Being a Swim Parent

The most important thing you can do as the parent of a swimmer is to love and support your child, both in and out of the pool. This support is a key factor in fostering enjoyment and learning as well as contributing to the child's individual success in the pool.

Being the parent of a swimmer can be a seemingly thankless combination of roles, from financier to taxi driver and many things in between. At the same time as making huge sacrifices yourself, there’s every chance that a teenage child will reward you by finding you intolerably embarrassing and tell you on a frequent basis that you’re ruining their lives. Brilliant!

First of all, your child needs your unconditional love. One of the things that can cause difficulty for sporting children, is when they feel that their parents’ love is conditional on their sporting success. For most of you it might sound ridiculous that this could happen, but it does, and you don’t even have to be a ‘pushy parent’ living out your needs through your child for it to. Do you reward your children for their sporting success? If so, how? If you must reward them, do so for their effort or attitude.

10 Top Tips for Swimming Parents

Try not to impose your ambitions on your child Remember that swimming is your child's activity. Improvements and progress occur at different rates for each individual. Don't judge your child's progress based on the performance of other athletes and don't push them based on what you think they should be doing. The nice thing about swimming is every person can strive to do their personal best and benefit from the process of competitive swimming.
Be supportive no matter what There is only one question to ask your child after a practice or a competition - "Did you have fun?" If meets and training sessions are not fun, your child will struggle to enjoy them and perform their best.
Don’t try to coach your child – let the coaches do it You are involved in a sports program that offers professional standard coaching. British Swimming was the first in the UK to introduce structured levels of teaching and coaching qualifications, and Prescot senior coaches regularly attend coach development days to further enhance the knowledge and coaching ability of the Club. Do not undermine the coach by trying to coach your child on the side. Your job is to provide love and support. The coach is responsible for the technical part of the job. You should not offer advice on technique or race strategy. Never pay your child for a performance. This will only serve to confuse your child concerning the reasons to strive for excellence and weaken the swimmer/coach bond.
Only have positive things to say at a swimming meet You should be encouraging and never criticise your child or their coach. Both of them know when mistakes have been made. Remember "yelling at" is not the same as "cheering for". They are the swimmer, not you.
Acknowledge your child's fears New experiences can be stressful situations. It is totally appropriate for your child to be scared. Don't yell or belittle, just assure your child that the coach would not have suggested the event or meet if your child was not ready. Remember your job is to love and support your child through all of the swimming experience, to wish them well and to remind them to just go and enjoy themselves.
Don’t criticize the officials Please don't criticize those who are doing their best, they are voluntary positions and remember they are fully qualified and probably know the rules even better than you.
Respect your child's coach The bond between coach and swimmer is special. It contributes to your child's success as well as fun. Do not criticize the coach in the presence of your child. If you do need to raise concerns, please ask to speak to the coach away from your child.
Be loyal and supportive of your Club It is not wise for parents to take swimmers and to jump from Club to Club. The water isn't necessarily bluer in another team's pool. Every Club has its own internal problems, even teams that build champions. Children who switch from Club to Club find that it can be a difficult emotional experience. Often swimmers who do switch Clubs don't do better than they did before they sought the bluer water.
Your child will have goals besides winning Most successful swimmers have learned to focus on the process and not the outcome. Giving an honest effort regardless of what the outcome is, is much more important than winning. One Olympian said, "My goal was to set a world record. Well, I did that, but someone else did it too, just a little faster than I did. I achieved my goal and I lost. Does this make me a failure? No, in fact I am very proud of that swim". What a tremendous outlook to carry on through life.
Don’t expect your child to become an Olympian As one example from America, there are 250,000 athletes in USA Swimming. There are only 52 spots available for the Olympic Team every four years. Your child's odds of becoming an Olympian are about .0002%.

Here’s a story from an American swim coach to help illustrate:

Sara reaches for the wall, exhausted, straining, and gets 3rd place. She gets out of the water and checks her time. Almost a best time. Almost a win. Sara is happy. Or at least content. She knows what she has to fix – that second turn was a little off – and is excited to get back to practice on Monday. Sara warms down and smiles to herself. Sure, it wasn’t a best time, but she loves to race. It’s the one time of the week she doesn’t have to worry about tests, homework, that school dance next week… “You missed your turn,” Sara’s mother says.

