Dec. 17, 2024
Sports Parenting Do’s and Don’ts
In this insightful episode, we delve into the often overlooked complexities of youth sports parenting with Michael Huber. Many of us can relate to the pressures of being a young athlete—either feeling the weight of expectations from parents to excel in every game or facing the sting of being sidelined and overlooked. Michael shares his mission to equip young athletes and their families with essential tools to navigate today’s increasingly challenging and often toxic sports environment.
We explore the unique pressures young athletes face and discuss how we can foster a healthier, more supportive atmosphere that allows them to flourish. Michael’s personal experiences and insights promise to illuminate the path toward a more positive sports culture that benefits not only the athletes but their families as well.
Join me as we engage in a meaningful conversation about encouraging our children to pursue their passions while staying attuned to their feelings and aspirations. Learn how we, as parents and grandparents, can strike that balance between support and pressure in the world of youth sports.
Don't miss this enlightening discussion that will guide you in cultivating a nurturing environment for the young athletes in your life!
Michael Huber is a Certified Mental Performance Consultant® . For more information on his services, please visit https://michaelvhuber.com/
Thank you for tuning into today's episode. It's been a journey of shared stories, insights, and invaluable advice from the heart of a community that knows the beauty and challenges of raising grandchildren. Your presence and engagement mean the world to us and to grandparents everywhere stepping up in ways they never imagined.
Remember, you're not alone on this journey. For more resources, support, and stories, visit our website and follow us on our social media channels. If today's episode moved you, consider sharing it with someone who might find comfort and connection in our shared experiences.
We look forward to bringing more stories and expert advice your way next week. Until then, take care of yourselves and each other.
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Chapters
00:00 - Supportive tools for navigating youth sports pressures
03:31 - Corporate consultant questions purpose, ultimately quits career.
09:46 - Perfectionism causes anxiety and distorts relationships.
13:31 - Athletes should control what they can control.
17:27 - Motivation-driven pressure is healthy if self-directed.
19:58 - Finding personal motivation makes activities meaningful.
22:49 - Healthy parenting and trust reduce addiction risks.
25:22 - Communicating openly with youth promotes understanding.
30:42 - Praise effort and attitude, not just results.
33:10 - Embrace failure; build resilience and character.
37:13 - Adults should communicate patiently, understanding children's limitations.
38:23 - Embracing challenges fosters growth mindset and improvement.
41:33 - Find strength, hope, and peace together.
Transcript
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Were you that kid that hated sports and was teased because of it, pushed and prodded to be more athletic, and so you did just the opposite? Or were you the kid that was very athletic and you found yourself pleasing your parents, maybe even killing yourself, to be the best on your team? In this episode, Michael Huber will share his mission to equip young athletes and their families with the essential tools to thrive in today's increasingly challenging and often toxic youth sports environment. His insights promise to shed light on the pressures young athletes face and how we can foster a healthier, more supportive atmosphere for them to flourish. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from Michael's experiences and wisdom as we explore how we can all contribute to a more positive sports culture with our grandchildren.
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Welcome to grandparents raising grandchildren nurturing through adversity in this podcast, we will delve deep into the challenges and triumphs of grandparents raising grandchildren as we navigate the complexities of legal, financial, and emotional support. I invite you to join us on a journey of exploring thoughts, feelings, and beliefs surrounding this growing segment of our society. Drawing from real stories and expert advice, we will explore the nuances of child rearing for children who have experienced trauma, and offer valuable resources to guide you through the intricate journey of kinship care.
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Well discuss how we can change the course of history by rewriting our grandchildren's future, all within a supportive community that understands the unique joys and struggles. This podcast was made especially for you.
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Welcome to a community where your voice is heard, your experiences are valued, and your journey is honored.
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So I was one of those kids that was always the last one chosen for the team. I was kind of chubby for my age, introverted, and always lost in a book.
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My achievements were recognized in the classroom, not out on the field.
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But how much different is that when it comes to sports? How often do we truly listen to what our kids want?
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How frequently do we pause to ask them how they feel about the activities they love or don't love?
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Do we know when to encourage them and when to step back? The lessons to be learned from fostering a healthy sports culture at home, akin to promoting good habits around homework and family responsibilities. So join me as we hear from an individual who has spent a lifetime immersed in the world of sports. His insights come from personal experience, and I learned so much from his wisdom, and I hope you will too. First of all, thank you for having me here on the podcast.
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It's a pleasure to share. I was in the corporate consulting for 20 years, from around my mid twenties until my mid forties and around the age of 40, I started to question why I was doing it. I didn't really get much fulfillment from it other than the fact that it was a good living. I was really questioning my sort of purpose and the point of my place on earth. So I started to consider that. But I had young children, we had bills to pay, a lifestyle that my wife wanted to keep up. And so I had to really think about, what am I going to do here? How am I going to do it? And does it make sense because of the fact that we have all these obligations? But ultimately, I got to a place where I hit a wall and I was like, I can't do this anymore. And I decided that I wanted to do something more meaningful, specifically around helping young athletes with the mental side of their sport. And I got to that through my own journey of recovery. I'm a compulsive gambler in recovery almost twelve years now. And that experience of being able to work through my own problems and get help from other people when I never really was good at that, really inspired me to become somebody who was more of a support system for other people because of my own experiences. I just assume, Michael, that you're a sports lover as well, or you wouldn't be in the business.
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Yes, I love sports. It's interesting, actually, it's a really good question because I grew up on sports. From the time I was five years old until I was graduated from high school, I was an athlete. It was my favorite thing in the world to do. There was nothing else that I would rather talk about or do or just consume my life. Ultimately, sports, my relationship with sports kind of morphed into gambling because I was no longer an athlete. I was a sports gambler largely. And so, like, I used that as my vehicle to remain connected to sports, even though I wasn't actually playing anymore. So my relationship to sports actually got really distorted for a while in adulthood because of my gambling. I assume, Michael, and you have children, that you've been a coach as well. What inspired you to get into sports psychology?
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Yes, absolutely. I kind of skipped over that part.
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But I was a coach from the time. My children are teenagers now, but from the time they were five until they got till 1314 years old, I was always involved in coaching.
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And one of the inspirations for getting into sports psychology was actually experiencing some of the things around me that were just so unhealthy. The way that adult coaches talk to children, the way that parents talk to children, the way they framed the importance of sport at a really young age when it was really supposed to be about fun and development and growth and not about performance and winning, you know, seven, eight, nine year old kids. This language and the sort of universe that adults create for these young people was really, really troubling for me. And I always tried to be on the other side of that. That's why I did coach, because I felt like I had a couple of choices. One was to be a part of it, right? To contribute to it or to be something different and to try to be a buffer, because there was all these other adults who were operating in a really unhealthy way, at least in my view. I could be that counter to that. And I had some really, really fantastic experiences as a volunteer coach growing up with my kids, you know, growing up through their system, just because I just loved it so much. Do you think we as parents or grandparents, put too much pressure on our kids to participate in a sport when they may not be athletically inclined? Yeah. And I think not only that, because. And every kid is different, right? Every kid starts in a different place. They have different genetics, they have different families, they have different abilities. And I think it's not only about valuing what each kid brings to the table, but I think one of the things that I really recognized and became aware of very early on was adults have a very low level of respect for children. And what I mean by that is adults project, hey, I'm the adult. I know more than you. I tell you what to do, and you go do it because I said so versus, hey, I want to understand, just because you're nine or ten years old, I still want to understand where you're coming from so that I can help you, rather than saying, hey, do it my way, because my way is the right way. That's not it. Right. It's really about seeing them for who they are and helping them to figure out what they want to get out of this. What do you think are some of the biggest pressures young athletes face in today's sports environment, and how do these pressures affect their mental health and performance?
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I think there are a lot of them. I would say, frankly, I think the number one, and there's obviously, there's a lot of different age groups and brackets in terms of developmentally, every age group has a little different issue.
