March 15, 2024 | Tagged Leadership
6 Actions Steps Parents Can Take to Help Children Achieve Their Basketball Dreams
6 Action Steps Parents can take to help their kids achieve basketball dreams
As a parent with a son or daughter who has expressed an inner drive to be a great basketball player, here are six action steps you can take to help him or her achieve his/her goals. If your passion is greater than your son or daughter's, this plan will not work.
1. Require a goal book. If you have children who are twelve and older, require them to keep a goal workbook and have them fill out their goals every Sunday night or Monday morning for the week. This should include their plans for hard and soft skill development, eating/nutrition/sleep plan, and their goals for being a better person off the court.
2. Check in with their goals and encourage. Help them establish consequences. If your son or daughter isn’t following through with the goals, help them set up fair consequences and accountability which is chosen by them, not by you.
3. Take a back seat. If you are the driver, they won’t succeed. Be firm about requiring written goals and be persistent and consistent about checking the goals each week. Don't say anything during the week. Don't mention diet, or sleep, or working out. When you meet with your child for accountability on following through, think like a counselor. Ask, "What do you think went well? What goals did you make? What goals did you come up short? How do you feel when you don't reach your goals? What changes can you make to be more effective next time?" Make sure you lead with curiosity, do not blame or shame. Your goal is to help your children navigate this for themselves.
4. Eliminate flattery and praise that compares—you are the best player in the gym, you are way better than anyone else your age. This ruins potential. Instead, encourage- this word means to build courage. Find ways to praise effort, follow-through, passion, humility, and work ethic.
5. Rethink AAU/Club Teams and full-summer travel teams. Travel teams are important, but they are an exceedingly small part of the overall development of a serious player. They are frosting. Travel Teams like the ones NBC sponsors to Europe are once-in-a-lifetime events but trips and travel every week or weekend will cost overall if they do it all summer long. Don’t let your kids who love basketball only eat dessert. They will come up short when it matters most. Summer is the intensive time for skill work-- shooting, dribbling, strength, and conditioning, learning the game, passing, and footwork.
6. Delight in life together. Celebrate this incredible time of life to build hard skills. Decide together what it means to be successful and how to balance life. Let’s not waste our time striving or pushing each other and miss this moment. Hold your child, speak words of courage and strength, and pray with and for your child. Every moment we have together is a gift. If you need your child to get a college scholarship, this is too much pressure. Children are not designed to bear our needs for fame, glory, or bragging rights. Your child is not your property. Instead, your child has been given to you to mentor, raise up, strengthen, and build into an amazing person.
About NBC Basketball Camps
Our mission is better players and better people. Basketball should bring out your best, not your worst. If you are interested in your kid being a superstar with no internal moral character and admirable leadership qualities, NBC Camps are not the program for you. We want to work with parents and athletes who believe in the importance of living life with dignity, strength, and mental toughness. We want to raise athletes and leaders who make everyone around them better. Come check out NBC Basketball Camps. We have a program just for you.