Parents

Your Role as a Sport Parent

We all know that sport is important to the development of our children. As parents you are very influential in the way your child views his or her sport.  You, along with your child’s coach, are the most influential people in ensuring your child has a positive experience in sport. Here are a couple of simple tips that you can follow to help ensure your child gets the most out of their sport experience and that it is as positive as it can be.

1. Be a role model-cheer for all the participants.

2. Ask your child how they think they did. Don't tell them how you think they did.

3. Emphasize fun and skill development.

4. Help your child to set personal goals.

5. Become actively involved in your child’s sport:

How to Be a Great Swim Parent

Allow your swimmer to be resilient. Help your child develop ways to face down disappointments.  A disappointing result can be framed as a chance to examine and review and make changes and be able to accept the next challenge without undue anxiety or stress.

Your positive attitude to swimming and your club will be reflected by your child. 

Avoid rewarding your swimmer for their successes. The sooner a swimmer can take ownership of their sport by defining their own goals and dreams, the better they will be at accepting the challenges of training for their sport. 

Take the long view.  The training that will make a 9 year old the region's fastest 50 freestyler is not the training that will benefit them in the long run.  We take seriously our philosophy that swimming is a Sport for Life and will make decisions that will support their long term athlete development.

Recognize that all swimmers are different.  Kids learn and mature at different rates.  Avoid comparing your child to others.  Avoid measuring the success of your swimmer by the development or achievements of other swimmers, who are likely at a completely different biological or psychological timetable than your swimmer.

How they do vs. what they do.  How fast a child swims and how well they place at meets when they are young has little to do with how they will do as senior swimmers.  What is most important is what happens in practice technically.  The work done in practice is cumulative.

Be flexible.  No program can be written in stone.  Coaching swimmers is a work in progress since each swimmer is different from another.  Most coaches have uncertainty about whether the methods that work for one swimmer will work for another.  Being a good coach requires planning, execution, assessment and re-evaluation on a constant basis.  If change is needed, support for program change will be needed.

A Guide to Your First Swim Meet