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But I do say that I think the biggest issue is money. And I say it not because it's explicit to young people. They don't really know how much money parents are spending, resources that they're expending but they know implicitly, just through my work, I could see it. And through my own experience, kids kind of internalize that mom and dad are investing a lot in this process. And so the kids so consciously internalize it to be, oh, okay, I need to produce a certain result to make mom and dad happy. And mom and dad are not saying, hey, I'm spending all this money. You need to do it. But their behavior is influenced and manipulated by the fact that they are spending a lot of money on this and time, too. And the kids are feeling like they have to produce a result to make mom and dad happy. And it's like, I don't feel like they love me, right. I've become a commodity and not a person because I'm out there trying to perform to make somebody else happy, especially a parent whose relationship is just so emotional and connected. So it's really, really challenging. What signs should grandparents look for that might indicate their grandchildren are experiencing unhealthy levels of stress or pressure in sports? And how do we differentiate between healthy competition and toxic sports environments? Yeah, I think the number one issue that I come up against, and it's.
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I hesitate to say it only because it has so many different connotations, and it's not a simple concept, is perfectionism. This feeling that I can't make a mistake, I can't do something wrong, because as soon as I do something wrong, I'm going to get criticized, or my mom or some other trusted adult is going to say to me, hey, you're not good enough. So there's this real internal struggle. I got to get everything right, or else. And then that leads to anxiety. It leads to, what? If I don't play well, they're internalizing this not only on the field, but they may be anxious about going to a sport, or they might be anxious about the car ride home, because they get in the car with mom or dad, and the first thing mom or dad asks is, why did you do this? Or, you should have done that. And it really distorts the relationship between a parent and a child, because really, all the kid wants is mom or dad to be like, hey, you did great, or, it was fun to watch you play, or, I love you. No matter what, those things don't always come out. And parents are not trying to intentionally hurt their children. They're human, too. They're not aware of those feelings. And so they sort of delve into it, and it just becomes this bigger snowball over time. That's great advice, Michael. I assume that you also work with teens that are wanting to transition into a more professional mindset about sports. And yet it's still a fine balance between making it still be all about the love of the game, and yet I take the game seriously. And I know you also coach some professionals. I do. I have one professional client right now, and I have a number of professional athletes that I've had relationships with in different capacities in the past. It's a really interesting dynamic because obviously when you go on to be a professional, it becomes a job. And those issues for those people are very different. You have to become almost desensitized to performance in some ways, because if you take everything so personally, you're not gonna be able to show up and do your job every single day. Because that's what it is, it's work.
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And in some ways, you'd love for a kid to learn that when it's twelve.
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Hey, it's just one game. There's another game tomorrow. Why do we have to put all the eggs in the basket of, I didn't play well today. Okay? What did I learn from it? What am I gonna do differently tomorrow? But I think there is a larger issue societally about mental health. Right. And I don't want to like, overdo that, but I just think that a lot of people have this anxiety nowadays about whether it's sports or work or life or whatever, that I'm not good enough and that I need to do more or else. And then we have this whole social media world out there where people are putting their eyeballs on us and that that makes it a little bit more pronounced. What are some practical tools and strategies grandparents can use to help their grandchildren develop a healthier attitude towards sports?
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I know, for instance, when I first got my granddaughter, she was just terrified of doing anything different and she had sensory issues and her fine motor skills were lacking. So you would have said that she really wasn't a naturally talented athlete, but I felt like I needed to encourage her without being too bold. And then here's my grandson, who's very naturally athletic.
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And it was difficult not to compare the two.
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Can you share techniques that can help young athletes get their minds to work for them rather than against them? Well, I think first and foremost, and maybe this doesn't answer the question directly, and I'll get to it, but I'm a big student of motivation, and I think there's this really fine balance of, hey, this person's genuinely gifted and most people objectively can see that. But if that individual, the athlete doesn't want to be.
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They don't want to invest in that ability because they don't love what they're doing. I think it's really important for them to figure that out on their own rather than to be pushed and be like, hey, you're really gifted. You need to do something with this. It's better to let them find it and help them figure out why they're doing it versus telling them they need to do it. Now, to answer your question a little bit more directly, I think the number one lesson any athlete should hear from day one, as best we can, is control what you can control. Right? Meaning, what do I do that is going to allow me to be the best athlete I can be and to get the most out of my ability versus putting that attention on all these other environmental factors, including what the adults in the world think about us or what our peers think about us. Worry less about that and worry more about what can I do to get the most out of this? Because ultimately we start to shift that focus from what we can control to what we can't as we get into, like, our teenage years. And now we start to worry about what everybody else thinks about us. And that takes away the focus from do I really love this and do I really want to become a better athlete? Regardless of whether or not the results out in the world dictate that I'm special or good or great, it's more about how do I keep getting better every day. That's up to me. So I think that's something that gets lost quite a bit, to be honest with you. So let's talk about support systems. How can we, as grandparents that are raising grandchildren, foster a supportive, a more supportive environment that encourages open communication about the pressures related to sports? And what specific techniques can you recommend to us to use?
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I would say outwardly, the first thing I would pay attention to is the language. What are the types of words that they're using? I'm not good enough, or I should have been able to do that, or I can't do this, or I'm only good at that.
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Versus am I looking at this as a challenge, a puzzle to be solved where I'm constantly trying to get better and I can look at the environment and say, hey, you know what? I can do something about this versus these very absolute statements or words like should just not. I can't. That kind of language implies that they're looking at the sport as something to be judged on versus something to do that they're invested in. To do better. I mean, obviously there are other things that you're going to look for in terms of body language. Are they withdrawn? Are they overly emotional in terms of when they're playing? Or maybe they're overly emotional after a game or a match or whatever it is that they do.
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Are they withdrawing? Are they angry? Those kinds of observational things are really important. And then there's this whole other element of being able to communicate back to them without making them feel like you're going to magnify the way they feel about themselves. But rather than allowing them to reflect and feel like it's okay to talk about some of these struggles versus feeling like I'm just going to keep bottling it up because I don't want to be challenged or questioned, or I don't want that conflict with an adult because they're judging me. It's a very, very fine balance.
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And how do we know when we're pushing them too much or not enough? I think it's a really good question. I think it's a hard question to answer. So the way I'll answer is to kind of go back to something I said a little bit ago, which is motivation. What I learned as a coach and as a parent is if a young person values their performance and they're winning because it's important to them, then I think it's okay or healthy to put a little bit more pressure because they are the ones that are motivated to go do it, to go get something versus am I putting pressure on them because I, as an adult, want something from them that they aren't willing to give or can't give? I want you to be a better athlete because of the way I feel, but the kid doesn't really want it. The most simple example I can give is winning is not the most important thing. And then I realize if Johnny or Mary wants to win, then it is important to them. So that's where we push them because they're making that determination of I really want to win for me because it's important to me and I don't want to downplay or dismiss it, but I also don't want to push the kid who's like, I don't care if we win. I just want to have fun, to be able to have a good time. And that's a little hard in a team environment because everybody has conflicting motivations. It's kind of like being at a job in a place of employment. Everybody's there for a different reason. Some people love the job, some people want to advance. Some people just want a paycheck. So how do we balance all those competing needs and motivations?
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I personally realize that being active and keeping moving is important for our health.
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And if we have kids that just want to sit on the couch and watch YouTube, then how do we impress upon them that just getting out and taking a walk is important for their health? Do we get out there and do it with them?
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Do we explain to them that they need to spend a little bit of time outside?
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How do we convey that to our kids?
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I think, again, it goes back to the motivation and the language. Right. Why are we exercising?
