A Guide for Parents to Use S4G to Have Their Desired Impact

Introduction

Parenting in youth sports can often feel hopelessly complex and challenging. Whether you're new to the scene, grappling with subpar sports experiences, struggling to ignite a love for sports in your child, or aiming to enhance their journey without causing inadvertent harm – your concerns are valid and shared by many. In this guide, we share how to use the articles across Sport4Growth in an approachable way.

Stages of Creating Your Desired Impact

1. You Have the Power

Parents, you have the power to positively influence your child's sports journey. Even in the face of obstacles like unsatisfactory coaching, team dynamics, or league structures, you can make a significant difference. Your knowledge of the sport is secondary; what matters is your intent, awareness and approach.

For example. Is your child's team losing a lot? Does it seem like they aren't having fun? Read our articles on Youth Development to find the ways to still make the season a massive success.

2. Set Goals for What Matters to You

Read our articles on Youth Development. Determine what matters to you when it comes to your child's experience. Develop your idea for a foundation of success. The "True North." Make this an iterative and constantly evolving process. Read the articles. Watch practice and games. Ask questions. Read the articles again. You will quickly discover the things that matter most to you and your lens will evolve into something new with tremendous clarity.

3. Determine What You Can Do

Once you have identified what matters, you can decide what you are equipped to do to make sure you achieve your objectives. You can use our articles on Learning Styles to better understand what your child needs and better understand how you learn and communicate. Reflect on your strengths and weaknesses. Read our articles on At Games to find ideas on how to best support your kids while you attend games without unintentionally doing things that conflict with your objectives.

4. Try Our Tactics

Read articles on things you can say and things to avoid saying, for example on How to Build Resilience. Try the tactics. See what works for you. Always go back to what you identified as what matters most and how your and your child's learning styles and abilities fit the goals. The tactics can be used to support how you go about making the impact that you want. Expand your toolkit.

5. Go Deep

Once you have developed conviction on what you want to achieve, you can use our deeply expert researched articles to enhance your understanding and magnify your impact. Our articles go into why certain development matters so much over the long-term of someone's life. They dive into how the brain develops and specifically for a certain life-skill area. You can read our short stories that illustrate how a given development takes place. You can become an expert and start influencing others, such as coaches, parents and leagues.

Hopefully this helps you as a parent realize you can have a significant impact in areas you might never have considered. Hopefully with a little awareness of the lifelong developmental impact available through youth sports, your stress over your kids sports goes down, and is replaced with a confidence and clarity about what the purpose of youth sports is to you. With just that clarity of beliefs you can take control of your journey as a parent of a youth sport athlete and no matter what their skill level, athleticism or team performance, you can help support them to have an incredible experience that can impact them for the rest of their lives.