Your daughter must enjoy herself, and being an athlete is no exception. They require time to be a child and a teenager. They require that breathing space.

Our athletes’ mental health is our top priority as mothers. It has a significant impact on how she navigates not only her sport but also her life. Many parents are left wondering – what can I do to help?

To begin with, you’re probably accomplishing more than you realize.

Second, while this is not an exhaustive list, these are the things that I have seen make a significant impact on athletes’ mental health as well as their performance. Scroll down below and find out how!

1. Validate her feelings

If you feel your daughter is seriously battling with her mental health or is attempting to deal with issues such as clinical depression or anxiety, make sure your daughter has access to resources other than the ones I’m going to tell you about today. Ascertain that she is linked with a therapist or counselor and that she is receiving the necessary help.

What you can do at the moment is to validate her feelings. 

Validating her sentiments can assist her in processing disappointments in both her sport and her life.

When she doesn’t play well or has a horrible game, we as moms prefer to rush in and attempt to repair how she’s feeling and help her to move past that feeling as quickly as possible, telling her things like —

“No, you’re fine. You play better than you think. Let’s be joyful, and go have some ice cream.”

If we rush over how she’s feeling and simply reassure her, “You’re OK. You’re good. Don’t feel that way.”

She is subconsciously receiving cues that what she is experiencing is abnormal, which is wrong. The most important thing for our daughters to understand is that all emotions are natural. There are no negative emotions. There are no pleasant feelings.

A simple thing you can do is validate her feelings. She must learn that it’s not always going to feel good every day. And there will be instances when it does not feel nice, but that’s fine. 

That’s just life.

2. Model healthy habits. 

Set a positive example for her to follow. Exercise, nutrition, getting outside every day, and setting social media boundaries are all apparent examples. They are all healthy habits that we all know are advantageous. 

When you prioritize movement and nutrition, it will have a significant impact on your daughter’s confidence. The same can be said for mental wellness.

It could look like—getting out into nature, even if it’s as simple as going for a stroll after dinner, setting social media cut-off time, and getting enough sleep.

Including these items in your family routines will be liberating for your daughter. We’ve all seen how harmful social media can be. It allows your children to view the highlights of others’ life and compare them to their own, which could be hard to deal with. 

Making boundaries around social media, however, helps to create good behaviors.

The more, you can incorporate these things into your family routine, the better it is. So find simple ways that you can do that. It could be as simple as going on for a walk together!

3. Schedule in fun. 

Your athlete requires enjoyment. I don’t care if she’s on the top team in her region and has a scholarship to a division one institution. She also needs time to be a kid and a teenager.

Their sport is their entire life, and they will feel as if they have no other room to breathe if they do not take breaks. So plan some pleasant activities for your daughter.

Give her the option of scheduling a time when she can do whatever she wants, such as a vacation. Make it possible for your daughter to take a vacation from the grind and routine. We don’t want to wait till our athletes break down to provide rest.

The mental wellness of your athlete should be your top focus. So you use your judgment and make decisions that are consistent with your values.

4. Surround her with support.

Surround her with love, mentorship, and knowledge. She requires to receive mentorship and assistance, as well as the opportunity to improve her skills;

• Understand what to do with our emotions.
• How to deal with adversity.

We can’t expect our players to know how to deal with adversity in their sport unless we provide them the opportunity to do so.

These are learned abilities. That is exactly what we teach these athletes in our elite competitor program. They are receiving mentorship, and I believe that hearing from other adults and seeing other strong female leaders who are assisting them in overcoming some of these issues is quite beneficial to them.

Moms in Elite Competitor have peace of mind knowing that their kid is plugged into a community where she knows she is not alone and where she is learning real, tangible skills from an expert so that they don’t have to figure out how.

All you have to do is take the initial step toward assisting them. If you’ve decided to begin mental training right away, remember to;

• Validate and normalize her feelings
• Model healthy habits yourself
• Schedule in the fun
• Surround her with support

These are the four options available to you. They are quite basic. You can even do some of these things right now.

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Helpful Links:

• Download the free resources we’ve created for you
• Join us inside our FREE Facebook Group – The Elite Competitor Society – for weekly Q&A, periodic trainings and challenges, and the support of an amazing community of moms, coaches, and the men who partner with us!

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