I'm your mom, but please call me coach

The speaker encourages parents to volunteer as coaches for their children's sports teams. They emphasize the importance of parental involvement in youth sports and the positive impact it can have on both the child and their peers. The speaker shares their personal experience of becoming a coach and how it has transformed their life. They discuss the benefits and challenges of coaching, including the need for training and certifications, the rewards of watching children grow, and the difficulties of balancing the roles of parent and coach. They also touch on the impact coaching has on the parent-child relationship and offer advice for those considering coaching their child's team. The speaker concludes by encouraging parents to take on the role of coach and make a difference in their child's life. Calling all moms and dads. Are your kids involved in a sport? Do you wish to spend more time with them and actually know what they're up to and accomplishing during practice that you've probably paid some money towards? Well, here's your chance. I encourage you to volunteer to not only be present in your child's athletic endeavors, but you can lead it, too. Volunteer coaching is essential for youth sports, because if you don't, who will? You can make a difference in your own child's life as well as their peers. You may not get the thanks that you deserve each day, but you can go home knowing that without your dedication of time and love, 20 to 30 children would not have been able to train without you. You get to be the reason that practice continues. You get to be the reason that our youth can learn the advantages of living a healthy lifestyle. And you get to be the reason that children are excited to spend an extra hour of after-school time focused on finding a healthy outlet for the things in life they can't control. Youth sports need parents that are willing to step up and become a coach. So are you ready to step up? Let's talk about it. Mommy? No. Mommy? No. Coach Holly? Yes, girls? Hello, and welcome to I'm Your Mom, But Please Call Me Coach. My name is Holly, and I will be your host for today's podcast. Today we'll be discussing the benefits and challenges of coaching your own child's sports team. I'm going to discuss what training or certification should be involved when coaching youth sports, as well as the benefits and challenges of coaching your own child's sports team. We will then go over the necessary role change from parent to coach and cover how this might impact my relationship with my children as I fill that new role. Let's start off by talking about why I decided to volunteer my limited time to coach an eight-week after-school running program called Soul Kids at my daughter's elementary school in the first place. You might be asking yourself if someone needs to be a fitness professional to coach youth sports, and the answer is no. You do not need a lifetime of fitness experience to coach sports. What you do need is lots of heart and passion for helping kids set and then reach their goals. A few years ago, I would have never seen myself becoming a coach. Let me give you a little back story, and you'll understand. In 2020, I was morbidly obese and weighing in over 270 pounds. I was a solo, full-time mom who worked behind the deli counter at a grocery store, eating as much fried chicken as I sold, and I saw my two daughters, Zoe and Bridget, following in my unhealthy footsteps. I knew I had to change something. I began eating healthy and eventually won a life-changing experience on the radio to compete in a six-week fitness challenge at a local gym called Cavell. I ended up winning the challenge and earned myself a free membership for an entire year, and nine months into my weight loss journey, my life changed. I lost 100 pounds and was asked by the owner of the gym to trade in my deli apron for a pair of New Balance shoes and become a certified coach of group classes at the same gym that helped give me a life worth living. I like to lift heavy weights, but I was certainly not a runner. Not yet, anyway. My oldest daughter, Zoe, felt inspired by my transformation and signed up for an eight-week running program at her school called Soul Kids. During our last season of Soul Kids, I tried to show up to as many practices as I could. I tell my kids it's important to challenge yourself to do hard things, and for me, running was hard. Running is certainly not my passion, but my kids are, and who would I be if I asked them to help support me in my goals if I wasn't willing to do the same thing for theirs? We finished our 5K race at the end of last season, and we went on with our lives. This season, there were not any volunteers to coach at my kids' school, and they were not going to have Soul Kids sign up for the season. So I asked myself, self, why don't you volunteer? As it turns out, many parents ask themselves this exact question. After volunteering myself to coach, I interviewed Jamie Stevens, who is one of the founders of Soul Kids, to discuss the process of parents volunteering to coach their own children. How many volunteer coaches with Soul Kids have their own children on the team, or have that as a reason for coaching because their kids are on the team? Every single one except we have 44 coaches and assistant coaches throughout the program this season, and all but two people have kids on their own team. Wow. And the majority of them have started coaching because the program was there and there was no coach for the program at their kid's site, so they took over so that the program could continue and we could offer it to everyone. So, as other parents have done, I went through the school-required background check, and now I'm the head coach of Soul Kids at a local elementary school. I had to do some serious soul-searching and ample amounts of research to find answers to some of the bigger questions. Let's address some of those questions now. One of the first questions I asked myself was, what certifications or training should be required to coach youth sports? When it comes to volunteer coaching opportunities like that of Soul Kids, youth-specific training and certifications are not required. Volunteers most often have jobs and responsibilities outside of youth sports. So, if certifications were required, programs would lose a lot of volunteers, as many coaches are typical