What To Do When Your Athlete/Child Wants to Quit? As parents, we can be creative and try to keep competitive sports fun and social for our kids. But what do you do when this doesn’t work? When you can see they are unhappy, and you start to doubt this is the right path for your child? I had this exact situation with one of my boys. My middle son had a goal to play golf at Stanford from a young age. He set his goals, did the work, day in and day out without question. He loved it…
When Epstein began writing about the data that athletes who go on to become the elite are usually not the specializers, the reactions from parents was pure disbelief. Can’t be true! Maybe in some other sport, but that isn’t true in our sport! Right?! We all learned from Gladwell’s 10,000 hours, deliberate practice, Tiger Mom, and from Earl Woods developing Tiger, before the age of 2. We all get caught up in the rat race to keep up, but research is showing that this form of early hyper-specialization isn’t the…
After watching Rafa win his 12th French Open, I revisited Toni Nadal’s TEDx Talk on how he built a champion in Rafa through building his character. It is one of my all-time favorites and a must see for all parents and coaches. Toni rarely speaks of the technical work he did with Rafa but speaks often and openly about his building character as the key to Rafa’s success. As many of us in the tennis world know, throughout Rafa Nadal’s career, his uncle, mentor and former coach, Toni Nadal, has been…
Do we need to use online schooling? Does my child have a chance to make it in tennis, if she doesn’t do online schooling? In all my work with junior tennis, this is probably the question I get most often from parents. I am thinking back, and I honestly can’t remember one parent presentation or workshop, where the question wasn’t asked. The answers are no, and yes. Having said that, it is a family decision and what works for one family, doesn’t always work for another family. So, how do you like…
School is back in session, and that means many of our athletes are back on the courts or playing fields. I have two children playing football, one in high school and one in college. I will be honest that having my children play football scares me. (I am the one silently saying her “Hail Mary’s” that no one gets injured during the games.) I am also the coach who is nervous having young players on the tennis courts all day in extreme heat. Unfortunately, we all know that things can go wrong, very wrong. Let’…