What is your role in your child’s swimming?

Dave Anderson

What is your role in your child’s swimming?

Shelby Rozeboom 

Sport Psychology MS

srozeboom@wsacltd.org

Hey Parents!

I would like to encourage you to take a minute and think about your current involvement in your child’s swimming. What does it look like right now? As a parent, you are one of the important and most influential figures in your child’s life, and your role in their lives is always changing. You are extremely impactful in the areas of motivation, behavior and psychological growth. In this series, I am discussing what healthy, positive involvement in your child’s swimming might look like. My goal here is to provide you with some guidance on how to best support your child in their swimming, both in the pool and out of it. 

Research in sport psychology has shown that children tend to enjoy their sport more when they perceive their parents as positively involved and satisfied with their sport participation. In contrast, children tend to feel higher levels of anxiety when they perceive their parents as over-involved, holding excessively high expectations, and exerting too much pressure to perform (Holt et al., 2009). So what might a positive athlete-parent relationship look like then? Research suggests that there are three concepts of parenting style: Autonomy Support, Structure, and Involvement; which greatly influences a child’s well-being and internal motivation to partake in different behaviors and endeavors (Grolnick, 2003).


 

Autonomy Support 

  • Autonomy Support is the extent to which an environment allows children to feel that they initiate their actions, rather than feeling coerced to act in a particular way (2009).

  • Autonomy Supportive parents give their children the opportunity to make decisions for themselves, solve problems on their own, and do not put pressure on them to behave in a certain way.

    Structure

  • Structure is the extent to which parents provide clear and consistent guidelines for their children’s behavior (2003). Children are informed of all the parameters of a situation and then make decisions that are within those limits set by their parents.

  • It is important not to confuse structure with control, structure helps them to critically think about a situation and allow them to make the best decision for themselves, control takes the reins (out of your child’s hands) off of their own lives and does not help them to become a conscious decision maker, which is an important skill to learn and retain as they enter adulthood.

    Involvement

  • Involvement is described as the extent to which a parent is interested in, knowledgeable about, and takes an active role in their child’s life (2003). 

  • More involvement than less is generally better when parents provide resources and support that give their child a sense of autonomy, however, more controlling practices can make a child develop negative feelings about their parent’s involvement and undermine their sense of autonomy.

 

 

Autonomy Support - New 6/22/22

    In the next part of this series, I am going to dive a little deeper into the first of the three subtopics I outlined in the introduction. As I described previously, autonomy support is the extent to which an environment allows children to feel that they initiate their actions, rather than feeling coerced to act in a particular way (2009). Autonomy Supportive parents give their children the opportunity to make decisions for themselves, solve problems on their own, and do not put pressure on them to behave in a certain way. 

Giving your child autonomy will increase their internal motivation to stay and succeed in swimming, while also making the sport a much more enjoyable experience for them.

So what exactly does this look like in the world of being a swim parent? 

At Home

  • When having discussions with your child about their swimming, let them be in control. Allow them to voice what their goals are, and what they would like to accomplish in swimming, rather than telling them what you think their goals should be, or that the goals they have are not ambitious enough or up to your expectations. At the end of the day, swimming is their sport, not yours.

  • If your child expresses that they are frustrated or upset by something in their swimming, encourage them to talk to their coach about it. Try your best not to speak for them, allow them to voice their concerns and work out a plan and a solution with their coach.

At the Pool 

  • At swim meets, it is absolutely crucial to have control over your emotions and your words as a swim parent. How you react to their swims is how they will learn to react to their swims. After every race they swim, always keep your tone encouraging and supportive, no matter what the result of the swim was. Allow them to talk about how they felt about the race, and try not to tell them how you think they should have swam it differently, etc. The responsibility of their swimming is not yours, it's theirs. 

  • Remember that times and places do not define your child, and help them to know that too. If you express worry or anxiety over their times, then so will they, and then it will become all about the end results and not about the whole process of mastering their skills. Success can be defined in a variety of ways, every day, your child is learning and continuing to master their craft in small ways, and those wins should not be overlooked. 

    These are just a few examples of how you can provide autonomy support towards your child in their swimming. Remember that at the end of the day, this is their thing, and helping them to learn to be independent and in control will be extremely valuable, not only in the present, but for the rest of their lives. 

They will find greater satisfaction and enjoyment in swimming and anything else they choose to pursue if they are the ones in the “driver’s seat”, with you as the “passenger” guiding and supporting them in their endeavors.