How To Know When To Push And When To Back Off So Your Athlete Daughter Can Play To Her Potential

Welcome back to the racing unstoppable girl athletes podcast. I'm coach Bri, an elite competitor coach for female athletes, and I am excited that you're here. Whether you are just getting started on this sports mom journey, or you have lots of seasons under your belt, this podcast is for you, to help you build confidence and elite performance in your athlete daughter, and for you to enjoy this sports mom journey yourself. Now, before we get into today's episode, I'm actually answering a question from one of you, all around how to know when to push your daughter and when to just hold back, step away, and let her do her thing. Before we get into my thoughts around that. I want to give a shout out to a mom in our community. So her name is Christine. Her daughter, Ashley is a basketball player. And recently she posted something in our community that I thought was pretty awesome. So I want to give Christine a shout out. She said,"I have to share about my daughter, Ashley. We literally signed up for the program just this week. We got as far as the introduction section and she said to me, mom, I feel like they're talking to me. So we took in some of the initial things and chatted about it. I have shifted my reactions and energy as a mom and in turn, Ashley was so much stronger mentally and physically. She had her best game she's ever played this morning. This is only the beginning for her. I already sense the shift in her." So, just want to give a shout out to both of you. You're both doing the work, Christine, you're doing the work to shift how you approach Ashley and some of the things that you're saying before, during, and after games, Ashley, you're doing the work yourself by really committing to your mental game. So, I'm just really excited to see how both of you progress as you continue to go through the program. All right. Moms let's get into today's episode. Like I said, this is a question that I received from our community. So I'm just going to read it. And then I'm gonna quickly go through some of my thoughts and questions that I want you to ask yourself if you find yourself in this situation. So the question is: how do I know when I should push my daughter because I know she's capable of more, and when to back off and just let her have her space and keep my mouth shut? Now, I know we've all been here. Right. So where I am assuming that this mom is coming from is that she sees her daughter and you see your daughter and you see that she's really capable. She could be doing more. Or maybe she's even said to you something like, I want to make varsity, or I want to play in college or you know, these goals that she has. And then you see that she is not doing the things that are required of those goals. So whether that be, she's not training outside of her normal practice hours, and you think that she should be, or you know that she could be going a little harder or trying harder, or she could be doing more, whatever that looks like, you are now in this position as the parent of; okay, how do I push her and, you know, allow her to rise to what I know she's capable of without causing this strain, without nagging, without causing her to shut down or blow up at me? Do I just say nothing? Do I just let her go along and do what she is doing, knowing that there's more in the tank and she should be doing more if she has these goals? So likely that's where you are. And I totally understand. We're just gonna pose some questions just to get our wheels turning in this direction and talk about some strategies that we can approach this with. So first question I want you to ask yourself is: why? Why do you feel the need to push your daughter in this area? What do you even mean by push? Do you mean remind her of her goals? Give her some tough love? Call her out? Tell her, Hey, if you want this, this is what you need to be doing. Why aren't you doing those things? What does that mean? And I want you just to ask yourself, what is this desire to push her rooted in? And your initial reaction is probably going to be something like, well, because she says she wants these goals. And so she needs to be doing these things. And if no one else is going to do it, then I need to do it. Or, if I don't push her, then things are just going to be how they are. And she's never going to get to where she wants to go, and I know she has more in the tank. But I want you to dig a little deeper. Because oftentimes it's some of our own fears, some of our own desires that we want to see in our daughters and in our athletes that are playing out here. And yeah, sometimes athletes do need a little nudge in a direction. We'll talk about that in a second. But I want you just to consider what would happen if you did nothing? What would happen if you let her kind of play this out? What would happen if you let the natural consequences happen of, hey, you say you want this, but you're not exactly doing what I would think that you should be doing in this situation. And she gets to handle and go through the natural consequences of not putting in the extra work. She will learn very quickly that, Hey, when I don't put in work, I don't get the results that I want to get. And so I just want you to pause and ask yourself, you know, what is this desire rooted in? Is it for me? Or is it for her? And what are her goals? Because oftentimes I also see that, you know, parents and athletes are on different pages when it comes to their goals. So we'll have, you know, parents who are like, you know, she has so much potential. She should be playing at this level. She's capable of playing at this level. And then we have an athlete who was saying things like, I don't want to play at that level. I'm happy where I am. Yeah, maybe I could play at a higher level, but that's not what I'm here for. And so you have to know, what are her goals? And for those of you that are saying, well, she has stated that she wants these things. She has stated that she, she wants to go to the next level. Sometimes athletes actually don't know what goes into that. And