6 Tips for Swim Parents About the Car Ride Home
6 Tips for Swim Parents About the Car Ride Home
by Elizabeth Wickham
“I’ll never forget the ride home after a swim meet,” one of my Masters coaches said. He’s in his mid-fifties and he doesn’t remember the car ride home in a good way. In fact, he joked that he was scarred for life. It was a meet where he swam really, really badly and the ride home was awful. Is that how we want our kids to remember spending time with us 40 years later?
According to the National Alliance for Youth Sports, approximately 70 percent of kids in the United States stop playing organized sports by the age of 13 because “it’s just not fun anymore.” One of the main reasons why youth sports are no longer fun falls on our shoulders. Kids feel too much pressure from us, they don’t like being coached by parents, or we are bad spectators. A number of kids mention the ride home as something they dread.
We want our kids to stay in the sport for all the benefits it brings to their lives. We don’t want them to quit at age 13. If we lighten up on the ride home, we can make their swim years more enjoyable.
Try the following tips on the way home from a meet and see how your kids react:
