What do you say to your daughter when she’s beating herself after mistakes?

Here’s a question from one of our Sports Moms Inner Circle moms relating to this kind of struggle. 

“My daughter plays well in games, at least I think she does, but afterward, she won't stop beating herself up over a few mistakes. I usually try to tell her to move on and remember all the good things she did. However, it doesn't really seem to work. Any suggestions on how to help her get over those mistakes and focus on what she had right instead?”

If you’re a sports mom, then you’ve probably been in this kind of situation. And every athlete has this struggle at some point in their sports journey. When your female athlete starts thinking and saying negative things about herself, what is the right thing to say?

Today we’re going to talk about why this happens and the different strategies you can use to help your daughter in these kinds of situations.

Struggle With Perfectionism 

Beating herself up after mistakes is often found in athletes who suffer from a touch of perfectionism. Everything has to be perfect or exactly right or they are unable to feel good about themselves. They're frightened of disappointing their coaches, teammates, and you. They simply do not want to make mistakes for fear of disappointing others or lack a strategy or method for recovering from failures.

Focusing on The Process

Athletes who struggle with negative thoughts need to have a really solid post-competition routine, that is how to focus on the process. This is something we teach inside the Elite Competitor Program. We train athletes in a very specific post-competition routine so that they can productively evaluate their performance. Because a lot of times, if they don't have a productive way to process, they get stuck with focusing on outcomes. 

Help them to be process-wise instead of outcome-wise. 

L-O-V-E

We also teach a framework around this post-competition in our Elite Competitor Program so that sports parents have a routine to fall back on when supporting their daughter post-competition.

And the one that we teach is love… L-O-V-E. 

Each of those letters stands for something different, but I wanted to focus today on the most important point of  L-O-V-E and that is the letter V which symbolizes the word “VALIDATE”.

VALIDATE her sentiments and what she says. It might be as simple as one sentence. Allow her that room rather than forcing her to rush through the scenario.

In summary, there are various reasons why athletes struggle with these negative thoughts. It might be because of some underlying perfectionism. Help her process her experiences with a post-competition routine, validate her feelings, and help her focus on process versus outcome. 

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