Anxiety and sports
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Anonymous
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I have a 12-year old who plays multiple sports, and he's good skill-wise. He plays great in practices, but plays worse during games especially in high-pressure games like finals and tournaments.
He has anxiety and it seems to be affecting his play during these times. Afterwards he will beat himself up for not playing better and gets upset because he feels he's let his team down. His coaches have sometimes responded by giving him less play time during games, which is further feeding the anxiety. How can we help him? |
Anonymous
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Mental skills training or visualization might help. Both are widely used by elite and professional athletes. Mental skills training focuses on changing an athlete's thinking, visualization on training and calming the nervous system. You did not say which sports, but check out Athletes Who Settle for More (Facebook page) and The Mindful Athlete (book) - this might give you some ideas.
There are mental skills trainers specific to many sports. There are also hypnotherapists who work specifically with athletes. |
Anonymous
Anonymous
| OP, is the anxiety only present in a sports setting? Or is it general performance-related anxiety that manifests in other situations like tests at school? My kid has an anxiety disorder (not limited to sports) and before practices and games, he uses the Calm app for meditation and mindfulness. There are series (including one with LeBron James) that talk about sports performance, confidence, etc. You could give that a shot as a low cost first step to see if it helps. |
Anonymous
| Without knowing what level he is playing, would a less competitive club or team for awhile help him build his confidence? |
Anonymous
Hi, PP. He plays travel. Thanks for the suggestion. My guess is moving him to a less competitive team would make him feel worse, as it would be saying he wasn't good enough to stay on travel. Thanks, PPs for the suggestions about mindfulness and visualization. DS does not have a lot of anxiety in school. Does well on tests. He does get anxiety for assignments like public speaking or presentations and generally doesn't like being in situations where he feels watched. One of the PPs mentioned a hypnotherapist who treats athletes. Do you know of any that work with children with sports anxiety? |
Anonymous
This is an overkill, unless your child vies for a national team. A hypnotherapist? For regional youth sports?? |
Anonymous
Why is it overkill if it helps a kid? You sound judgy and negative. |
Anonymous
The PP is probably assuming it's exorbitant, and not paid for by insurance. Not everyone has bucketloads of cash to throw at problems. Can you speak to how hypnotherapy compares with the cost of an app, parenting book, coaching or therapy? |
Anonymous
| My DD talks with a sports psychologist and it has helped her not only in her sport but in life skills in general. |
Anonymous
| Recommend getting him in something that works with his functional and cognitive movement/processing at the same time. They increase overload cognitive processing while doing he/she sports which then translates into sport like atmosphere. My DS does training with them out in Tysons but they travel too. He would get super nervous when up to bat. |
Anonymous
| PP do you have a name for the Person or group in Tysons? Thanks! |
Anonymous
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Sports are all about “moments” for performance. Similar to acting or performing music. You may get more chances, but you do not get to repeat. Life in general has many such moments as well. That is one of the reasons kids sports are helpful things. They serve as practice and help show the value of preparation.
What a parent can do is help with training and practice. And, helping your kid see the value of practice and realize that gains in skill and ability very often take a long time and come at different times and in different ways to different people. Kids need to learn the value of practice. Try this with a 12 year old. Borrow an instrument that he does not play. A violin perhaps. Hand it to him with the music for a decently complex piece that a high school orchestra may use. Hand him the instrument and tell him to play it. He will refuse of course. Why? He does not know how. He has never seen someone play a violin before? Of course he has. Try it. He will refuse or perhaps try and make some scratching sounds. Show him a video of your local high school orchestra concert. Those are kids just a few years older than him. Perhaps older brothers and sisters of kids he knows. They can play. Why can’t he? Obviously, because they took lessons and practiced and practiced and reached the point where they can play. Now pull up a video of a young prodigy about his age. Why is that kid so good? Well, lots and lots of practice of course, but also lots of talent. Is that kid also great at baseball? Nope. Probably his picking up a glove would be exactly like your kid picking up a violin. Twelve is a good age for these discussions to start. They can go on for years. What do you like? What are you good at? What physical abilities do you bring to the activity that help or hinder you? And, how hard and long are you willing to work at something? Practice and effort can make most folks competent and even successful at something, but you have to add talent at that something to become very good. That applies to all sorts of things in life. So - for a 12 year old with sports - how do you become “better” at something? Practice. In soccer there used to be a guideline that it took 10,000 hours of practice to become a reasonably skilled player. Think about that for a second. In the US most youth travel soccer programs will have 2 practices a week, 90 minutes each, and then a game for about 30 weeks out of the year. That’s about 150 hours of that 10,000. What it means is that you have to work on stuff on your own. Now, maybe your kid does not care enough about it to work on their own (practice). That’s fine. Work on stuff that they like and that they may have talent to excel a little bit in. This also is a big parent role. You need to be continually assessing and reassessing your kid’s interests, ability and talents to put them into activities that will work for them. Always recognizing that there are lengthy learning curves involved. So - no - it is not at all surprising that a kid who has 5 pop ups a week hit to them in practice misses up if one is hit in a game. If the kid had caught 500 pop ups before, then 501 is in the glove. Professional baseball teams want judge a batter over 1,000 at bats to try and get a feel for how they hit. A 12 year old little leaguer might get 30 at bats in a season. They need hours and hours swinging - recognizing that a kid is going to get tired and lose his form after about 30 swings. A kid who is walking up to the plate with the equivalent of 200 at bats behind him in the last couple months is going to be miles ahead of a kid walking up there with the 10 at bats. |
Anonymous
| Encourage him. Let him know you have confidence and so so his team in him and let him keep playing. He will get over it if he wants to play. |
Anonymous
+1 Some anxiety on the field can be quite normal (as long as it is forgotten after the game and doesn’t affect his life or well being off the field). It’s natural to be a bit nervous in certain situations (pitching in a tight game etc)- heck I would be and I’m 42 and not generally anxious. I’d praise what he does well, don’t mention his anxiety unless HE brings it up (make sure you aren’t projecting), never criticize or mention an error or bad performance. Let the coaches handle it. My own 12yo pitched in a game that was important to his team last week, was clearly a bit nervous and didn’t have a great outing. Afterward, we said “great game bud! You sure had a great hit! We loved watching you and the team play. Let’s go get some ice cream” and that was that. No reason to make a big deal out of it. He’ll have plenty more games and failure is a part of most sports and part of the learning process. |