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Like exercising, sport is a vehicle to be active, to be healthy. This is good for your health. This is good for your long term health. This is good for your mental health. It's not a vehicle to be a superstar. Now, it can be, but it doesn't have to be. It can be fun and enjoyable, and there could be a bigger purpose, but it doesn't have to be winning or college scholarships or becoming a pro. Everybody has their own motivation. And I think if we look at it through that lens of why am I really doing this? And we understand the purpose like anything else. I talk to kids about this all the time. If someone says, do your homework because I said so, it's different than do your homework because if you do your homework, then this is going to help you get into a good college. So this is going to help you get a good job, and it's going to help you take care of your family. Now we're starting to help them understand this little thing called homework. Seems like a nuisance, but there's actually a reason for it. They may not want to do the homework, but they can actually look at it and go, hey, I understand why I'm doing it. Same with sports.
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This is why I'm doing it. There's a really good reason. You might not understand it yet, but at least I can go do it because I feel like, okay, like I get it versus, no, you just need to go do this because I said so, which is such an adult thing to do.
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Would you share with us your experience of addiction related to sports? I mean, the drive that happens sometimes when teens are involved with sports, the testosterone that's running through their veins, it can lead to addictive habits. Right.
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So I'll speak from my own experience.
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For me, addiction from a very. And I didn't become addicted to gambling. I mean, if I'm being realistic, until I was in my late teen, early twenties was when my addiction started to really form when I was younger. It wasn't that, but gambling was always a form of escape. And I grew up in a household where my father was a big drinker. And I would say that he was there and present physically, and he was a provider and he worked, but he didn't have the emotional capacity to give me what I needed as a child. So from a very early age, gambling was this sort of coping mechanism for me because it helped me escape from reality, just like sports were as well. And I think that's where I start from my own perspective. Now, 30 years later, I look at it and go, okay, every kid's gonna have their journey with this kind of stuff, right? And most kids experiment, and it turns out to be nothing. We all experiment with stuff, and most of us don't become addicts. We experiment with gambling, drinking, drugs. We try it, and then it goes away. Or we have, like, a relatively healthy relationship with it, or not an addictive one, at least if you want to look at it that way. But it's. It's really the kids who are at most at risk are the ones, I think, that aren't getting the support parentally. I wasn't the way I needed emotionally.
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And I look at my own children now who are teenagers in my mind. Is it possible that my son or daughter becomes addicted to something like gambling? Yes, it's possible. But the environment that I'm raising them in is so much more aware and healthy than it was when I was being raised that the odds in my mind go way down. Because I tell my kids I love them, because I spend time with them, because I coach them, because I let them make their own choices. But I also talk to them about important stuff. There's an openness in the relationship, that there's a trust between us, that I could feel like I can let them go make their own choices and take some risks and then come back to home base attachment, their attached, healthy attachment of like, hey, I can go into the world and try gambling if I'm a 16 year old, like my son is. But I also know dad had a problem, and I could talk to dad about it because I trust him. I didn't have that.
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I didn't have that. And my father gambled, and we did it together.
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I mean, that's how I got my dad's attention. I learned how to gamble because my dad would bet on horse racing, and I'd be like, oh, my dad likes this, so I want to like it, too. I want to be part of it, you know, at a certain point as I got older, I wanted to impress him about how smart I was because that was the only, really the only vehicle he had to connect, because he didn't really know how to connect on a healthy level. So I tried to meet him and go to him and say, hey, dad, look at me. I want to do what you're doing. And unfortunately for me, I took gambling to places that he never did. And because it just became this emotional crutch that I used for 30 years of my life. I was going to ask you if this was your means of connecting with.
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Your father to me, gambling. You know, people think of gambling, especially if you don't have an experience with it, whether it's personal or a loved one or someone close to you. I think people just assume gambling is a financial issue, and it's not. It's not. It's an emotional thing. And for me, I had a really big ego. I wanted to be right.
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I wanted people to notice me. I'm smart. I understand sports better than other people. I am willing to take risk. I had this very, very distorted relationship with it. And really, so much of my self worth and identity was tied up in being a gambler, which made disconnecting from the behavior really challenging. Because if I don't have this, who am I going to be?
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What's the number one word of advice that you would give us about raising our grandchildren when it comes to sports and beyond?
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I would say that the number one thing that I do to help any significant adult in a young person's life, the number one thing I talk about with them is how do I communicate with them? A number one, we can't do for them. They have to learn how to do it themselves. What we can do is learn how to communicate with them. I talked about some of the words that we use. Just should can't. But it's really more about asking questions, asking open questions of what I would call an open ended question, or what we call it in our field, how, what, when? Right. I want to understand what's going on inside of you so that I can better help you, rather than asking a closed question like, why did you do this? Which puts a lot of us on defensive. For a grandparent, even probably more so than a parent, there's two generations of distance between an eight year old and a 68 year old. The way that you experience the world when you were eight is light years different. So I want to understand where you're coming from, grandchild or child and how can I connect better and how can I understand you better so that I can help you better versus assuming I have the right answers and trying to impose that onto a young person. Now, just the same, I'm a big believer. And as a parent, it's extremely stressful. As a grandparent taking care of young children, it's probably more stressful because you're removed from it. You're maybe starting over, maybe you're kind of rusty. And it's like, I don't know what to do. And I think it's really about being aware of the way we feel and being able to identify our thoughts and feelings and saying, I don't have to be perfect. I don't have to get this right all the time. I need to take care of myself. I need to take a deep breath. I need a break. Because if we can do those things and practice mindfulness and take deep breaths and have a journal or talk to somebody therapeutically, we can show up better for our children and our grandchildren because we're not anxiety ridden and frantic and worried about, am I doing this right? We're allowing things to unfold the way they're supposed to unfold. And that sounds a little bit fluffy, but I really do believe that. I think the biggest challenge the parents I work with faces, they're trying to control everything and you can't control everything. And that creates an anxiety that leads to bad behavior. It just escalates because I want my kid to do this and they're not doing this. So now I'm going to try to do this to control them, and now it becomes this conflict or disconnect, and now it gets harder and harder and harder. I think one of the issues that I see so much with this generation that I did not see as much with my own children is motivation. The motivation to do their homework, the motivation to pursue a sport, the motivation to stay encouraged when they feel that they're going to fail at something. I don't know if it's because it's easier to sit in front of a tablet or whatever. I don't believe that we have to push our kids so much, but that we need to encourage them to follow through on their commitments as well as let them know that, you know, I'm tired. If they want to go out and learn how to ride a bike, then I'm going to be there for them when they want me to be there.
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But if they're not going to make a commitment, I'm not going to push it for sure. I just had this conversation with my ex wife about my son who's about to start driving, and we were talking about how he's got to, you know, start to practice. But she said to me, and I agree with her, she said, I have other stuff going on. If he wants to learn how to drive, he needs to be motivated to come to me and ask. I'm willing to take him, but I'm not going to push him or force him. Right. I think it's the same with a bike. Both my children learned how to ride a bike at a different pace. My son was a freakish hand eye coordination kid. He started walking at nine months. As soon as he got on the bike, within five minutes, he was riding the bike. My daughter took her a year to figure out, and she was afraid to fall, and she didn't want to get hurt.
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But eventually she figured it out. And I think exactly the way you're approaching it is exactly right. Let him come to you. If he wants to do it, great.
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If he doesn't want to do it, it's okay to. If I learn to ride a bike at six or seven or eight, what's the big deal? And maybe a kid's not riding his bike at seven years old and his friends are making fun of him because he doesn't ride a bike. Well, as much as it, you know, it sucks to say it. That could be the motivation. I'm willing to take some lumps here to learn how to ride the bike because my friends are making fun of me. Not. Not perfect, but hey, okay, now I'm ready to do it, because that's okay, too. We can't make them feel a certain way.
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I think you're handling it, you know? Exactly right. I think a lot of it is about letting them decide the pace at which they want to try this and supporting them. How do you feel about offering rewards?
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That's a really good question. I mean, certainly there's thousands of years of evidence to support that strategy.
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I'm big on rewards for effort and not results.
