Parenting an Athlete: What Prioritizing Mental Fitness Looks Like

Quickly afterward, Livingstone started the work to face down the mental health challenges of hysteria, despair, stress, and low vanity related along with her coaching. She returned to swimming even stronger as a Division 1 school athlete—and ultimately constructed a profession as a advisor for athletes, coaches, and groups specializing in psychological well being and efficiency.

Now a mom of 4, she will be able to’t assist however suppose again to the emotional highs and lows of her swimming profession as she watches and guides her tween and teenage youngsters in their very own athletic pursuits. As Livingstone and her eldest daughter, Kylie, returned from a weekend hockey event, anger, frustration, and disappointment hung within the air. Kylie’s group had gained the primary two video games of the necessary event—a showcase for faculty scouts—however the third had been a blowout, and never in Kylie’s group’s favor.

Livingstone had a flashback to a nationwide championship meet in highschool the place her swimming efficiency wasn’t as much as her normal customary. Out of the pool, she recalled, her mother greeted her and stated, “Good job, I really like you”—and Livingstone exploded at her. “How might you say ‘good job’ after that?!”

Associated Tales

Now going through her personal daughter’s disappointment, what was the proper factor say?

#OlympicParents

Since video of gymnast Aly Raisman’s mother and father within the stands contorting alongside along with her uneven bars routine on the 2012 Summer time Olympics went viral, the Olympic highlight has expanded from the athletic and emotional journey of athletes to that of their mother and father, too.

Throughout the 2016 Summer time Olympics, cameras eagerly re-trained their lenses on Raisman’s mother and father and others, and articles and documentaries got here out about parental dedication and the way elevating an Olympic athlete can “take over” family life. Whereas the COVID-rescheduled Summer time Olympics of 2021 restricted family attendance in Tokyo, the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing produced loads of warm-and-fuzzy viral guardian moments, just like the heart-stealing indicators and tears of Chloe Kim’s father.

Now, because the 2024 Paris Olympics coincide with the supremacy of bite-size viral video made for social media, media shops are already going all-in on the phenomenon of the Olympic guardian. NBC is churning out videos of parents from the trials as they twist, yell, and claw whereas watching their youngsters. Information shops are doing roundups of their favourite household reactions. Throughout the video games, the community even plans to outfit some mother and father with heart rate monitors, and can show these parental palpitations on the display whereas the wearers’ youngsters compete.

“Can we assist domesticate an elite degree of efficiency and likewise [raise them to be] wholesome and nicely and intact?”—Samantha Livingstone, M.S.Ed., Olympic gold medalist and efficiency advisor

Whether or not you’ll be able to commiserate with these mother and father and the stress of watching your youngster try one thing large, or if you happen to really feel like they actually need to take a chill capsule, consideration increasing from Olympic athlete to Olympic household may truly be factor.

“There could also be a whole lot of profit and upside to placing the highlight on mother and father to humanize us,” Livingstone says. “I do not know that sufficient folks discuss, ‘Yeah, I am a guardian, and I additionally really feel all this stuff.’”

That dialog could also be useful for each mother and father and their youngster athletes. How mother and father navigate the emotional ups and downs of their youngster’s sport can have a direct effect on that youngster’s psychological well being—or, because it’s identified in sports activities, “mental fitness.” Psychological health is the flexibility to climate wins and losses, ups and downs, to know when to push via challenges, and when to pause, to keep up an immense degree of dedication.

“Can we assist domesticate an elite degree of efficiency and likewise [raise them to be] wholesome and nicely and intact?” asks Livingstone. “That does not imply we’re not going to face disappointment and face challenges, the truth is that is a part of the method. However can we do each collectively?”

Stress on athletes and their mother and father has reached a fever pitch

Contemplating the total impression of a household’s involvement in sports activities—and why that involvement has change into so intense—is a crucial place to start out when answering the query of how you can assist a baby develop psychological health. Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka opening up about their burnout, despair, and anxiousness as they pulled out of the 2020 Olympics and 2021 French Open, respectively, has led some to wonder how we’ve gotten to this place—and to a world the place over 70 percent of young athletes experience burnout¹ by the age of 13, based on a 2024 report from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“Sports activities are such a robust and enjoyable motivator to maintain youth bodily and mentally lively, however some youth might really feel strain from mother and father, coaches, and others to measure success solely by efficiency,” Joel S. Brenner, MD, MPH, a fellow of the AAP and an creator of the report, stated in an AAP statement.

