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Five College Parenting Tips - Courtesy of Excellent Coaches Parenting Strategies – August 2011
Copyright © 2011 by Kay Kimball Gruder, SuccessfulCollegeParenting.com
As the parent of an athlete I spend a lot of time listening to coaches and observing organized sports. Like in any role, there are some coaches who are good, some who are poor, and there are those who are masterful. As a certified parent coach I often see parallels between great coaching and excellent parenting and I have gained strategies and tips by observing, listening, and trying out new approaches – expanding my parenting toolkit. Join me in the land of:
§ “no excuses;”
§ “anticipate and prepare;”
§ “no complaining;”
§ “practice creates confidence;”
§ “adverse circumstances are inevitable.”
Tip: Excellent coaches don’t accept excuses. They know that when you give someone an excuse for failure they will often take it. Think about it, we can usually come up with a list of excuses for why we’ve done something poorly, but I heard a coach once say, “Excuses don’t get you any closer to doing well.”
Parenting Focus: Guide your focus or that of your student’s on reasons for doing well. Shape conversations toward thinking about future steps or actions that will more likely yield desired results. Be aware if you make excuses, because if you do, you’ve probably set that pattern into motion for your children.
Tip: Excellent coaches help their athletes to anticipate and prepare. They establish clear expectations early-on and help their athlete to think ahead. As a coach will tell you, “It is far easier to deal with challenges when you anticipate what might occur” – and I would add -- when you also anticipate what you might need to know or act on.
Parenting Focus: Seek to be informed so that you can anticipate likely challenges and think in advance about how you want to support or guide your student. You can take this thinking a step further and think about what skill, lesson, or perspective you desire your son or daughter to gain as a result of experiencing a particular challenge. Anticipating challenges can also be expanded to thinking about opportunities that your student will likely encounter in college – things like study abroad, internships away from home, etc. Use your time to become informed and then you can more effectively discuss options and opportunities with your student.
Tip: Excellent coaches don’t tolerate complaining. They know that when you open up the complaint department things seem even worse than they are, and then energy is taken away from getting back on track or solving the problem.
Parenting Focus: Monitor how much and how often you complain and do the same when listening to your son or daughter. We can all agree that complaining makes a bad situation worse and that it takes you or your student further from the actual problem or situation. I always suggest, “Do something – don’t just complain.” Doing something might include talking about options, staying informed, researching information – any activity that will lead you or your student closer to a solution and the feeling of being competent.
Tip: Excellent coaches expect their athlete to continually practice in order to develop proficiency. They know that in order to excel one must always be expanding, reinforcing and developing skills.
Parenting Focus: Consider keeping your parenting tool kit vital by seeking new strategies, learning what is working for others, and understanding student development in the college years. Learn about the resources that are available to help your son or daughter to become a better student. These might include an academic success or academic learning center, peer tutoring, faculty open office hours, academic advisors, counselors, etc. Talk about these resources as natural options for your student to access. Students who take advantage of the supports around them, who build in time to do a few more problems, to study a bit more, and who extend their learning even just a little bit beyond the classroom lesson, work more efficiently and have greater confidence than students who do just the minimum.
Tip: Excellent coaches know that adverse circumstances are inevitable. They help their athlete to dig deeper,
to look harder, and to tap into an inner reserve. In those moments the coach often believes in the athlete more than the athlete believes in himself or herself, but it is that focused positive energy that then helps the athlete to push through, overcome, or recover.
Parenting Focus: When adversity emerges, either by chance or by one’s own doing, move to a place of compassion and resist making judgments. Be more steadfast and less reactive. When possible, create the time and space you need to gain clarity, and take greater care of yourself so that you can be a strong support to your son or daughter. Meet adversity with a sense of possibility – and help your student to visualize what things can look like, be like, once the adverse experience is over – because it will eventually be over.
I never envisioned being the parent of a child who participates in organized team sports, or that I would have
a daughter who lights up every time that she has a basketball in her hand. I never pictured myself attending weekly games or living in a home where the sports channel was viewed far and above anything else. But the truth is that we can discover things in what might seem the least likely of places. Just as we seek to enrich the lives of our children with opportunities and challenges, we benefit when we infuse our parenting with new information and approaches.
“Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.” - Douglas Adams
Kay Kimball Gruder
