SPORT PSYCHOLOGY
Parenting a Competitive Junior Orienteer Jason McCrae – Intern Psychologist
O
RIENTEERING is often billed as the family sport, and rightly so. Family members can all compete in their individual age classes at the same time of day and the same location, something not able to be done in many other sports, and it fosters an environment that allows the whole family to enjoy participation together. But how a mum or dad can best parent their child in a sport they are also competing in is not always clear. This article will attempt to offer some tips on parenting of children as they move up through Australia’s junior Orienteering ranks, whether the child is aiming for national team selection or just starting out in our sport.
What are these tips based on? These tips are based on a combination of sport psychology research done in other sports and years of comments and suggestions of parents, coaches and junior athletes of various sports. Of course, every child, parent and their relationship is different. We are all unique and as a result some of the ideas in this article may not be suitable for all parents or their juniors.
Parenting an orienteering junior – some suggestions So what are some of the things a parent can attempt to do to help both their aspiring young junior and the relationship they have with that child/teenager. • All parents should have the opportunity to be coaches and all juniors can benefit greatly from coaching. It’s just that in many cases parents should not coach their own children! This can be hard to implement in Orienteering where parents often have a lot of skill in how to orienteer and there are sometimes not many coaches available. However it is very difficult, no matter what a child might say, for a child to make a distinction between the roles of parent and coach. In particular, criticism of performance, technique or training should be handled by the coach. If you are an experienced and skilled orienteer as well as a parent you might be able to coach a fellow orienteer’s children in return for him or her coaching yours. • Parents should try to have a sound understanding of the nutritional requirements of Orienteering and provide for it. • Accept success and failure and help your child to do so as well. Good orienteers learn to deal with failure early. If you can make sure that your young orienteer knows that whether they win or lose, you still love them, appreciate their efforts and are not disappointed in them, then you will have gone a long way to helping them in their orienteering career. Of course we can’t say success doesn’t matter, it does, but by teaching a junior to enjoy the feeling of competing and trying hard, no matter what the outcome, you are setting them up to enjoy Orienteering. • The goal of juniors should be to improve their orienteering and themselves. They should be encouraged to improve their 30 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER OCTOBER 2006
technique, fitness and attitude. This should be the focus whether their best performance is likely to win the race or produce a result lower down in the field. The important thing is to focus on putting good effort into navigation and fitness - let the result take care of itself. • It doesn’t take long at an Orienteering event to recognise that juniors have a different code of dress to their more senior colleagues. More than adults, a junior’s psychological and emotional well-being is influenced by how they look and being accepted by their peers. As parents you can support this by recognising that sometimes the clothing that you think might be inappropriate is actually necessary. • Be a good role model for your child. As mentioned previously, Orienteering is one of few sports where the whole family compete. Children learn best by observing others’ behaviour and replicating it. If you are setting a good example of enjoying your orienteering, dealing well with failure or disappointment and competing in a manner that you would like your son/ daughter to then you are helping them to learn how to enjoy their Orienteering. Alternately if you are displaying some behaviours at Orienteering that you do not think are appropriate then no matter what you tell your child, you need to start ‘walking the walk’ if you don’t want them to behave that way as well. • Often after a junior has finished parents want to talk to them, find out how they went and generally have a chat about their orienteering experience. Unfortunately at that time juniors generally want to drink, eat, see their friends or just kick the footy! The best thing for a junior sportsperson is that their parents are patient and wait for the time when their child wants to talk about how their race went. When that time comes, take time to listen for the aspects of Orienteering that the child wants to talk about. Juniors usually want to talk about the things they enjoyed about their race and the positive aspects while parents can often want to talk about the mistakes.
Something on your mind? This column has been appearing in The Australian Orienteer for approximately two years now covering a range of sport psychology topics such as goal setting, overcoming distraction, focussing on processes and recovering from mistakes. One of the things I’ve tried to do is provide action plans and tips that can be implemented by orienteers in their training, competing or technique generally. Is there anything however “on your mind” when you compete that you find challenging? If so I invite you to drop me an e-mail and see if we can address it in the next or subsequent columns. I’m happy to keep your details anonymous if you wish. Please e-mail me on the address below at least a fortnight before AO submissions are required (see submission date in the first few pages of this edition). Jason McCrae works as a Sport Psychologist at the ACT Academy of Sport which is also Orienteering Australia’s National Training Centre. He is a keen orienteer himself and has worked with many of Australia’s top elites and can be e-mailed on jason.mccrae@act.gov.au
