“Teach your Children
Well: Parenting for Authentic Success” by Madeline Levine
I recommend reading
it. I found that it had many good insights about the developing
teenager. One thing that is clear is that we coaches can play a vital
role as trusted advisers at a time when children need to achieve independence
from their parents, but are still not ready (are we ever?) to be completely
autonomous.
One of my big goals for
our program is that we produce young adults with excellent RESILIENCE.
Many kids arrive at college in what college administrators call a
“failure-deprived state”. They have been so coddled and supported that
they have never experienced failure and learned good coping skills. Ski
racing is wonderfully complicated and gives our kids plenty of chances for “successful
failures”.
Resilience is not a
character trait but a learned skill. It’s what we teach. Ms.
Levine suggests seven important coping skills that teens need to learn over the
four or five years of adolescence when we are coaching them. I’ve listed
them below with some ideas about how we can help develop these skills. As
always, I’ll be interested in your ideas and suggestions.
1) Resourcefulness
2) Enthusiasm
3) Creativity
4) Work-ethic
5) Self-control
6) Self-esteem
7) Self-efficacy
RESOURCEFULNESS
Can the teen solve
problems in an ethical (no cheating) and healthy way without his or her parents?
Can the teen self-soothe, calm down, and stay focused when things go wrong?
We can develop this by
having kids be responsible for their own equipment and training. The J2s
do not have the ability to plan their own training and need to be told exactly
what to do. But, by the time they are second year J1s they can think
about their training, and figure out how to get their workouts done despite
obstacles like school work, family parties, and transportation. We can
teach psychological skills like visualization and meditation.
ENTHUSIASM
Junior cross-country
skiers tend to be an enthusiastic group. That’s good because zest is the
internal driver of accomplishment. However, it’s important for us to
always remember the joy of skiing, to have fun, and to demonstrate and
encourage love of the sport.
CREATIVITY
Most people think of
creativity as only meaning the arts, but in fact it is the ability to come up
with original and useful ideas. Business leaders value it more than any
other quality. And creativity is
the opposite of boredom. Ski training requires a structured program,
but it can have much room for creative
work. How can a teen arrange his or her schedule to get in
workouts? What training can he or she do to address a weakness? How
do we ski a piece of terrain for optimal speed? I think all of us coaches
enjoy coaching because it gives us the chance to be so creative, but we need to
not solve all the juicy problems ourselves, but give our athletes the chance to
solve problems, and enjoy and develop
their creativity.
WORK-ETHIC
We coach only two kinds
of kids: crazy or lazy. The lazy ones are easier to deal with. Just
keep nudging them to do the work. The crazy ones are sometimes more
of a challenge. They want to work too hard and we need to rein them in and show
the difference between hard-work and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The team is especially important for both
types of athletes as they will gravitate to the group norm and do what the
other kids are doing.
SELF-CONTROL
We all know that it
takes many years to develop self-control. How do we help? First, we
must demonstrate it ourselves. Second, we
make the rules clear. We suggest how to follow them. In the famous
Marshmallow Test four year-olds could resist eating a marshmallow (to get a
delayed but bigger reward) if they didn’t think about it and focused on other
things. We can teach how to focus on long-term rewards (e.g. trip to Alaska
in March!) and remind kids how today’s decision to work will pay off
later. After a really bad race we can say “Go for a ski. You have ten
minutes to mourn this bad day. Then, you need to come back and be ready
to move forward” (credit to Donna Smyth for this idea).
SELF-ESTEEM
We want our kids to feel
good about themselves. How? Self-esteem comes from the combination
of competence and confidence. Our kids are driven to be competent.
We can help them gain confidence by being honest with them about what they are
good at and what they are bad at. We push them out of their comfort zones to
try new things when we know they can handle it, and praise them when they
really do achieve something. One of our most important jobs is helping
them break big goals down into very small, short-term goals so that they get
constant feedback that they are acquiring new competence that will build their
confidence for additional effort.
SELF-EFFICACY
Kids need to feel “What
I do makes a difference”. We can show them that if they work harder, eat
better, sleep well, and are organized then they will ski faster. They
need to be actively involved in their own development so they grow their sense
of personal power. We coaches can make clear the consequences of
decisions, let them try, let them fail, and help them learn from their
failures. We can also help them develop efficacy in relationships by
emphasizing the importance of supporting their teammates.