parents. Stephen said that guidance and support is always offered, as well as training in the way of weekly guided manuals that are provided to each coach at the start of each season. I was lucky in that I had already become CPR and first aid certified for my current role as a strength coach. I was also certified as a personal trainer for my existing job, but that is not a requirement to become a volunteer coach for youth sports. In order to be unsupervised with children in the Boise School District, though, you must undergo fingerprinting and have your background check cleared at the state level, as well as with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A head coach must have their background cleared, though any additional coaches are allowed to attend practice so long as the head coach is present. After I was cleared to become a volunteer coach, I had to ask myself what the benefits are of coaching your own child sports team. And I have to be honest here. I would not have volunteered my very limited free time to coach for Soul Kids if it didn't provide an opportunity to spend time with my own kids. I work two jobs. I go to college part time and I raise my daughter solo with only my income to make ends meet. Free time is merely a fantasy phrase in my world. If coaching meant that I could spend time with my kids as well as make a positive difference in the lives of not just my own, but their peers as well, then I decided I was willing to make that sacrifice of time and energy. During my interview with Janie Stevens, I asked for her opinion as a fellow parent coach as to what she feels is rewarding about volunteering to coach. I asked Janie what she thought was the most rewarding part of coaching your own kids is. Getting to see them grow as a runner and as a person. It's just super cool to be able to watch your kids grow alongside you. Absolutely. You don't really get to see if you send them off to a different sport to be coached by someone else. Janie Stevens couldn't have said it better when she said, we get to see them grow. As a parent, you send your kids off to school and at the end of the day, you ask them how their day was. And they say, fine. We ask them what they learned or what they did. And they say, I don't know. However, as a coach, I know what they're doing and I get to see them bond with their peers. And I get to not only be involved in the process, but I get to orchestrate it. That, as a parent, is priceless. As it turns out, I'm not the only one that feels grateful for this bonding experience. I interviewed my daughter Zoe to get her opinion firsthand. I like having my mom as my coach because I get to spend time with her. She works a lot and this gives us more time together. So on top of time well spent, I also get to pick our team's shirt colors for upcoming 5K race at the end of the season. So that was certainly exciting. I went with a Cavell colored green in honor of the gym that helped transform my life. More importantly, I get to make relationships with other children on the team who may or may not have healthy relationships with grownups in their lives. On top of that, some kids on our team are only members in the family who speak English. Some kids have parents who are fighting cancer. Or some kids are living in homeless shelters, which my daughters and I have as well. I get to meet these incredible souls that desperately need a healthy outlet and positive encouragement in their lives. And I get to be a part of that. At the end of the day, the biggest benefit to coaching, as Stephen said, is being able to watch these children, and not just my own, grow as people. On top of that, there are so many health benefits for children that are involved in extracurricular sports at a young age. Allie Burdick and Melissa Rodenberg wrote an article for womensrunning.com that touched on these benefits. They said, if you are a runner, you know that the activity has numerous benefits and children see many of the same benefits like improved sleep, increased self-esteem and confidence, a decreased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, and lower blood pressure and blood cholesterol levels. This is the main reason I wanted my girls to join a running group, or any after-school sport for that matter, so that they can learn how to live an active lifestyle and gain limitless self-confidence and pride in what they've accomplished. So we've covered the benefits of coaching your child's sports team. Now let's talk about the challenges. Coaching children in general, even when they aren't your kids, is a challenge. In my interview with Stephen, I asked her what some of the biggest challenges of coaching children's sports or having your own children on the team. What is the most challenging part of coaching children? Getting 25 to 30 kids aging in range from 5 to 12 to all do the exact same thing at the exact same time. The other day I tried to switch up our running practice and I had to go on our very first adventure run where we left the school campus and crossed a major intersection to reach a two-mile loop around a lake for our practice. Getting 25 elementary-aged children to cross the street safely was by far the biggest challenge I have faced as a coach to date. So I completely relate to Stephen's comment regarding challenges. I then asked Jamie about the challenge of showing bias towards your own child in a sports team and how to avoid that. Oh, wow. I don't know because it's really hard to do. I know I had a hard time at the very beginning of not going, oh my gosh, look it, you are just amazing in front of other people. And, you know, you spread that to everyone, but sometimes you want to make sure that everybody is feeling the love, not just your child. Bias towards your own child can be a double-edged sword. You could be biased towards them by treating them differently than the other kids on the team. Or you could try so hard to avoid bias that you actually become harder on your own child and hold them to unrealistic standards. The most important step is to communicate your decisions with your child and tell them what they should expect from you in the name of fairness. Make sure they feel safe about opening up and sharing their feelings with you and if your behavior as a coach has ever made them feel singled out or uncomfortable. Now, let's talk about how parent coaching impacts your