It is pure to marvel about mother and father’ position on this state of affairs. Are mother and father getting too invested within the athletic achievements of their offspring, placing them on groups and in environments the place they’re meant to win in any respect prices, even typically risking their safety²? Are these youngsters simply a part of the era experiencing unprecedented levels of stress, which many specialists attribute to an incapability to tolerate damaging feelings? Are they merely a product of a world the place parents attack referees once they suppose their youngsters have been handled unfairly?

How mother and father of elite athletes can or ought to thread the needle between being motivating and supportive with out being too demanding has lengthy been a supply of fascination. For higher or worse, the athletes of fogeys like Tiger Woods and the Williams sisters are well-known (and notorious) for seemingly serving to their youngsters obtain greatness via their very own time, cash, ardour, and sometimes, “robust love.”

And whereas fathers have traditionally occupied the position of hyper-involved guardian/coach, today, that involvement is typical of the entire household.

“Being an elite athlete takes an enormous dedication when it comes to time, effort, and sadly, within the U.S., cash,” says Travis Dorsch, PhD, affiliate professor and founding director of the Households in Sport Lab at Utah State College. “Mother and father are inherently concerned from a really younger age. Certainly, they’re usually those who introduce their youngsters to sport and assist their journey for so long as it lasts. They serve a number of roles: coach, launderer, nutritionist, chauffeur, psychologist, sleep therapist, and extra.”

That has an emotional impact on everybody—guardian and youngster athletes alike.

“They get so invested in it,” says Sharon Kay Stoll, PhD, M.Ed., a professor of sports activities ethics and training on the College of Idaho who has studied parental involvement in sports activities. “It turns into this psychological declare on the entire household dedicated to the end result of this youngster.”

Intimate household involvement has change into the norm in recent times due to the “professionalization” of kids’s sports activities, because the AAP puts it. If a baby reveals expertise in a sport and desires to pursue it as a competitor, a rec league turns right into a membership group turns into greater ranges of membership groups. Efficiency on aggressive groups is supposed to garner a university scholarship, after which model sponsorships, and eventually the perfect indicator of greatness and success of all: an Olympic medal.

On this actuality, cash is each the carrot and the stick. In pursuit of the sort of athletic success that results in free rides at school, movie star standing, and endorsements, households journey across the nation (and even world) each weekend for competitions, ship youngsters to elite coaching colleges, and even transfer states so their youngsters can practice with the perfect coaches. Stoll says this will all price a whole bunch of hundreds of {dollars}. Monetary funding—along with the drive to wish to see your youngster succeed—results in excessive emotional stakes.

“While you begin investing sources, it is vitally arduous to say ‘I do not care what the end result is,’” Stoll says.

Can we actually anticipate mother and father to not care? It seems, ‘not caring’ isn’t essentially the reply to offering a basis for psychological health.

The purpose, Livingstone says, is to guardian not simply the athlete, however the individual.

How you can assist construct psychological health when parenting an elite athlete

As Livingstone felt the waves of her daughter’s post-loss emotion roll via the automotive, she selected her phrases fastidiously. Whereas acknowledging how robust the loss felt, she additionally stated, “I really like you, and I really like watching you play.”

“The position there’s an anchor of affection,” Livingstone says. “We’re tethering them to like and residential, to allow them to unfold their wings and go strive issues and fall on their faces and know that okay, I am nonetheless cherished, I am nonetheless me. How can I study from this?”

The purpose, Livingstone says, is to guardian not simply the athlete, however the individual.

“If we’re it from a lens of how can we assist psychological health, and never simply psychological health of the athlete, however of the entire human, their wellbeing total, then there are positively core foundational guiding rules that we all know assist domesticate a way of security and safety that don’t pull towards elite degree efficiency, however slightly assist unlock new ranges,” Livingstone says.

Study everybody’s motivations

When Julia Konner, MPH, former Division 1 gymnast and creator of Perfect Balance: A Young Athlete’s Guide to the World of Gymnastics, began gymnastics as a child, she says her mother and father had no concept what they had been entering into. However as a result of she confirmed expertise and was passionate in regards to the sport, they let her pursue it at greater and better ranges. And when she herself wasn’t clear about her motivations after a tough follow or a struggle with a coach, they let her discover the reply to the query of whether or not she actually needed to be doing this.

“Once I got here to them and stated I needed to give up, they’d hearken to me, and they’d assist me course of,” Konner says. “However they did not have the solutions.”

Konner says having the ability to come to the conclusions herself helped keep her longevity within the sport, in addition to proceed having a optimistic relationship along with her mother and father. Nevertheless, she had some teammates whose mother and father would reward them with items or prizes once they leveled up. Or they’d not permit for dialog about drive, insisting that their child was “not a quitter.” Konner says teammates would even throw up earlier than meets due to the strain they skilled from their mother and father. At that time, Stoll says it’s previous time for a guardian to have a look at their very own motivations for preserving their children in elite sports activities.

