be extremely difficult, if not practically impossible. It is, thus, quite important for parents of children trying out for sports to do whatever they can to boost their confidence in themselves before the tryout. While positive thinking alone won’t get them that roster spot, it will be hard for them to get there without it.
Accepting Failure
Even Babe Ruth struck out from time to time. Even the best actors and actresses missed out on some of the roles they had hoped to land. Everyone has to deal with failure from time to time. For as much as it might hurt, you have to prepare your child for the possibility they might fail, and explain that it’s not the end of the world.
With those things in mind, your child will be able to try out for sports with the right mindset.