“Yeah, I know, but I think I can get better,” says Sara.

“You almost won. You should have won,” her father chimes in. “Maybe you should work on your finishes. Do you work on your finishes in practice?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe I’ll talk to the coach.”

End scene.

I’m not a fan of cliché stereotypes that begin with, “There are two types of parents in the world…” but there are definitely two types of parents in the swimming world: The parent that builds, and the parent that breaks.

The above interaction – fictional, though I’m sure happens every day on every pool deck everywhere – didn’t involve screaming, red-faced swim parents with insulting comments. It wasn’t too harsh. It didn’t involve profanity or threats or tirades.

But it wasn’t supportive, either. It wasn’t, “Hey, good race!” with an offer for a hug. Instead, the interaction involved two parents, obviously supportive of their swimmer, showing up to the race, giving advice, letting their swimmer know what happened, offering critiques.

The thing is: Critiquing is not a parent’s job -- at least when it comes to swimming. Critiquing is the coach’s job.

That’s why coaches exist.

The other day, I was talking about all the emails I get from swimmers around the country and how a majority of them talk about how hard their own parents are on them. Mostly after races. I get emails from swimmers as young as 10 years old who tell me things I’m sure their parents would be horrified me finding out about. They tell me about parents who break down instead of build up. Parents who are critics and let swimmers know what they need to do to improve. Parents who yell after the race is over. Parents who threaten to force their swimmer to quit the sport if victories are in the soon-to-come horizon.

“I bet a lot of these parents, if I read back to them their letters from their swimmers, would be horrified,” I told my friend. “I bet many of these parents don’t even know how much pressure they put on their swimmers.”

No one of us wants to be that bad villain from the Disney movie. You know the kind of villain: The parent who yells at their kid and the kid goes into the bedroom and cries and music grows and we feel appropriately bad for the kid. No parent wants that to be that “villain.” And yet, I think many parents place an incredible amount of pressure on kids without even knowing it.

Many parents don’t even realize it.

Take the scenario above: It wasn’t necessarily a bad interaction. But it wasn’t good. Sara, like many young swimmers, uses the sport as a way to escape and have fun and race. Swimming, to Sara, is just a way to get away from real-world pressures, of which, at any age, are numerous. Tests, homework, social pressures, that whole “figuring out what you want to do with the rest of your life” thing… Sara, like millions of other athletes around the country, just uses sports as a secondary activity, one that is fun and healthy and vigorous and enjoyable.

Many times, though, parental expectations and pressures get in the way of that enjoyment. Let’s face it: Many kids want to impress their parents. They want good feedback. And I understand we live in a society that perhaps praises too often. There’s a joke in one of my favourite sitcoms when the student receives happy clouds and sunshine cartoon icons instead of actual grades. Too much unearned praise can, sometimes, be detrimental.

But again: There are two types of parents.

The kind that build. And the kind that break.

To borrow a line from the film Stripes: “Lighten up, swim parents”.

This sport, while teaching many lessons to swimmers, is like climbing a mountain. You learn most lessons on your own. How to climb. How to fall. How to get back up. Swim parents: Let the rest of the world break down your child, because the world out there will gladly do so. Let it be your job to build your child up, to just say, “Great job!” and offer a hug and nothing else. Let the coaches coach. Let the swimmers swim. Let the races be raced. And while everyone needs a good push once in a while and everyone needs encouragement once in a while, this is just swimming. This is just a sport.

A friend of mine recently told me his parents finally told him towards the end of his swimming career, “We know we have been putting too much pressure on you. So now with your last season, just have fun.” And he told me just hearing that from his parents made all the difference. Just hearing those words was like a blessing -- a freeing act, like now he had permission to enjoy the sport again.

And guess what?

In his last meet, he swam lifetime bests.

He sat and reflected. He then smiled and said, “If only they had told me that sooner.”

Everyone at Prescot Swimming Club has the best interests of your child at heart. We are all qualified to the ASA standard, we are all volunteers, and most have their own children swimming for the Club. Your support as parents and, if you can, your help as volunteers, is very much appreciated.

Prescot Swimming Club