Tennis Parents: Creating a Healthy Environment (Part II)

Excellence is about Attitude.
Attitude is about Environment.
Parents influence the Environment.

By Roberto Forzoni MSc CEng MCIBSE BASES

It is not easy to be a good parent and, it is even harder to be a good parent of a competitive tennis player. To know what is best to do and say, and when to say and do it, is not easy. It can be quite daunting for parents who have not been involved in the tennis scene. There are a lot of questions to ask and often quite a lot of people who are only too prepared to offer you their answers! Many problems arise because parents are unsure of the best way to help their child and so use their natural instincts, which can often lead to ineffective and sometimes destructive solutions. For example, to try and increase the confidence of their child prior to a match, just before going on the pitch to warm-up, a parent might say, “Go on Robbie, just do your best. You know you’re better than your opponent, so just go and show it!” On the face of it this sounds quite encouraging, but if you are Robbie, you may feel a little bit of pressure as you are now aware that a comparison is about to be made by your parents between you your opponent about which one of you will be able to control the game

CONSISTENT FEEDBACK

What are the questions you ask when your child comes home after playing a match? is it “Did you win?”, “What was the score?”, or “How did you play ”. Be careful, after asking the more performance oriented question of, “How did you play?”, that you receive a performance oriented answer rather than the often heard response of, “Oh, I lost 2-6, 0-6”, or “I won 2 and 1”. One then has to be careful to not be satisfied with the, “I won 2 and 1” response more than the “Oh, I lost 2 and love” version. To allow the player to fully understand that performance is key and that the ‘match isn’t over until the lesson has been learnt’, the same amount of searching for feedback and lessons learned, need to be elicited whether your child has won or lost, played well or poorly. Far too often there is more feedback asked for and offered by parents after a victory than a loss.
Avoid using the word “we”, such as “We have a game on Friday” or “We played well today”. After all it is their match, their practice, their tennis.

DECREASE THE 'BUT' - INCREASE THE 'AND'

Try and decrease your use of the word ‘but’ and increase your use of the word ‘and’. For example, “You played well John, but if you can get more shots deep earlier then that would help” to be replaced with, “You played well John, and if you can get more shots deep earlier then that would help”. It is often said by using the word, ‘but’, that the words before it have then been reduced in importance. In the example given, the ‘but’ detracts from the positive part of the feedback. The ‘played well’ is now not heard. All the young tennis now hears is the instructional part of the feedback, and because it was preceded by a ‘but’, the players’ confidence is momentarily lowered and he then perceives the neutral statement of ‘if you can get more shots deep earlier then that would help’, as negative and slightly critical. Whereas, using the word, ‘and’, maintains the positive feelings of competence from the first part of the feedback, whilst giving more self-confidence to the player by providing them with hope and the perception that they can get even better. In summary, ‘buts’ tend to take away, whereas as ‘ands’ tend to add on.

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