"No matter how far we come, our parents are always in us."
-Brad Meltzer, American Novelist
Competition is one of the few constants in today’s world. Competitive people are present everywhere: at school or the workplace. Some of the greatest rivalries are present in sports.
Team sports are very different from individual ones when it comes to being competitive. In team sports, you compete with not only your rivals to win matches but also team members to secure your place. In a prominent team game such as cricket, the competition is much more intense.
When it comes to coaching such an intense sport, parents want to be as involved as possible in their children’s growth and successes, and they play a critical role in the development process of their kids.
But they continuously face issues. Here are five issues faced by them:
Parents are very critical of their children and want them to perform at their best. They see the coaching sessions as a means to iron out all the creases in their children’s game and make them worthy of the best team in the world. Though this may sound irrational, the influence of cricket on the psyche of parents can be believed only after seeing it in person.
Detailed and structured reports are indispensable because they ensure that we have identified the key performance metrics. Monitoring and tracking these metrics give meaning to training programs. Without these reports, the feedback may be sporadic and erratic. Coaches may have hectic schedules to accommodate player training needs and feedback sessions. So, the coaches are under intense time pressure and may not be available as and when the players or their parents may need their advice/ feedback.
In cricket, every parent sees himself as a coach worthy of coaching the test players. So the feedback loop from coaches to the parents has a very different but critical significance.
Since getting progress reports is difficult or time-consuming, parents often bombard their kids with training-related questions: How did you do? How was the match? What did the coach say? Kids, however, have a different level of training discussion with their parents. The kids may not be able to communicate their training performance or improvements. They might also find it hard to explain their match performance. For many kids, playing is just a way to have a good time. So when a parent pesters to know the growth in their child’s performance, the child may resort to standard replies. The more the questions remain the same, the more repetitive the answers become. To cut the conversation short and make the parents feel good, the kids will respond with the standard defensive response, “everything is good.”
Parents do not just want to be drivers to their kids - taking them from one match to another. Parents want to be involved in the training and growth of their children.
A significant part of a good parent is being responsible. This responsibility extends to having direct participation in all aspects of their children’s training. As long as the parents are aware and involved in the growth of their kids, they will feel that their parenting has been successful.
Recording training videos help coaches and academies track the progress of their players. However, not all parents are comfortable with recorded videos. There is a constant worry about what cameras are filming and how the videos are stored. The lack of transparency regarding video content safety is yet another problem parents face, which sometimes can hinder the rate of development of their kids.
Parents want to be a part of their children’s journey. For example, with school progress cards, parents know what subjects their kids are weak at so that they help them by providing support, arranging additional coaching, or motivating them. Since the parents are used to academic-periodic reports, they expect a similar approach to sports coaching.
Nonetheless, parents' lives do not only revolve around their children. They take pleasure in their child’s success and growth. Parents see their childhood in their children. And they want to make their children’s lives as stable and safe as possible. A parent re-lives their past and future life in their child's life.
But that shouldn't be the case for sports. For parents, their children’s goals should align with their goals. Being good parents means being interested, involved, and responsible for your children’s aspirations and successes. Asking, what their child wants and likes, is a good way to know their sports interests better.
Coaching, online or offline, is one of the most effective and efficient ways to establish a strong bond between coaches and players. Ludimos app helps parents track their children’s progress and become a part of their success journey.
Benefits of using Ludimos:
Ludimos is an online cricket coaching platform enabling data-driven and personalised coaching. Ludimos provides smart tools and restricted access to videos to the right people at the right time.
To know more about Ludimos, visit: www.ludimos.com
