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The Psychology of Tennis Parenting
The following post is an excerpt from The Psychology of Tennis Parenting.
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The Psychology of Listening
For a youngster to mentally process your message, the athlete must pay attention to the essence of the ideas. Most children never get past their parent’s tone of voice and nonverbal clues. Digesting the message isn’t easy for most junior athletes. Once the message is perceived as negative, they stop listening. So, use a bit of reverse psychology and apply optimistic solutions instead of the laundry list of their problems. This method detaches the athlete from their ego.
Young athletes are typically lost in their judgmental thoughts, so the listener often distorts the message.
“One who understands what to say has knowledge; one who understands when to say it has wisdom.”
Magnifying the negative and forgetting the positive is a typical communication obstruction. Every athlete, parent, and coach have a unique communication style. There are four basic communication styles (passive, aggressive, passive-aggressive, and dominating). It’s important to understand that if your style isn’t working, change your communication system to fit your listener.
Solution: Understand your communication system. Try to downgrade your tone of voice to a calm, relaxed cadence to get your meaning heard. When choosing to discuss their failures, switch the problems with the solutions. Add player accountability to problem-solving using the “Ask, don’t tell.” teaching method. After all, top athletes are nurtured to solve their problems.
Try to focus on giving without expecting, argue less, stop comparing your child with their peers, avoid participating in gossip, eliminate judgment, and choose not to live vicariously through your child.