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Okay, so this kind of goes back. This actually speaks to what I do for a living. Kids are getting rewarded based upon the results they produce at a very young age. You're really special. You are really great. You did these really great things versus did you try hard? Were you a good teammate? Did you have a good attitude? I'm going to reward you for the things that you can control. So if your grandson gets on his bike and says, hey, I want to go try, and he falls down a couple times I'm going to be like, hey, I'm really proud of you for trying. And you are brave.
00:31:03.208 --> 00:31:20.470
You had courage and you took your lumps. That's great. Versus, oh, wow, you learned how to ride your bike. Here's a reward. Because now all of a sudden, now he's going to look to get that reward for the result. And if he doesn't generate the result, it then creates an anxiety of, oh, I'm not good enough or I want that result and I try really hard for it.
00:31:20.509 --> 00:31:24.173
So rewarding effort and controllables, I think, is great.
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Rewarding results, I think, can be distorted. Michael, it occurred to me as we've been talking that a teenager who might be less likely to want to share and is struggling in other areas of their life might be more likely to trust you rather than a parent or psychologist. Because these life skills that we're talking about that are learned through sports, translate into all other areas of our grandchildren's lives. Yeah, for sure. I talk to young people in my work about this all the time. I teach them these strategies through the lens of sport, the context of sport. But it applies in the classroom, it applies in social situations. The ability to control what I can control. I can't control what my parent friend, sibling teacher does. I control my end of that bargain.
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So if I'm not getting what I need from somebody, I need to think about what can I do to change that relationship or do I need to?
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And so that ability to empathize with people and understand that I can't control them. They're not perfect, but if I want something, I need to advocate for myself or learn how to communicate that and deal with that discomfort, that's up to me. I'm a big believer in that. And I think that's where a lot of modern day parents like, and I would consider myself in that bucket, get really uncomfortable because they don't want to let their children fall on their face, so to speak.
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They don't want to let them fail and be uncomfortable and be sad and be angry. It's okay. It's okay. That's why sports are great. You're going to fail. So you have to learn how to be resilient and say, you know what? I failed, but I'm going to dust myself off and now I'm going to go back at it and it's the same in a relationship and it's same in school and it's the same at work. I'm going to go in and I'm going to fall on my face sometimes, and I'm going to have to learn how to dust myself off and approach things in a different way or come back at it and do it again, that's what I love about it. And if we can embrace the failure, the adversity, the challenge, and say, how do I build my character?
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By being able to endure failure and then ultimately learn from it and do better. Now we're teaching people how to solve problems and be resilient and not teaching them to be superstars just based on the result, because that's as much as that's what we see in society. It's not the point for most kids, the point of sports is to learn how to be a part of society and deal with adversity. I mean, there's so many. There's so many benefits to it.
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But we now live in a world where those benefits get subordinated to performance.
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And one of the things you hear so often now is, oh, everybody gets a participation trophy. And I'm conflicted about that. Okay? Everybody shouldn't be rewarded necessarily all the time for everything, but at the same time, do we really want to just reward the kid who grew a foot taller than everybody else at ten years old because he hit the genetic lottery?
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And that kid's really special until he's not anymore. What kind of lesson are we teaching young people? That they can't control their stature?
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That's out of their control. But rewarding some kid for being precocious just because his mom and dad is genetically more advanced or bigger or stronger than the other little kids? That's not really fair. And I've seen so many examples of that in my life. My tenure as a parent and a coach. And now in the world that I work in, is I've seen so many kids who are the biggest, strongest, fastest kid when they were ten, 1112 years old, and they're not even playing sports anymore. But we were completely lauding them when they were little as this special, special little person because they could do all these things, and now they're not even doing it anymore. So really, what are we talking about? Michael, as you were talking, I just had this vision of the simple act of throwing a ball with my grandson last week and how much it meant to me. It wasn't so much that he couldn't throw it perfectly, although he has a great arm. But the act of going out and spending that time together, I mean, it was just fun. And I wasn't thinking about anything else.
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Just being active was like one of the greatest ways that I can share time with him. I mean, what you've just captured is the essence of life. Life is so complicated, so stressful for adults. We have all these different stressors, and sometimes we forget that we need to set aside that half an hour and to go outside and I throw the ball or go for a walk or ride a bike or whatever it is, because we're worried about something that concerning to us and we get bogged down in our thoughts. So we're like, hey, I can't deal with this right now. You go play on your tablet. That's just life. And so for me, it's okay as an adult to do those things because you're human, too. But at the same time, if we understand why we're doing it, we're much more likely to do it versus saying, I have to do this. When I think about the example of throwing a ball, perfect example. It's not that I need to throw the ball perfectly. It doesn't matter. Throwing a ball is not going to change your life. Ultimately, at the end of the day, it's not about throwing the ball well, it's about learning how to throw the ball and overcome those challenges or the lack of confidence and taking direction, asking questions, being able to solve your own problems, hey, I can't throw this ball, but I want to. How am I going to do it? Everybody learns differently. Everybody thinks differently.
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I mean, there are obviously different stages of cognitive development. When you get a seven or eight year old, they're very concrete in their thinking, meaning they can't think abstractly. They can't understand why. So how do I understand where they're coming from and how do I, as the adult, communicate with them to help them learn how to solve this problem based upon where they're at? And that's going to change developmentally as they get older. But I think a lot of adults, it stresses them out and they go, you need to do this because I said so, again, to go back to that.
00:37:39.681 --> 00:37:53.777
And then it puts a lot of pressure on the kid because they can't really emotionally understand why mom or dad or grandma or granddad is acting that way. Well, grandma, granddad, mom and dad are stressed out about life.
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And rather than trying to be patient and communicate and meet the child where they're at, they're going to, okay, let's just go do this and get it over with. Because you need to learn how to throw a ball or ride a bike. Here we're showing them by example that being active is healthy. We're teaching them about teamwork, right? Yeah. And we're showing them that grandma and grandpa care to take time to spend with them.
00:38:17.639 --> 00:38:42.916
Yeah. And that how they do something isn't as important as just getting out there and doing it. Yes. So I think about that, and my view on that has changed, you know, pretty extensively over time just because of my own experiences. But I think about when my son or daughter would throw a ball and it was 5ft to the right of me or 10ft over my head, rather than looking at it as, oh, why can't they throw the ball to me?
00:38:42.947 --> 00:39:23.440
I'm going, oh, this gives me the opportunity to get a few more steps in. So now I'm thinking about it. Like the fact that they just threw the ball 10ft over my head is now it's giving me a chance to, to be active rather than thinking, this is so annoying, why can't the kids just throw it to me? Which is where I think a lot of us think about it versus, hey, this is an opportunity to have a growth mindset and be like, I'm going to take a few more steps is good for my health. I'm glad they threw it over my head. I mean, that's an extreme example potentially, but if we live our lives as adults that way and think about things as a challenge or an opportunity to improve or get better, that's going to rub off on our kids. It's going to rub off on our kids that it's okay to make mistakes and fail, because it's just a way of getting better.
00:39:24.099 --> 00:39:34.639
It's about the journey. Mike, thanks so much for taking the time to be here with us today, for sharing your experience. I know that it's meant a lot to me and I know it has to our listeners.
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Absolutely, absolutely. This is wonderful. Thank you so much for having me. You can find out more about Michael huber@michaelhuber.com dot the link is in the show notes. I want to encourage subscribers to share their thoughts and any additional questions they might have with Michael. I'm sure he'd love to connect with you.
00:39:52.989 --> 00:40:00.050
Thanks for joining us today for another episode of grandparents raising grandchildren. Nurturing through adversity.
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I encourage you to share both your challenges and your successes with us. Your story is undoubtedly one someone else needs to hear. Submit your stories to the links provided in the podcast information. Your contributions will enrich upcoming conversations, creating a more supportive community in which we can learn and grow together. Author, speaker, and mentor and a former vice president of a global Fortune 500 company, Cassandra Crawley Mayo often found herself working as one of the first and only african american women in many of the positions that she held.
00:40:41.519 --> 00:40:48.230
She has led organizations in recruiting, retaining and promoting african american leaders from within.
