Composure, Week 4
Carrying It Forward
The month is closing. Your part is to reflect with your child on the month, connect it to life beyond football, and share what you learned about their steadiness and your own.
Keeping Your Own Head
All month, your kid has been learning what gets to them and how to stay steady. This short tool takes you through the same steps from the touchline.
You’ll pick a moment that winds you up, notice what your body does first, and choose a word to go with one long breath out, so you have your own plan ready for match day. It takes a few minutes, and whatever you write stays private.
How To Support Your Child
Throughout the Week
Invite a conversation whenever a moment comes up, perhaps over breakfast or on a drive, about how things are going and where they’ve noticed their composure showing up outside football. Make time for your own homework too: the short private tool on what sets you off around football just below. You’re their role model for staying steady, so noticing your own triggers is part of the work.
On Match Day
Notice the strides your child has made this month, and anything that feels different now, in them and in you. Be proud of where you both got. It takes a lot of courage to look inside oneself, and you both did it, together.
Resources
We Make Footballers – “How to Talk to Your Child After Their Football Match or Training Session”
Six tips for the conversation after a match or training session from England’s largest provider of weekly football training for children aged 4 to 12. Most useful for its reminder that parents who ask their children to control their emotions need to control their own, both while watching and when talking afterwards, even though it is written with younger players in mind.
Dr Patrick Cohn (Sports Psychology Podcast) – “A Post-Game Routine for Young Athletes and Parents”
A podcast episode in which a sport psychologist and a certified mental performance consultant discuss what to say before and after matches and how to improve communication with young athletes. Most useful for giving parents a simple routine to follow after the final whistle, even though the examples are American and the page promotes the presenters’ paid programmes.