child. When I knew that the program at our school would fail to continue if not for someone, me, stepping up and volunteering, I knew I had to do it. I have been trying to encourage my kids to live a healthy lifestyle that includes physical activity and sometimes the best way to do that is to lead by example. I had to do some serious research to discover what I was actually getting myself into and more importantly, how this choice would impact my family. I would not have embarked on this experience if I knew it would have a negative impact on my relationship with my children as they are the primary reason for me coaching in the first place. I made it my first mission to research how this change in roles impacted the child-parent relationship. Frank Smoll, Ph.D., writing for Psychology Today, touched on how difficult it is to be a parent and a coach. He said the most difficult issue concerns confusion arising from the dual roles of coach and parent. To effectively deal with this, parents and children need to understand that coaching behavior and parenting behavior will be different. Twenty-three hours out of the day, I am mommy. When we're at practice, I am coach. I explained to my daughters that this role distinction was crucial for us to ensure that all children are treated equally and to make sure that we don't talk shop when we're at home. I am the first to admit I have already somewhat broke this rule. After a long day of school for them and work for me, I had us scout a run for practice to ensure that we would have enough time during practice to run a loop around a lake and back to school in time for parents to pick up their kids. They whined moderately about having to do it, but I reminded them that we as a family made this choice for me to become the coach, and I needed their support to make sure that practice was a success. The following day, our 25-kid team successfully completed the loop, and my girls were proud that we scouted the route as a family first. While I may have broken this role rule this time, I still try to emphasize the importance of keeping my parent role separate from my coaching role. While interviewing my six-year-old daughter, Bridget Bowler, she explained why this emphasis on roles is a challenge for her personally. Is it hard looking at your coach and knowing it's your mom, but you can't actually act as though she's your mom? And because I can't really, like, do things that I'm used to doing with her, with my mom. And so if I do it, then all the kids will do it. Like, if I call her mommy, then everybody else will call her mommy. I know it's going to upset me. What is the hardest part about having your parents as your coach? Not doing what I'm used to doing with her. Okay. Like, for what, for example? Not being able to hold her hand, give her kisses. As a parent coach, this interview with my kindergartner really hit me in the feels. I volunteered to be a coach so that I could, in some way, strengthen my relationship with my daughters with the hope that it would support them in their own pursuits of an active lifestyle as they grow up. They already come to the gym with me while I coach strength classes after school. So I have to be careful that our whole relationship isn't defined with the coach-mom mindset. I then interviewed my 9-year-old Zoe to get her opinion of having me as her coach. Sometimes I feel like my mom is harder on me than the other kids because she is both my mom and my coach. The truth hurts sometimes. I'm grateful for her honesty because it tells me where I have room to improve and grow. It's even more hard on me as a parent to know when to turn that coach mode off and when to be their mom when we're at practice. Sherry Gordon, writing for Very Well Family, discusses some of the challenges of coaching your own child. She referenced some very important tips from Dr. Case, who is a sports psychologist. He said, Too many times, parents are so passionate about sports and coaching, they don't turn it off. The parent-child relationship can quickly become so focused on training and practice that it can negatively impact a relationship. For this reason, I've had to become very cautious of making sure both my daughters and I understand that mommy has to have two different roles, mommy and coach. I have to really emphasize that hugs and kisses are absolutely unlimited outside of practice. The only reason I restrict them during practice is to protect their feelings and to ensure that I'm treating everyone at practice with equality and fairness. Lastly, I'm going to address all of the parents that are considering coaching their child's sports team. Deciding to volunteer for your child's team is a huge undertaking and not one to be taken lightly. You have to ask yourself why you wish to volunteer. Some parents take this responsibility because there's truly no one else, while some parents have a passion for the sport and want to share it with as many children as they can. Maybe you want to be more involved in your child's life, or maybe you want a reason to be more active by joining in on the sport with them. Whatever your reason is, it's important that you understand what you're signing up for. You might become the reason why a child decides to live a healthy lifestyle, or if you aren't seriously passionate about this role as both a teacher and an athlete, you might become the reason why a child decides not to continue participating in extracurricular sports. To be a good coach, you simply need heart, according to Stephen. What would you say to a parent who is considering coaching their child's team? Do it because it's the best and most fun and rewarding thing you'll do. I could not have said it better myself. When we are running, some of the kids whine and complain that running is hard, and they aren't wrong, it is hard. What I tell them, though, is this. You have to challenge yourself to do hard things sometimes. Maybe you don't love the process all the time, but you will always find joy in the end when you see how far you came and can be proud of yourself for what you have accomplished. So, in the words of my soul kid Taff, or rather, my Taff soul kids, I am brave! I am strong! I am smart! I am kind! We are soul kids! Well, there you have it. You're brave, you're strong, you're smart, you're kind. If I can do it, so can you. My name is Holly, and thank you for listening to my podcast.