For many children competing isn’t something they look forward to or want to do.
Frequently, either at an inner club mini-meets or even at regional meets, new or recent competitors end up refusing to compete. It might be that the child is reluctant to agree to go to the meet, or that at the meet develops some kind of sudden sickness (head ache, tummy ache and the likes), cries, panic or simply refuses to go behind or step on the starting block until he or she is excused from doing the race.
This kind of behavior can be quite dramatic and is often challenging for parents as well as for coaches to deal with.
Here is an example of how I’ve dealt with this kind of situation to help parents and children find the fun and joy of competing.
Lily is a young 6-year-old girl who started swimming a year ago. Her parents hadn’t been able yet to take her up to one of our mini-meets (inter club mock meet. We use these meets to teach children the process of meets and parents to time and volunteer.) as their daughter was very reluctant to attending.
Parents signed her up several times in the past but they never were able to make it to the pool on the day of the meet. Lily was just not having it. Finally, after more than a year, she was on deck the day of the mini-meet. Parents had made a deal with her that she would get a reward if she were to race at least once.
Observing from a distance, I could see that she was quite hesitant to even get in for the warm up. It looked like she thought the warm-up was also part of the “race”. Our younger coaches showed her a lot of care and made sure that all they said and did was geared toward making all the children feel safe and loved.
Lily’s dad was upstairs in the stand taking care of her younger sibling while her mom was on deck trying to time. Her mom looked as worried as Lily was. Lily was clinging to her mom’s hands and was even reluctant to hang out with her group mates.
I approached to talk with the mother. I asked her how her daughter was doing. She said that she was very scared and that her tummy was hurting. Then I asked her how she was doing. She seemed a bit surprised but feeling comfortable with me she admitted she was worried for her girl.
She didn’t want anything “bad” happening to her and she didn’t want her to have a bad experience that would prevent her from wanting to compete for many more months.
I reassured her that I wanted the exact same thing and that there might be some things we could do now to help Lily have a great experience that evening.
I asked her then if she knew why Lily was so reluctant to compete. So far Lily had only given her typical 6-year-old answers such as:
“just cause”, “I don’t like it”, I don’t want to”, “it’s stupid”, “it’s not fun”.
I explained to the mom that if we were able to help Lily go a bit deeper than this, we would have a good chance at helping her grow out of it.
To do that, we had to ask Lily how she felt and thought about racing and competing. We needed more input on how she talked to herself about competing.
In short, we had to find out how she perceived competition.
This information would provide us with valuable insights on how to help Lily adjust her perception. I instructed the mom on the type of questions that could help her and asked her to report to me once she had uncovered how Lily was really perceiving the whole thing.
Lily was so intensely caught up in her fear that I felt there was no way she would open up enough if I were to sit with her and her mom for that conversation. So, I took over the timing while Lily and her mom were chatting.
A few minutes later, the mom came back and reported with a smile on their conversation. She had just found out that
Lily understood competition has one person wins and everyone else loses.
She didn’t want to lose because nobody likes losers. The mom was very surprised to find this out and was wondering how it could be this way. I explained that this was not so uncommon and that our culture (we glorify so much winning over effort) was really to blame but that the good news was that we were now in a position to really help her.
I explained to the mom that, as per the definition in the dictionary, to compete means “to struggle with”. In other word it means that by struggling to be the best, one can find their own greatness and limitations. For Lily it means that she needed to adjust her perception so that she could see that races are just a chance to find out how fast she really could go, regardless of how fast her friends could go.
Our challenge resided in helping Lily focus on testing herself as opposed to the end result. To help her mom do that I asked her if she was aware of any game, she had witnessed Lily test herself with.
After thinking for a while her mom said that Lily liked building card castles at home and that she often tried her best to push her limit on how high she was able to build them. This was a great example she could use to help Lily understand how a swim race worked. It may not have been enough to get her to race that day, but the mother now had a great plan to help her daughter make the adjustment.
The mom went back to sit next to Lily who was waiting, obviously hoping her mom would come back to tell her they would go home now.
After a long talk with her mom and missing her first two races of the three she had that evening, we had Lily jump in for her race. It was obvious she was still reluctant and insecure but the ice had been broken. Her first race was behind her.
Her mom, coaches and myself congratulated her on her achievement and dad even came down to the deck with the sibling in his arm to give her a proud hug.
Here is a picture of an S.A. (essay) the daughter of my friend wrote around Lily’s age.
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