Stress Better: How Parents Can Help Athletes Grow from Stress
Stress Better: How Parents Can Help Athletes Grow from Stress
Stress automatically calls to mind negative moments in life: A difficult upcoming test, a fight with a friend or parent, global collective stress like the coronavirus pandemic, or even self-created stress about what others might be thinking. And yes, too much stress and too few resources to combat it can be a bad thing…but allowing kids to entirely avoid it actually does them a disservice.
Board-certified family physician and TrueSport Expert Deborah Gilboa, MD, specializes in youth development—including stress management. Her main message to parents is that children need to experience stress in order to be prepared for later life and become effective leaders. "Our job as parents is not to protect them until they're adults. It's to ready them for adulthood. And the ability to deal with stress is one of our best tools,” says Gilboa.
Board-certified family physician and TrueSport Expert Deborah Gilboa, MD, specializes in youth development—including stress management. Her main message to parents is that children need to experience stress in order to be prepared for later life and become effective leaders. "Our job as parents is not to protect them until they're adults. It's to ready them for adulthood. And the ability to deal with stress is one of our best tools,” says Gilboa.
Here, Gilboa explains how parents and coaches can teach young athletes how to process and handle stress, rather than bulldozing it away.