so in your mind, if you're thinking, well, you know, maybe you played at a high level or you know what it takes to achieve that. And she doesn't really understand that yet. And so we'll talk about some strategies to kind of, to steer her in that direction. But what happens is the more that you push, and the more that you guilt trip her, and the more that you nag, and the more that you come out at with, well, you're not doing it, so you're just never going to achieve that. The more likely she is going to push back. The more likely she will end up not enjoying what she is doing. The more chance she might have of actually walking away from her sport altogether. So we do have to tread this in a very intentional way. We have to be very intentional with where we are pushing and what encouraging we are doing. So, that's the first step, is just ask. Why do I feel the need to push her in this area? And what would happen if I didn't? Maybe she wouldn't achieve those things. And maybe that's okay. Maybe that is just the lesson that she needs. And so that's where I want you to start just with this whole idea of, okay, should I push or should I not? Because I'll be honest. More and more cases than not we could use to kind of swing in the area of backing off a little bit. And the other thing that we know about what is needed for kids to excel and stick with any given sport or activity, they need three things. They need enjoyment, they need ownership and they need intrinsic motivation. I'll say that again, they need enjoyment, they need ownership and they need intrinsic motivation. And all three of those things come from within your athlete daughter. Not from Pental pushing and prodding. Those come from your daughter. So the more she is enjoying what she's doing, the more she has ownership, she has choices, she gets to decide what she does and it doesn't do, the more likely she is actually going to enjoy her sport, stick with her sports and achieve more in her sport. And those are best cultivated through your support, not you're pushing. Okay? So remember that as well. And also remember what is the ultimate goal here? What is the ultimate goal with your daughter competing in her sport? Likely that she is happy, that she is loving her sport, and that she's improving. And with that in mind, we know that too much pushing can lead to maybe short-term gains, because if you're forcing her to do something maybe she will improve just a little bit, but it can lead to longterm disaster. And so we just want to keep that in mind when you are considering, all right, should I push her or should I hold back? Should I push her out so that, should I let her kind of navigate this in her? And while I am being that support right next to her. You know, guiding her, asking her really. Really important questions. You know, in our elite competitive program, we have a whole mom's side of the program where we teach moms a framework it's called the love framework on how to approach their athlete daughters, and questions to get them to reflect and evaluate on themselves on where they want to go on their goals, and if they're on the track to achieve those, rather than just deciding in your mind, this is what you should be doing. If you want to get here, this is what we need to do. Let's do it. Why aren't you doing it? And that's where it kind of goes down this spiral of negativity. Okay. So remember that ultimate goal. The other thing I just want to mention, before we get into some specific specific strategies is, you can actually take the pressure off of yourself in this area. So when we talk about your athlete daughter's sports, there are four main roles. I'm sure you've heard this before. If you've gone to any of our trainings or you follow me on Instagram. There's the coach, the athlete, the ref, and the parent. Right. And when we talk about pushing athletes and you know, getting them to this place where we are trying to get them to reach another level, that is mostly the job of the coach. It's mostly the job of the coach. And your job as her parent is to support her goals and support her decisions and support where she is going. For the most part. Okay? We'll get into some nuances later. Some of you when you're in this position can actually benefit by relieving yourself of this job, if you will, of pushing her. And leaving that coaching and leaving that pushing to her coach. And you get to enjoy the ride you get to enjoy, hey, all right, what are we doing this week? Okay. Where can I support you? What does support look like for you, from me? You say you want that goal, what can I do to support you? If that resonates with you, take it. You can actually relieve yourself of that job and of that pressure. Okay. All right. Let's talk about, really quick before we wrap up, some specific strategies to encourage. So I like to use the word encourage maybe your daughter, maybe you're in this situation where it's like, yeah, she does say she wants these things for sure, and you know, I get it, I don't want to push her. I don't want to nag her, but I do want to encourage her in this direction because I know that if she does get a little bit of encouragement and a little bit of a nudge in that direction, she'll take on and she'll take off. And I get that too. Some athletes do need a little nudge and you could ask yourself, does it need to come from me? Maybe you have another coach friend, or you have a friend who your daughter can actually take a little bit more from and, you know, you can actually utilize that in your advantage as well, too, if it's not coming from you because we know that that relationship it can be tricky, right? If it's, you know, you in the parent role as her support, and then also pushing her and potentially trying to coach her, that gets really messy. And so could this come from someone else? Could it come from a mentor? Could it come from a friend? Could it come from a previous coach or a current coach? Ask yourself that too. Some other strategies to help encourage her towards her goals. And again, her goals. Not your goals, her goals. Our choices. Okay. So maybe it is like, Hey, you know you need to be putting in some extra practice. We need to be doing some juggling. We need to be doing some workouts. A lot of times, athletes just have no clue what to do. So the low-hanging fruit is to make sure she has a plan. If she's supposed to be training outside of her sport, make sure it's very specific. Make sure she knows like, Hey, you know, this is what the workout would look like. It's so overwhelming. Like, you know, as an adult, it's so overwhelming to go in without a plan. If you're going to the gym or, you know, trying to work out, it's just like, I don't even know what to do. So have a plan. Okay, and make sure your daughter has a plan. You can't just expect, like you need to be training outside of practice and then have her know what that means. And a great way you could do this is give her choices. Okay. So if she's expected to do some, some work outside of practice and be like, Hey. You know what? You got some time, would you like to do that 20 minutes of juggling on Wednesday? Or would you like to do it on Friday? You know, we've got the time we're going to go. I'm going to go to the track and I'm going to do some laps and you're, you can come with me, bring a ball. Which day do you want to do that this week? Okay. So give her some choices in that area, depending on your daughter's age, that could work really well. Some athletes really love to be challenged. Okay. So they rise to that challenge. So if she is working on a certain skill or a certain something, so say she's working on her free throws. And she shot, you know, seven out of 10 and you're like, dang, seven out of ten is good. Think you can make eight out of 10? What do you think about that? And again, you gotta know your athlete. You have to know your athlete in this situation because we talk in the elite competitive program about, you know, when we do focus on outcomes like that, that can add extra pressure. But if you know your athlete loves challenges like that, then that could be another thing that can kind of push her in a really encouraging way. Now, one thing that I find is probably the most effective is collaboration and also modeling for her what this looks like. Do not underestimate the impact of you showing your daughter what it looks like to be disciplined and work towards goals. And what that looks like and how it doesn't rely on motivation and how sometimes you don't feel like doing things. The easiest one to give an example of is working out. Maybe you, you don't feel like going to the gym every day. You don't feel like doing your yoga practice, but you have this goal of being consistent in this area of feeling your best and so you're going to stick with it and you're going to create a plan for yourself. You're going to rest when it's necessary. So modeling that is really great. And then the other piece of this is collaboration; doing things with your daughter. And when we create this atmosphere of like, Hey, let's do it together. Then that really creates this really special environment where it's not this, you know, power imbalance where it's like, I'm just telling you what to do and you better do it, why are you not doing it? It's Hey, let's do this together. What day of the week, do you want to you know, go with me to the gym? You can work on whatever you want to work on. I'm going to lift some weights, whatever it is. Okay. And that is a great way to help just create the opportunity for that. We talk about you know, the parents rules to shape the environment and provide the opportunity you shape the environment by how you show up and what you're modeling. You provide the opportunities by giving her the space to do it. And giving her the opportunity to, you know, do what she says she wants to do and pursue her goals. And then I mentioned this earlier in the podcast, but; asking her, after you know what her goals are. After she has told you, Hey, I want to achieve this, or I want to do this. Ask her; that is awesome. I really want to help you get there. What the support looked like from me? And have her come up with some ideas. If you're like, Hey, if you can't think of anything, you know, we can brainstorm together. But what does support look like for me? Does it look like I'm doing something with you? You does it look like creating space in our calendar? Does it look like reminding you, does it look like coming up with a calendar together so that we can stay on track? What the support looked like so that I can help you get to where you want to go? All right, moms. I hope this was helpful. I know we went over a lot of things. The last thing I'll leave you with is that a lot of times when athletes lack motivation in this area, it's because they actually don't know what their goals are, and they don't have a vision of the athlete that they can become. And so that is something that, you know, when athletes actually enter into the elite competitor program, that is a first thing we go over. Who do you want to be as an athlete? What do you want to accomplish? Yes. But who do you want to be? And how do you want to show up? And we do very specific visualization around this. Then they create a visualization that they do every single day; their daily mindset routine. And we find the athletes who have this, it's not that they feel motivated all the time. That's impossible. But the athletes that do this are much more motivated, much less likely to get off track, because they know; they know where they're going. They know where they're headed. And now, you know where they're going and where they're headed as well. Okay. I hope this is helpful. One favor I can ask of you; if you find this episode helpful or this podcast helpful, it really helps us if you rate, review and share the podcast. So just send this link to another sports mom friend who could benefit from it, give us a rating and give us a review. If you have the time, we would greatly appreciate it, and it actually helps you as well, because it allows us to be able to bring on guests to this podcast to best serve you. All right, moms. I'm coach Bri. I will see you in the next episode of the raising unstoppable girl athletes podcast.