The Parent Playbook: 5 Ways to Support Your Child on Game Day

Your support goes a long way.

The game and the opponent will provide challenges, adversity, and problems to solve, so you’ll want to help your child on game day to be prepared to meet those moments head-on.

Because your navigation is development. You see the game as a conduit for growth and are playing the long-game. You know the match is not an end, but a beginning that can continue to guide your child towards their potential–a potential that we can never define.

So you are convicted to control nothing more than your ability to support because controlling anything else can take your child off-track or worse–create a larger hurdle they will battle the rest of their lives.

Here are the 5 ways a parent can best support their child’s development on game day.

1. Keep the Game a Game

Minimize pressure and expectations.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a rec league or a national final. There is nothing to be gained by putting our children into a flight or fight state by escalating their emotional state around the game. Our favorite professional players played with a child-like freedom that enabled them to be their very best.

Minimize expectations by creating and supporting a mindset that the game is just a game.

2. Manage the Excitement-Anxiety Spectrum

Shepherd the butterflies toward excitement, not anxiety.

There is always a palpable energy on game day. Finding ways to guide that energy towards excitement will encourage your child to keep showing up each week. There is a moment in every player’s life when the game changed from something they loved to an identity they had to protect.

The more we can channel the energy towards excitement (or even enthusiasm), the more likely short-term and long-term gains can be made toward your child’s potential.

3. Nothing But Vocalized Support

If you don’t have something supportive to say, don’t say anything at all.

This is true of prematch, during the match, or postmatch. If you do speak, be encouraging–root for the team (and your child) in a supportive way that provides energy and doesn’t take it away. This also goes for any communication with the coach: “thank you” and “good job” are the only things to say–wait 48 hours to say anything else.

Don’t let your ego shift your lens from the long game of development to the short game of control.

4. Culture Rep Car Ride

Your player is physically and emotionally vulnerable, so it’s a powerful time for a culture rep.

But this CANNOT be forced or controlled with a set agenda. You have to go in through the door they open–let them speak first, guide it towards the vulnerability, and help them craft beneficial meaning from it, so they bring energy to the next week.

One of the greatest muscles we can develop in our children is toughness–the ability to reframe anything (including perceived failure) into an opportunity for growth.

5. Remind Them It’s Always About the Next Iteration

What you are really teaching your children is that there is a much more fruitful game than the one they just played on a pitch.

Development is the infinite game that can act as a companion to any game we choose to play. Our children need this more than ever. The paradox of today’s player is that it’s the hardest time to become the best at something, but it’s also the most ripe time to separate out from your competition.

By always modeling and preaching the value of the next iteration, we engender a love of process (over outcomes) that will serve them the rest of their lives.

Final Thoughts

Every one of us loves our children, but many times, we can be the biggest hindrance to their development.

We have to remember that development is counter-cultural.

It’s not the easier road. We live in the most frictionless, instant gratification-promoting time in human history, so to play the long game with our children’s development is much harder than it seems. Especially if support was never modeled to us when we were kids.

Remember, your navigation is development, and one of the greatest gifts you can provide your child is the life-long support of helping them explore their potential.

If you follow these 5 game day principles, you’ll be well on your way.

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