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After experiencing a career of success and fulfillment, it was also self sabotage and self neglect during the latter part of her career that brought on imposter syndrome and burnout. She committed herself to a journey of confronting habits and behaviors that kept her from living a healthy and happy life outside of work. So now she's on a mission to help women live their best lives. Get ready for this fun and exciting interview with Cassandra Crowley Mayo, a passionate advocate for women seeking to break free from the roadblocks holding them back. Thank you for tuning in to grandparents, raising grandchildren, nurturing through adversity. Remember, you are not alone. Together we can find strength and hope in the face of adversity. Peace be with you, and I pray that you find some time this week to listen to your inner wisdom amongst the noise and the pandemonium of this world.
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Were you that kid that hated sports and was teased because of it, pushed and prodded to be more athletic, and so you did just the opposite? Or were you the kid that was very athletic and you found yourself pleasing your parents, maybe even killing yourself, to be the best on your team? In this episode, Michael Huber will share his mission to equip young athletes and their families with the essential tools to thrive in today's increasingly challenging and often toxic youth sports environment. His insights promise to shed light on the pressures young athletes face and how we can foster a healthier, more supportive atmosphere for them to flourish. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from Michael's experiences and wisdom as we explore how we can all contribute to a more positive sports culture with our grandchildren.
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Welcome to grandparents raising grandchildren nurturing through adversity in this podcast, we will delve deep into the challenges and triumphs of grandparents raising grandchildren as we navigate the complexities of legal, financial, and emotional support. I invite you to join us on a journey of exploring thoughts, feelings, and beliefs surrounding this growing segment of our society. Drawing from real stories and expert advice, we will explore the nuances of child rearing for children who have experienced trauma, and offer valuable resources to guide you through the intricate journey of kinship care.
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Well discuss how we can change the course of history by rewriting our grandchildren's future, all within a supportive community that understands the unique joys and struggles. This podcast was made especially for you.
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Welcome to a community where your voice is heard, your experiences are valued, and your journey is honored.
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So I was one of those kids that was always the last one chosen for the team. I was kind of chubby for my age, introverted, and always lost in a book.
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My achievements were recognized in the classroom, not out on the field.
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But how much different is that when it comes to sports? How often do we truly listen to what our kids want?
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How frequently do we pause to ask them how they feel about the activities they love or don't love?
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Do we know when to encourage them and when to step back? The lessons to be learned from fostering a healthy sports culture at home, akin to promoting good habits around homework and family responsibilities. So join me as we hear from an individual who has spent a lifetime immersed in the world of sports. His insights come from personal experience, and I learned so much from his wisdom, and I hope you will too. First of all, thank you for having me here on the podcast.
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It's a pleasure to share. I was in the corporate consulting for 20 years, from around my mid twenties until my mid forties and around the age of 40, I started to question why I was doing it. I didn't really get much fulfillment from it other than the fact that it was a good living. I was really questioning my sort of purpose and the point of my place on earth. So I started to consider that. But I had young children, we had bills to pay, a lifestyle that my wife wanted to keep up. And so I had to really think about, what am I going to do here? How am I going to do it? And does it make sense because of the fact that we have all these obligations? But ultimately, I got to a place where I hit a wall and I was like, I can't do this anymore. And I decided that I wanted to do something more meaningful, specifically around helping young athletes with the mental side of their sport. And I got to that through my own journey of recovery. I'm a compulsive gambler in recovery almost twelve years now. And that experience of being able to work through my own problems and get help from other people when I never really was good at that, really inspired me to become somebody who was more of a support system for other people because of my own experiences. I just assume, Michael, that you're a sports lover as well, or you wouldn't be in the business.
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Yes, I love sports. It's interesting, actually, it's a really good question because I grew up on sports. From the time I was five years old until I was graduated from high school, I was an athlete. It was my favorite thing in the world to do. There was nothing else that I would rather talk about or do or just consume my life. Ultimately, sports, my relationship with sports kind of morphed into gambling because I was no longer an athlete. I was a sports gambler largely. And so, like, I used that as my vehicle to remain connected to sports, even though I wasn't actually playing anymore. So my relationship to sports actually got really distorted for a while in adulthood because of my gambling. I assume, Michael, and you have children, that you've been a coach as well. What inspired you to get into sports psychology?
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Yes, absolutely. I kind of skipped over that part.
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But I was a coach from the time. My children are teenagers now, but from the time they were five until they got till 1314 years old, I was always involved in coaching.
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And one of the inspirations for getting into sports psychology was actually experiencing some of the things around me that were just so unhealthy. The way that adult coaches talk to children, the way that parents talk to children, the way they framed the importance of sport at a really young age when it was really supposed to be about fun and development and growth and not about performance and winning, you know, seven, eight, nine year old kids. This language and the sort of universe that adults create for these young people was really, really troubling for me. And I always tried to be on the other side of that. That's why I did coach, because I felt like I had a couple of choices. One was to be a part of it, right? To contribute to it or to be something different and to try to be a buffer, because there was all these other adults who were operating in a really unhealthy way, at least in my view. I could be that counter to that. And I had some really, really fantastic experiences as a volunteer coach growing up with my kids, you know, growing up through their system, just because I just loved it so much. Do you think we as parents or grandparents, put too much pressure on our kids to participate in a sport when they may not be athletically inclined? Yeah. And I think not only that, because. And every kid is different, right? Every kid starts in a different place. They have different genetics, they have different families, they have different abilities. And I think it's not only about valuing what each kid brings to the table, but I think one of the things that I really recognized and became aware of very early on was adults have a very low level of respect for children. And what I mean by that is adults project, hey, I'm the adult. I know more than you. I tell you what to do, and you go do it because I said so versus, hey, I want to understand, just because you're nine or ten years old, I still want to understand where you're coming from so that I can help you, rather than saying, hey, do it my way, because my way is the right way. That's not it. Right. It's really about seeing them for who they are and helping them to figure out what they want to get out of this. What do you think are some of the biggest pressures young athletes face in today's sports environment, and how do these pressures affect their mental health and performance?
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I think there are a lot of them. I would say, frankly, I think the number one, and there's obviously, there's a lot of different age groups and brackets in terms of developmentally, every age group has a little different issue.
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But I do say that I think the biggest issue is money. And I say it not because it's explicit to young people. They don't really know how much money parents are spending, resources that they're expending but they know implicitly, just through my work, I could see it. And through my own experience, kids kind of internalize that mom and dad are investing a lot in this process. And so the kids so consciously internalize it to be, oh, okay, I need to produce a certain result to make mom and dad happy. And mom and dad are not saying, hey, I'm spending all this money. You need to do it. But their behavior is influenced and manipulated by the fact that they are spending a lot of money on this and time, too. And the kids are feeling like they have to produce a result to make mom and dad happy. And it's like, I don't feel like they love me, right. I've become a commodity and not a person because I'm out there trying to perform to make somebody else happy, especially a parent whose relationship is just so emotional and connected. So it's really, really challenging. What signs should grandparents look for that might indicate their grandchildren are experiencing unhealthy levels of stress or pressure in sports? And how do we differentiate between healthy competition and toxic sports environments? Yeah, I think the number one issue that I come up against, and it's.
