Parenting

Child(ish) Reads: Raising Empowered Athletes

| Patti Webb

A little backstory for me. I was up in Virginia for work this past fall and was invited to come to my high school crew team’s afternoon practice. I was a crew coxswain for six years; starting in high school, through college and two years in Masters rowing. I’ve sat in on practices, but this was my first time a long while helping novice high school girls.

Crew is an amazing sport when it comes to culture, work ethic, and mental game. But the coach was quick to point out that he wasn’t seeing a lot of physical fitness and strength in this group of girls. While crew was fun and they enjoyed being on the water, they were still very much learning fundamentals and not speed. This is racing after all.

So how do you connect with a young person about being competitive? How do you motivate without turning into a zealous tiger parent? How young does this start?

Raising Empowered Athletes: A Youth Sports Parenting Guide for Raising Happy, Brave, and Resilient Kids by Kirsten Jones. Kirsten, a Hall of Fame DI volleyball player from The College of William and Mary, and fourteen-year NIKE executive, is now a motivational speaker, writer and Peak Performance Coach. Her clients include teen athletes (and their parents), where she helps them learn how to reach their goals and release their limitations. She co-hosts the #RaisingAthletes Podcast with Susie Walton on iTunes and Spotify.

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Finding your “Cricket”: Navigating your Child Interests

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

A little while ago, we watched the Bluey episode “Cricket.” It featured a pup named Rusty who was so passionate about the game of Cricket that he played it whenever he could. This made my son curious about why someone would be so dedicated to one thing. And so began our quest to help our child discover his own “Cricket.”

My son is currently playing baseball. While he enjoys playing the game, he is not as diehard as most of his friends and sometimes would rather stay home building Lego than practice. This season was the first time he realized that baseball may not be his “Cricket”. When we asked him what he does enjoy doing, he said he liked creating things, climbing trees and being outside, and playing video games. Aside from a few new activities, a few have remained constant: nature and building. So do we pursue the interests we already know, or try new avenues to see what sticks?

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Oh, The Pain…The Pain!

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

Cuts, scrapes, and bruises are part of childhood. That curiosity and “f*ck around and find out” mentality helps build resilience long-term. While it’s expected for kids to whimper when they get a booboo at two, it’s a quandary when they continue to do it at eight. After one too many “Toughen up, Buttercups”, we started to wonder about pain tolerance in children. If they can’t handle a minor bug bite or dodgeball hit, then how do we expect them to handle a dun-dun-dun… flu shot?

But the truth is that pain is a highly complex and individualized experience, influenced by a multitude of factors. For today’s post, we’re deep diving into the concept of pain and how to better help our kids manage it. 

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Low Tech Culture

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

“Learning about yourself and what you’re drawn to is one of the cool things about growing up.” – Rachel Childers, musician with the Boston Symphony Orchestra

To piggyback off our last post, we’re sharing the low-tech devices your kids can use to find their musical tastes.

The Old

Hey, there’s nothing wrong with going old school. If you still have these lying around, introduce your kid to the classics and low-tech tech.

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