Have you been watching the Olympic coverage as a family? Perhaps you have a child who has been bitten by Olympic fever. Check out the following article on the CTV.ca Olympic site where I was interviewed about how to respond to and encourage your child’s new Olympian dreams - and help them go for Gold!
The Games are a Golden Teaching Opportunity for Parents
by Dave McGinn
The Globe and Mail Posted Monday, February 15, 2010
Ray Simundson remembers the exact moment his daughter, Kaillie Humphries, decided she was going to become an Olympian. Ms. Humphries, who is competing in bobsleigh next week at the Vancouver Games, was a pint-sized seven-year-old at the time. One day, one of Mr. Simundson’s clients, Mark Tewksbury, brought along the gold medal he won at the 1992 summer Olympics and was showing it to Mr. Simundson’s three children.
It was Kaillie who was most taken with the Canadian swimmer’s medal.
“She was just enamoured with what the gold medal looked like,” Mr. Simundson, a Calgary financial planner, recalls. “She liked what it looked like and just blurted out that one day she was going to win one of those.”
Over the next three weeks, kids across Canada will look up at their televisions and dream of Olympic glory. Some may decide to become the next bobsleigh superstar. Others may dream of one day winning gold in ski jumping.
For parents, the Olympics is about as perfect a teachable moment as it gets. But should you temper their expectations - or start building that backyard sledding course?
It’s a tricky balance. It’s not a parent’s job to let these kids know how high the odds are stacked against them, experts and parents of Olympians say. Instead, it is an opportunity to teach them about determination, teamwork and all the other Olympic virtues no athlete can reach the podium without. But for some parents whose children show exceptional promise, it also presents the challenge of encouraging kids just enough without pushing them too far.
“Really what they’re saying is, ‘I want to excel at something.’ And you have to give them the opportunity for them to excel. It doesn’t mean they have to be in the Olympics,” says Mary Christie, mother of Jeff Christie, a member of Canada’s Olympic luge team. “It’s important for parents to say, ‘Yeah, isn’t it great that that person has worked so hard and devoted so much of themselves to reach this point in what they’ve chosen to do.’ ”
And even if a child isn’t destined for the podium, there is plenty for them to learn from watching the Games. “It speaks to national loyalty. It speaks to task mastery. It’s team spirit. It’s health in general. So it’s still speaking to the early buds of character traits that we would like to nurture in our kids,” says Alyson Schäfer, a Toronto-based parenting expert.
For kids who do come to idolize a particular athlete competing at the Games, and dream of following in their footsteps, Ms. Schäfer recommends parents pick up their biography, if there is one, or go online and with their kids read about how they got where they are.
Parents shouldn’t be afraid to act as unabashed cheerleaders for their kids, Ms. Schäfer says. It may be true that a child just isn’t a good enough skater ever to play hockey at the Olympic level, but someone else can deliver that message.
“By the time people get to any form of an elite performance, there’s usually a tryout or a coach or something that’s going to be the bearer of bad news; it doesn’t have to be parents,” she says.
Some parents, however, may push and push their kids to fulfill their Olympic dreams. Doing so can lead to a kid pursuing a sport for the wrong reasons.
“Sometimes, when parents try to control too much their child’s activity or they emphasize the importance of the activity too much, the child will hear that message and understand that if they want to be accepted, or if they want to be appreciated, they must succeed at the activity,” says Geneviève Mageau, a psychology professor at the University of Montreal.
Pushing their son was never an issue for the Christie family.
“If anything we probably were on the other side of the coin, saying ‘You don’t really have to do this,’ ” Ms. Christie says.
But ever since he and his parents attended the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Calgary in 1988, competing in the Games was exactly what he wanted to do. And his parents allowed him to pursue that dream, on two conditions: He had to maintain good grades and have some friends outside of luge. That way, if he ever decided to give up the sport, he would not be leaving all his friends behind, too, Ms. Christie says.
While the Olympics is a chance for parents to teach their kids about what it takes to succeed at something, they need to realize they have to back up those lessons with actions, Ms. Schäfer says. Teamwork always begins with parents, whether it’s shuttling kids to and from practice, volunteering at events or sitting on committees. It is a significant investment of time, money and emotion.
Which is why Mr. Simundson, like so many parents whose kids have finally fulfilled their dreams of competing in the Olympics and are now on the world stage in Vancouver, is way more nervous than his daughter.
“She’s got a plan. She’s going to execute the plan. And she’s as calm as a cucumber,” he says. “I’m the one that’s a wreck.”
Stress