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I hesitate to say it only because it has so many different connotations, and it's not a simple concept, is perfectionism. This feeling that I can't make a mistake, I can't do something wrong, because as soon as I do something wrong, I'm going to get criticized, or my mom or some other trusted adult is going to say to me, hey, you're not good enough. So there's this real internal struggle. I got to get everything right, or else. And then that leads to anxiety. It leads to, what? If I don't play well, they're internalizing this not only on the field, but they may be anxious about going to a sport, or they might be anxious about the car ride home, because they get in the car with mom or dad, and the first thing mom or dad asks is, why did you do this? Or, you should have done that. And it really distorts the relationship between a parent and a child, because really, all the kid wants is mom or dad to be like, hey, you did great, or, it was fun to watch you play, or, I love you. No matter what, those things don't always come out. And parents are not trying to intentionally hurt their children. They're human, too. They're not aware of those feelings. And so they sort of delve into it, and it just becomes this bigger snowball over time. That's great advice, Michael. I assume that you also work with teens that are wanting to transition into a more professional mindset about sports. And yet it's still a fine balance between making it still be all about the love of the game, and yet I take the game seriously. And I know you also coach some professionals. I do. I have one professional client right now, and I have a number of professional athletes that I've had relationships with in different capacities in the past. It's a really interesting dynamic because obviously when you go on to be a professional, it becomes a job. And those issues for those people are very different. You have to become almost desensitized to performance in some ways, because if you take everything so personally, you're not gonna be able to show up and do your job every single day. Because that's what it is, it's work.
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And in some ways, you'd love for a kid to learn that when it's twelve.
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Hey, it's just one game. There's another game tomorrow. Why do we have to put all the eggs in the basket of, I didn't play well today. Okay? What did I learn from it? What am I gonna do differently tomorrow? But I think there is a larger issue societally about mental health. Right. And I don't want to like, overdo that, but I just think that a lot of people have this anxiety nowadays about whether it's sports or work or life or whatever, that I'm not good enough and that I need to do more or else. And then we have this whole social media world out there where people are putting their eyeballs on us and that that makes it a little bit more pronounced. What are some practical tools and strategies grandparents can use to help their grandchildren develop a healthier attitude towards sports?
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I know, for instance, when I first got my granddaughter, she was just terrified of doing anything different and she had sensory issues and her fine motor skills were lacking. So you would have said that she really wasn't a naturally talented athlete, but I felt like I needed to encourage her without being too bold. And then here's my grandson, who's very naturally athletic.
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And it was difficult not to compare the two.
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Can you share techniques that can help young athletes get their minds to work for them rather than against them? Well, I think first and foremost, and maybe this doesn't answer the question directly, and I'll get to it, but I'm a big student of motivation, and I think there's this really fine balance of, hey, this person's genuinely gifted and most people objectively can see that. But if that individual, the athlete doesn't want to be.
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They don't want to invest in that ability because they don't love what they're doing. I think it's really important for them to figure that out on their own rather than to be pushed and be like, hey, you're really gifted. You need to do something with this. It's better to let them find it and help them figure out why they're doing it versus telling them they need to do it. Now, to answer your question a little bit more directly, I think the number one lesson any athlete should hear from day one, as best we can, is control what you can control. Right? Meaning, what do I do that is going to allow me to be the best athlete I can be and to get the most out of my ability versus putting that attention on all these other environmental factors, including what the adults in the world think about us or what our peers think about us. Worry less about that and worry more about what can I do to get the most out of this? Because ultimately we start to shift that focus from what we can control to what we can't as we get into, like, our teenage years. And now we start to worry about what everybody else thinks about us. And that takes away the focus from do I really love this and do I really want to become a better athlete? Regardless of whether or not the results out in the world dictate that I'm special or good or great, it's more about how do I keep getting better every day. That's up to me. So I think that's something that gets lost quite a bit, to be honest with you. So let's talk about support systems. How can we, as grandparents that are raising grandchildren, foster a supportive, a more supportive environment that encourages open communication about the pressures related to sports? And what specific techniques can you recommend to us to use?
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I would say outwardly, the first thing I would pay attention to is the language. What are the types of words that they're using? I'm not good enough, or I should have been able to do that, or I can't do this, or I'm only good at that.
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Versus am I looking at this as a challenge, a puzzle to be solved where I'm constantly trying to get better and I can look at the environment and say, hey, you know what? I can do something about this versus these very absolute statements or words like should just not. I can't. That kind of language implies that they're looking at the sport as something to be judged on versus something to do that they're invested in. To do better. I mean, obviously there are other things that you're going to look for in terms of body language. Are they withdrawn? Are they overly emotional in terms of when they're playing? Or maybe they're overly emotional after a game or a match or whatever it is that they do.
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Are they withdrawing? Are they angry? Those kinds of observational things are really important. And then there's this whole other element of being able to communicate back to them without making them feel like you're going to magnify the way they feel about themselves. But rather than allowing them to reflect and feel like it's okay to talk about some of these struggles versus feeling like I'm just going to keep bottling it up because I don't want to be challenged or questioned, or I don't want that conflict with an adult because they're judging me. It's a very, very fine balance.
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And how do we know when we're pushing them too much or not enough? I think it's a really good question. I think it's a hard question to answer. So the way I'll answer is to kind of go back to something I said a little bit ago, which is motivation. What I learned as a coach and as a parent is if a young person values their performance and they're winning because it's important to them, then I think it's okay or healthy to put a little bit more pressure because they are the ones that are motivated to go do it, to go get something versus am I putting pressure on them because I, as an adult, want something from them that they aren't willing to give or can't give? I want you to be a better athlete because of the way I feel, but the kid doesn't really want it. The most simple example I can give is winning is not the most important thing. And then I realize if Johnny or Mary wants to win, then it is important to them. So that's where we push them because they're making that determination of I really want to win for me because it's important to me and I don't want to downplay or dismiss it, but I also don't want to push the kid who's like, I don't care if we win. I just want to have fun, to be able to have a good time. And that's a little hard in a team environment because everybody has conflicting motivations. It's kind of like being at a job in a place of employment. Everybody's there for a different reason. Some people love the job, some people want to advance. Some people just want a paycheck. So how do we balance all those competing needs and motivations?
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I personally realize that being active and keeping moving is important for our health.
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And if we have kids that just want to sit on the couch and watch YouTube, then how do we impress upon them that just getting out and taking a walk is important for their health? Do we get out there and do it with them?
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Do we explain to them that they need to spend a little bit of time outside?
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How do we convey that to our kids?
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I think, again, it goes back to the motivation and the language. Right. Why are we exercising?
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Like exercising, sport is a vehicle to be active, to be healthy. This is good for your health. This is good for your long term health. This is good for your mental health. It's not a vehicle to be a superstar. Now, it can be, but it doesn't have to be. It can be fun and enjoyable, and there could be a bigger purpose, but it doesn't have to be winning or college scholarships or becoming a pro. Everybody has their own motivation. And I think if we look at it through that lens of why am I really doing this? And we understand the purpose like anything else. I talk to kids about this all the time. If someone says, do your homework because I said so, it's different than do your homework because if you do your homework, then this is going to help you get into a good college. So this is going to help you get a good job, and it's going to help you take care of your family. Now we're starting to help them understand this little thing called homework. Seems like a nuisance, but there's actually a reason for it. They may not want to do the homework, but they can actually look at it and go, hey, I understand why I'm doing it. Same with sports.
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This is why I'm doing it. There's a really good reason. You might not understand it yet, but at least I can go do it because I feel like, okay, like I get it versus, no, you just need to go do this because I said so, which is such an adult thing to do.
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Would you share with us your experience of addiction related to sports? I mean, the drive that happens sometimes when teens are involved with sports, the testosterone that's running through their veins, it can lead to addictive habits. Right.
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So I'll speak from my own experience.
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For me, addiction from a very. And I didn't become addicted to gambling. I mean, if I'm being realistic, until I was in my late teen, early twenties was when my addiction started to really form when I was younger. It wasn't that, but gambling was always a form of escape. And I grew up in a household where my father was a big drinker. And I would say that he was there and present physically, and he was a provider and he worked, but he didn't have the emotional capacity to give me what I needed as a child. So from a very early age, gambling was this sort of coping mechanism for me because it helped me escape from reality, just like sports were as well. And I think that's where I start from my own perspective. Now, 30 years later, I look at it and go, okay, every kid's gonna have their journey with this kind of stuff, right? And most kids experiment, and it turns out to be nothing. We all experiment with stuff, and most of us don't become addicts. We experiment with gambling, drinking, drugs. We try it, and then it goes away. Or we have, like, a relatively healthy relationship with it, or not an addictive one, at least if you want to look at it that way. But it's. It's really the kids who are at most at risk are the ones, I think, that aren't getting the support parentally. I wasn't the way I needed emotionally.