“Everytime you focus that a lot on that, you lose a way of your self in relationship to the kid,” Stoll says. “You lose your self inside the aggressive venue the place you see the athlete as an extension of your self.” Don’t confuse your motivations with the needs of your youngster.

Dorsch says a method to do that is consider objectives—the athlete’s, the guardian’s, the group’s—just like the three corners of a triangle.

“It’s crucial that oldsters ask their youngsters usually what the kid’s objectives are,” Dorsch says. “Then the guardian should align their objectives to the kid’s, additionally considering what the objectives are for the group or group. All three corners of the triangle should be in alignment.”

Letting athletes blaze the path is crucial.

“[Parents who say], ‘You’re taking the lead and we’re behind you 100%,’ I believe these are essentially the most profitable athletes normally,” Konner says. “There are these exceptions, however I believe that is the way it’s sustainable.”

Take an lively position in sussing out the atmosphere—after which let coaches and athletes have their very own relationship

Switching membership groups made all of the distinction for Livingstone when she was a teen swimmer. Sadly, due to the excessive stakes in teaching elite athletes, it’s all too common for aggressive groups particularly to pack on the strain and contribute to burnout and stress. So a spot the place a guardian can intervene is in choosing a sports activities group that aligns with the household’s values.

“You’re letting the child drive, however doing the work to seek out the atmosphere that you just’re permitting them to enter, after which as they become older you are pulling again the issues that you just’re doing for them, and letting them, and inspiring them, to construct the talents to do this on their very own,” Livingstone says.

Dorsch explains that that is significant as a result of it helps athletes develop a way of company.

“Athletes wish to really feel competence,” Dorsch says. “Like they’re good, and bettering, at their talent or sport. Mother and father can facilitate that by discovering applicable teaching and alternatives for coaching and competitors.”

A necessary side of this, says Konner, is letting athletes handle the connection with their coaches. After a tricky follow, if she would complain about her coaches, her mother and father would encourage her mirror on the state of affairs as a complete and assist work out how you can talk with the coaches.

“I actually felt heard [by my parents], but additionally they by no means took my aspect,” Konner says. Konner discovered that “irritating” on the time, once they requested her questions like “Do you suppose you had been being disrespectful? Do you suppose you had been making a face? Did you roll your eyes?” They inspired Konner to “mirror on it, and that helps in each state of affairs in my life now.”

“I hear that a whole lot of ‘I simply need my child to be joyful,’ and in that we lose the chance to assist our children domesticate psychological health.” —Samantha Livingstone

Sit with the arduous emotions

Unfairness, disappointment, and loss are all components of life, so mother and father have to ship the message that it’s okay to really feel these arduous issues.

“I hear a whole lot of ‘I simply need my child to be joyful,’ and in that we lose the chance to assist our children domesticate psychological health,” Livingstone says. “Once they hear ‘I simply need you to be joyful,’ that’s interpreted as ‘Okay, I can not really feel these emotions of not feeling so good. So if I do really feel these, I’ll shove them down. I am not going to inform you about these as a result of I do not wish to disappoint you.'”

It is also as much as mother and father to mannequin how you can get via disappointment and anger as a guardian. Doing so may also help youngsters develop the talents to construct the identical. Livingstone acknowledges that this isn’t straightforward—she’s been the guardian within the stands pounding the glass and yelling on the ref—nevertheless it’s additionally key to constructing psychological health.

“The resilience that is wanted to remain in that higher echelon of efficiency contains not simply bodily resilience, it is also that emotional resilience,” Livingstone says. “If we have not discovered how you can really feel arduous issues, and transfer via arduous issues, if as mother and father we try this for them, we’re robbing them of that chance to study.”

Explicitly decouple efficiency from love

Successful to get parental approval is a well-weathered trope in sports activities, and for good cause: Youngsters decide up even unintentional alerts that join efficiency with love, says Livingstone.

“The guardian’s rule is I really like you, interval, and it isn’t connected to your efficiency—and that is not simply one thing we are able to say as a identified,” Livingstone says. “We now have to be so specific with that, after which comply with via in our actions. Which isn’t all the time straightforward to do, as a result of we’re human.”

For instance, it might be tempting to spend a automotive journey analyzing a recreation, however this will ship the sign that you’re centered on outcomes. As a substitute, give attention to offering that baseline understanding of affection and assist, whereas exploring what it’s the athlete may need discovered from the sport, or what they want to obtain.

What’s essential is “that piece of I really like you, interval, and you may’t earn extra love or lose love based mostly on the way you carry out.”