Your daughter's intensity might be her biggest advantage, not a problem to fix.  

***Resources & Tools***

FREE for YOU:
🎓 Strengthen Your Athlete's Mental Game - Training for Parents → https://trainhergame.com/mom
📬 Join our weekly TIPS newsletter → https://sportsmom.fyi/yt-tips
💬 Use this Conversation Guide w/ Scripts to talk to your athlete about mental training → https://sportsmom.fyi/convo-guide
🎙 Listen to the Podcast: Raising Elite Competitors

FREE for Athletes:
🔹 Share with your athlete: What's Your Competitor Style Quiz → https://athlete.fyi/yt-quiz
🎥 YouTube Playlist for Athletes → https://www.youtube.com/@AthleteMentalEdge

OUR SIGNATURE PROGRAMS:
👉 Join The Elite Mental Game for girl athletes → https://trainhergame.com/yt-emg

***Connect with us***
IG: ➡︎ https://www.instagram.com/elitecompetitorcoach
Tik Tok: ➡︎ https://www.tiktok.com/@raisingelitecompetitors
YouTube: ➡︎ SUBSCRIBE 🙌🏼 and hang out in our community here with us!

Learn more about Wendy and Fresh Start Family!
Wendy Snyder — certified positive parenting educator & family life coach, Founder of Fresh Start Family, host of The Fresh Start Family Show
Book: Fresh Start Your Family: Powerful Parenting to Restore Peace in Your Home (Wiley)
Instagram: @freshstartwendy (not @frustratewendy)
Website: https://freshstartfamilyonline.com  

***⏰ Key Timestamps***
00:00 Introduction: The Gift of Strong-Willed Kids
01:22 Meet Wendy Snyder & Fresh Start Family
02:54 Wendy's Journey Raising a Strong-Willed Daughter
03:59 From Autocratic to Firm-and-Kind Parenting
09:07 What Is a Cactus Kid?
10:57 Traits of Strong-Willed Kids & Future Leaders
16:06 Coaching Cactus Kids: Earning Respect
20:46 Compassionate Discipline vs. Punishment
22:29 Handling Intensity Without Disrespect
27:13 Teaching Peaceful Conflict Resolution & Win-Win
33:30 Team Conversations & Detachment Skills
38:23 Red Flags in Coaching & When to Step In
43:21 Closing Thoughts & Where to Find Wendy

👋🏼 I'm Coach Bre — a mental performance coach for girl athletes, Co-Founder of The Elite Competitor, and a former head volleyball coach and 4-time state champion. 

🎙 Joining me this week is Wendy Snyder, certified positive parenting educator, family life coach, and founder of Fresh Start Family. Wendy raised her own strong-willed daughter into a Division I beach volleyball recruit, and now teaches thousands of families how to do the same.  

Wendy talks about raising what she calls "cactus kids," beautiful, strong-willed kids who are a lot to handle if nobody's taught you how. If your daughter comes home intense after a bad game, argues with the ref in her head for days, or gets side-eyed for having "too much" personality, this one's for you.  

What You'll Learn: 
✅ Why "strong-willed" and "intense" aren't warning signs, they're leadership traits in disguise 
✅ The real difference between an intense athlete and a disrespectful one 
✅ A simple win-win script to help your daughter work through teammate conflict without shame 
✅ What to actually say (and not say) when a coach flags her attitude 
✅ How to know when to step in with a coach, and when to let her handle it herself

P.S. A few stats worth knowing:  
⚡️ Structured sports programs that intentionally built in social-emotional goals improved athletes' emotion regulation by standardized effect sizes up to 0.72 across 7 peer-reviewed studies (Kanaros & Bourdaniotis, Futurity Education, 2025)  
⚡️ A study of 295 Swiss elite teen athletes found coach-athlete relationship quality directly predicted burnout months later (Gerber et al., Sports Psychiatry, 2024)  
⚡️ Among youth athletes who quit, "I'm not good enough" and "bad coaching" were the top two reasons cited, with former players reporting far more parental pressure than current players (Aspen Institute Project Play, 2026)  

The Raising Elite Competitors podcast and YouTube channel is hosted by The Elite Competitor and is dedicated to helping sports moms strengthen their daughter's mental game and confidence in order to help her perform her best when it matters most.  

#mentalgame #sportsmom #strongwilledchild #coachbre #raisingathletes

Register for the Summer Strong Mental Game Bootcamp! We kick-off June 24th (registration closes June 19th). The earlier you register, the better price you get! https://elitecompetitor.com/summer-strong-bootcamp/