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And I look at my own children now who are teenagers in my mind. Is it possible that my son or daughter becomes addicted to something like gambling? Yes, it's possible. But the environment that I'm raising them in is so much more aware and healthy than it was when I was being raised that the odds in my mind go way down. Because I tell my kids I love them, because I spend time with them, because I coach them, because I let them make their own choices. But I also talk to them about important stuff. There's an openness in the relationship, that there's a trust between us, that I could feel like I can let them go make their own choices and take some risks and then come back to home base attachment, their attached, healthy attachment of like, hey, I can go into the world and try gambling if I'm a 16 year old, like my son is. But I also know dad had a problem, and I could talk to dad about it because I trust him. I didn't have that.
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I didn't have that. And my father gambled, and we did it together.
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I mean, that's how I got my dad's attention. I learned how to gamble because my dad would bet on horse racing, and I'd be like, oh, my dad likes this, so I want to like it, too. I want to be part of it, you know, at a certain point as I got older, I wanted to impress him about how smart I was because that was the only, really the only vehicle he had to connect, because he didn't really know how to connect on a healthy level. So I tried to meet him and go to him and say, hey, dad, look at me. I want to do what you're doing. And unfortunately for me, I took gambling to places that he never did. And because it just became this emotional crutch that I used for 30 years of my life. I was going to ask you if this was your means of connecting with.
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Your father to me, gambling. You know, people think of gambling, especially if you don't have an experience with it, whether it's personal or a loved one or someone close to you. I think people just assume gambling is a financial issue, and it's not. It's not. It's an emotional thing. And for me, I had a really big ego. I wanted to be right.
00:24:48.336 --> 00:25:10.125
I wanted people to notice me. I'm smart. I understand sports better than other people. I am willing to take risk. I had this very, very distorted relationship with it. And really, so much of my self worth and identity was tied up in being a gambler, which made disconnecting from the behavior really challenging. Because if I don't have this, who am I going to be?
00:25:10.288 --> 00:25:21.630
What's the number one word of advice that you would give us about raising our grandchildren when it comes to sports and beyond?
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I would say that the number one thing that I do to help any significant adult in a young person's life, the number one thing I talk about with them is how do I communicate with them? A number one, we can't do for them. They have to learn how to do it themselves. What we can do is learn how to communicate with them. I talked about some of the words that we use. Just should can't. But it's really more about asking questions, asking open questions of what I would call an open ended question, or what we call it in our field, how, what, when? Right. I want to understand what's going on inside of you so that I can better help you, rather than asking a closed question like, why did you do this? Which puts a lot of us on defensive. For a grandparent, even probably more so than a parent, there's two generations of distance between an eight year old and a 68 year old. The way that you experience the world when you were eight is light years different. So I want to understand where you're coming from, grandchild or child and how can I connect better and how can I understand you better so that I can help you better versus assuming I have the right answers and trying to impose that onto a young person. Now, just the same, I'm a big believer. And as a parent, it's extremely stressful. As a grandparent taking care of young children, it's probably more stressful because you're removed from it. You're maybe starting over, maybe you're kind of rusty. And it's like, I don't know what to do. And I think it's really about being aware of the way we feel and being able to identify our thoughts and feelings and saying, I don't have to be perfect. I don't have to get this right all the time. I need to take care of myself. I need to take a deep breath. I need a break. Because if we can do those things and practice mindfulness and take deep breaths and have a journal or talk to somebody therapeutically, we can show up better for our children and our grandchildren because we're not anxiety ridden and frantic and worried about, am I doing this right? We're allowing things to unfold the way they're supposed to unfold. And that sounds a little bit fluffy, but I really do believe that. I think the biggest challenge the parents I work with faces, they're trying to control everything and you can't control everything. And that creates an anxiety that leads to bad behavior. It just escalates because I want my kid to do this and they're not doing this. So now I'm going to try to do this to control them, and now it becomes this conflict or disconnect, and now it gets harder and harder and harder. I think one of the issues that I see so much with this generation that I did not see as much with my own children is motivation. The motivation to do their homework, the motivation to pursue a sport, the motivation to stay encouraged when they feel that they're going to fail at something. I don't know if it's because it's easier to sit in front of a tablet or whatever. I don't believe that we have to push our kids so much, but that we need to encourage them to follow through on their commitments as well as let them know that, you know, I'm tired. If they want to go out and learn how to ride a bike, then I'm going to be there for them when they want me to be there.
00:28:47.892 --> 00:29:33.884
But if they're not going to make a commitment, I'm not going to push it for sure. I just had this conversation with my ex wife about my son who's about to start driving, and we were talking about how he's got to, you know, start to practice. But she said to me, and I agree with her, she said, I have other stuff going on. If he wants to learn how to drive, he needs to be motivated to come to me and ask. I'm willing to take him, but I'm not going to push him or force him. Right. I think it's the same with a bike. Both my children learned how to ride a bike at a different pace. My son was a freakish hand eye coordination kid. He started walking at nine months. As soon as he got on the bike, within five minutes, he was riding the bike. My daughter took her a year to figure out, and she was afraid to fall, and she didn't want to get hurt.
00:29:33.971 --> 00:29:40.483
But eventually she figured it out. And I think exactly the way you're approaching it is exactly right. Let him come to you. If he wants to do it, great.
00:29:40.531 --> 00:30:08.125
If he doesn't want to do it, it's okay to. If I learn to ride a bike at six or seven or eight, what's the big deal? And maybe a kid's not riding his bike at seven years old and his friends are making fun of him because he doesn't ride a bike. Well, as much as it, you know, it sucks to say it. That could be the motivation. I'm willing to take some lumps here to learn how to ride the bike because my friends are making fun of me. Not. Not perfect, but hey, okay, now I'm ready to do it, because that's okay, too. We can't make them feel a certain way.
00:30:08.157 --> 00:30:18.509
I think you're handling it, you know? Exactly right. I think a lot of it is about letting them decide the pace at which they want to try this and supporting them. How do you feel about offering rewards?
00:30:19.009 --> 00:30:25.549
That's a really good question. I mean, certainly there's thousands of years of evidence to support that strategy.
00:30:26.769 --> 00:30:30.465
I'm big on rewards for effort and not results.
00:30:30.617 --> 00:31:03.096
Okay, so this kind of goes back. This actually speaks to what I do for a living. Kids are getting rewarded based upon the results they produce at a very young age. You're really special. You are really great. You did these really great things versus did you try hard? Were you a good teammate? Did you have a good attitude? I'm going to reward you for the things that you can control. So if your grandson gets on his bike and says, hey, I want to go try, and he falls down a couple times I'm going to be like, hey, I'm really proud of you for trying. And you are brave.
00:31:03.208 --> 00:31:20.470
You had courage and you took your lumps. That's great. Versus, oh, wow, you learned how to ride your bike. Here's a reward. Because now all of a sudden, now he's going to look to get that reward for the result. And if he doesn't generate the result, it then creates an anxiety of, oh, I'm not good enough or I want that result and I try really hard for it.
00:31:20.509 --> 00:31:24.173
So rewarding effort and controllables, I think, is great.
00:31:24.301 --> 00:32:27.395
Rewarding results, I think, can be distorted. Michael, it occurred to me as we've been talking that a teenager who might be less likely to want to share and is struggling in other areas of their life might be more likely to trust you rather than a parent or psychologist. Because these life skills that we're talking about that are learned through sports, translate into all other areas of our grandchildren's lives. Yeah, for sure. I talk to young people in my work about this all the time. I teach them these strategies through the lens of sport, the context of sport. But it applies in the classroom, it applies in social situations. The ability to control what I can control. I can't control what my parent friend, sibling teacher does. I control my end of that bargain.
