Is Your Child a Swimmer? Here’s the Parents’ Role:

Is swimming for your child?

It might not be long into your child’s life before they discover that they thoroughly enjoy the sport of swimming. Even at earlier ages, you might have been able to take them a pool and barely succeed in getting them out of it when it’s time to go home. So when your child advances in age and starts taking up swimming as a formal activity, it’s time for some good old-fashioned encouragement and support. Here are the ways you can keep out of your child’s way and help to teach them the value of hard work and practice.

First, make sure that you don’t attach your own expectations to the child. Remember the Pygmalion effect, which is the effect that educators have noticed in children: many children will conform to the expectations of authority figures. During one experiment, they decided to treat two groups of equally-talented children differently; the group that was treated like a specially-gifted class ended up performing better.

So what does it mean when you “don’t” attach your own expectations to your child? It means you don’t set unrealistic goals for them and then admonish them when they don’t achieve them. Instead, reward them for hard work, and hard work alone. And let them feel that you have full confidence in them. You might be surprised at how hard they work when they feel your confidence is legitimate; they shouldn’t feel like your expectations are so high that they can do nothing right. Imagine how you would treat a world-class swimmer: with respect and a little bit of awe.

Second, don’t coach your child if you don’t have any swimming experience yourself. This is especially true if your child is already working with a swimming coach at the high school or college level; there’s a good chance that your coaching will simply get in the way. Your relationship with your child is that of a parent-son/daughter; you’re not the coach. Make sure to get out of a coach’s way, especially if that coach has plenty of experience and comes across as genuinely interested in your child’s success.

It’s important to remember the impact that you have on your child as a parent. If nothing they do is right, they’ll start to find ways to sabotage their own success. But if they feel that you have faith in them and trust them to do the hard work on their own, their only option is to work hard in order to meet that trust. Use encouragement is a reward, and stay out of the way!

Photo Credits: hoyasmeg

Originally posted 2009-07-22 05:01:09.

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