Positive Parenting in Sports by Former Major Leaguer Jack Perconte

 
Trust -
The obvious word that comes to the sports mind with the letter T is Talent. Talent is a combination of God-given athleticism and some develped skills and generally manifests itself at a young age in kids. The word that I want to talk about is trust because this is an extrememly important concept when parents and coaches work [...]

Resiliency – Another one of my favorite words with regards to sports. If nothing else, kids who play sports learn to be resilient because of the failure which all athletes will encounter. Even the best players have to learn to deal with loss and failure and this usually builds up a resiliency that serves them

Negativity – First word that comes to mind when I think of the letter N is negativity. Negativity unfortunately is way too common in sports coaching today. Coaches and parents who are negative are always looking at the downside of  players performances and make it a point to express the negative to their players. This [...]

Justify – Not a lot of words beginning with this letter. Of course, coaches and parents should always be judicious with their teams and kids when making decisions about athletics. But one of my favorite words is justify. Most kids stop playing sports not because they get burnt out but because they cannot justify working [...]

Inspiration
-  This is an obvious word that initially comes to mind when I think of words beginning with this letter. Many parents get frustrated with their kids because they do not show much motivation to play to practice their skills. Often, motivation comes from within a players innate personality so that is hard to change with many kids. However, [...]

 
Hope – This is one of my favorite concepts that is so important in youth sports. It is so important because it is something concrete that parents and coaches can give kids that can make all the difference. You see, another person cannot give a player confidence for that is something they must attain on their own.  But, [...]

Goals – I am not a big believer in short term goal setting when it comes to youth sports. Examples of short term goal setting would be saying you are going to average 20 points a game this season or hit 15 home runs this year. I know that probably goes against most self-help and how [...]

Fundamentals
    If you have been following my writings over the last few years you know that this is the concept(s) I discuss the most frequently. To me, this word contains the two most important ideas pertaining to youth sports. Youth sports is albout developing fundamentals and having fun. The two go hand and hand. It [...]

Confidence  – Nowhere is confidence more important than on the playing fields of sport. Without confidence, players often lose their desire to keep playing, and at the very least they tend to play scared. Some players are naturally more

Attention – Getting the attention of players can be difiicult. Their attention span is often short and when they are around teammates and friends it tends to be even shorter. A couple of techniques I use to help this situation was