00:32:27.468 --> 00:32:34.988
So if I'm not getting what I need from somebody, I need to think about what can I do to change that relationship or do I need to?
00:32:35.124 --> 00:33:01.635
And so that ability to empathize with people and understand that I can't control them. They're not perfect, but if I want something, I need to advocate for myself or learn how to communicate that and deal with that discomfort, that's up to me. I'm a big believer in that. And I think that's where a lot of modern day parents like, and I would consider myself in that bucket, get really uncomfortable because they don't want to let their children fall on their face, so to speak.
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They don't want to let them fail and be uncomfortable and be sad and be angry. It's okay. It's okay. That's why sports are great. You're going to fail. So you have to learn how to be resilient and say, you know what? I failed, but I'm going to dust myself off and now I'm going to go back at it and it's the same in a relationship and it's same in school and it's the same at work. I'm going to go in and I'm going to fall on my face sometimes, and I'm going to have to learn how to dust myself off and approach things in a different way or come back at it and do it again, that's what I love about it. And if we can embrace the failure, the adversity, the challenge, and say, how do I build my character?
00:33:40.114 --> 00:34:06.296
By being able to endure failure and then ultimately learn from it and do better. Now we're teaching people how to solve problems and be resilient and not teaching them to be superstars just based on the result, because that's as much as that's what we see in society. It's not the point for most kids, the point of sports is to learn how to be a part of society and deal with adversity. I mean, there's so many. There's so many benefits to it.
00:34:06.327 --> 00:34:13.639
But we now live in a world where those benefits get subordinated to performance.
00:34:13.800 --> 00:34:36.034
And one of the things you hear so often now is, oh, everybody gets a participation trophy. And I'm conflicted about that. Okay? Everybody shouldn't be rewarded necessarily all the time for everything, but at the same time, do we really want to just reward the kid who grew a foot taller than everybody else at ten years old because he hit the genetic lottery?
00:34:36.146 --> 00:34:43.739
And that kid's really special until he's not anymore. What kind of lesson are we teaching young people? That they can't control their stature?
00:34:43.818 --> 00:35:45.204
That's out of their control. But rewarding some kid for being precocious just because his mom and dad is genetically more advanced or bigger or stronger than the other little kids? That's not really fair. And I've seen so many examples of that in my life. My tenure as a parent and a coach. And now in the world that I work in, is I've seen so many kids who are the biggest, strongest, fastest kid when they were ten, 1112 years old, and they're not even playing sports anymore. But we were completely lauding them when they were little as this special, special little person because they could do all these things, and now they're not even doing it anymore. So really, what are we talking about? Michael, as you were talking, I just had this vision of the simple act of throwing a ball with my grandson last week and how much it meant to me. It wasn't so much that he couldn't throw it perfectly, although he has a great arm. But the act of going out and spending that time together, I mean, it was just fun. And I wasn't thinking about anything else.
00:35:45.371 --> 00:37:09.815
Just being active was like one of the greatest ways that I can share time with him. I mean, what you've just captured is the essence of life. Life is so complicated, so stressful for adults. We have all these different stressors, and sometimes we forget that we need to set aside that half an hour and to go outside and I throw the ball or go for a walk or ride a bike or whatever it is, because we're worried about something that concerning to us and we get bogged down in our thoughts. So we're like, hey, I can't deal with this right now. You go play on your tablet. That's just life. And so for me, it's okay as an adult to do those things because you're human, too. But at the same time, if we understand why we're doing it, we're much more likely to do it versus saying, I have to do this. When I think about the example of throwing a ball, perfect example. It's not that I need to throw the ball perfectly. It doesn't matter. Throwing a ball is not going to change your life. Ultimately, at the end of the day, it's not about throwing the ball well, it's about learning how to throw the ball and overcome those challenges or the lack of confidence and taking direction, asking questions, being able to solve your own problems, hey, I can't throw this ball, but I want to. How am I going to do it? Everybody learns differently. Everybody thinks differently.
00:37:09.887 --> 00:37:39.594
I mean, there are obviously different stages of cognitive development. When you get a seven or eight year old, they're very concrete in their thinking, meaning they can't think abstractly. They can't understand why. So how do I understand where they're coming from and how do I, as the adult, communicate with them to help them learn how to solve this problem based upon where they're at? And that's going to change developmentally as they get older. But I think a lot of adults, it stresses them out and they go, you need to do this because I said so, again, to go back to that.
00:37:39.681 --> 00:37:53.777
And then it puts a lot of pressure on the kid because they can't really emotionally understand why mom or dad or grandma or granddad is acting that way. Well, grandma, granddad, mom and dad are stressed out about life.
00:37:53.914 --> 00:38:17.519
And rather than trying to be patient and communicate and meet the child where they're at, they're going to, okay, let's just go do this and get it over with. Because you need to learn how to throw a ball or ride a bike. Here we're showing them by example that being active is healthy. We're teaching them about teamwork, right? Yeah. And we're showing them that grandma and grandpa care to take time to spend with them.
00:38:17.639 --> 00:38:42.916
Yeah. And that how they do something isn't as important as just getting out there and doing it. Yes. So I think about that, and my view on that has changed, you know, pretty extensively over time just because of my own experiences. But I think about when my son or daughter would throw a ball and it was 5ft to the right of me or 10ft over my head, rather than looking at it as, oh, why can't they throw the ball to me?
00:38:42.947 --> 00:39:23.440
I'm going, oh, this gives me the opportunity to get a few more steps in. So now I'm thinking about it. Like the fact that they just threw the ball 10ft over my head is now it's giving me a chance to, to be active rather than thinking, this is so annoying, why can't the kids just throw it to me? Which is where I think a lot of us think about it versus, hey, this is an opportunity to have a growth mindset and be like, I'm going to take a few more steps is good for my health. I'm glad they threw it over my head. I mean, that's an extreme example potentially, but if we live our lives as adults that way and think about things as a challenge or an opportunity to improve or get better, that's going to rub off on our kids. It's going to rub off on our kids that it's okay to make mistakes and fail, because it's just a way of getting better.
00:39:24.099 --> 00:39:34.639
It's about the journey. Mike, thanks so much for taking the time to be here with us today, for sharing your experience. I know that it's meant a lot to me and I know it has to our listeners.
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Absolutely, absolutely. This is wonderful. Thank you so much for having me. You can find out more about Michael huber@michaelhuber.com dot the link is in the show notes. I want to encourage subscribers to share their thoughts and any additional questions they might have with Michael. I'm sure he'd love to connect with you.
00:39:52.989 --> 00:40:00.050
Thanks for joining us today for another episode of grandparents raising grandchildren. Nurturing through adversity.
00:40:00.670 --> 00:40:41.099
I encourage you to share both your challenges and your successes with us. Your story is undoubtedly one someone else needs to hear. Submit your stories to the links provided in the podcast information. Your contributions will enrich upcoming conversations, creating a more supportive community in which we can learn and grow together. Author, speaker, and mentor and a former vice president of a global Fortune 500 company, Cassandra Crawley Mayo often found herself working as one of the first and only african american women in many of the positions that she held.
00:40:41.519 --> 00:40:48.230
She has led organizations in recruiting, retaining and promoting african american leaders from within.
00:40:48.849 --> 00:41:51.559
After experiencing a career of success and fulfillment, it was also self sabotage and self neglect during the latter part of her career that brought on imposter syndrome and burnout. She committed herself to a journey of confronting habits and behaviors that kept her from living a healthy and happy life outside of work. So now she's on a mission to help women live their best lives. Get ready for this fun and exciting interview with Cassandra Crowley Mayo, a passionate advocate for women seeking to break free from the roadblocks holding them back. Thank you for tuning in to grandparents, raising grandchildren, nurturing through adversity. Remember, you are not alone. Together we can find strength and hope in the face of adversity. Peace be with you, and I pray that you find some time this week to listen to your inner wisdom amongst the noise and the pandemonium of this world.
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