She made one mistake and coach pulled her out. You see her on the bench and you're in the bleachers. Frustrated for her, but also with the coach. What do you even do? This is one of the most common things that I hear from athletes, from parents, like, what do you do when you have a coach who just pulls you after one mistake because it's really hard to. Prove yourself if that's what's happening, and potentially you won't get another opportunity. So I hear that frustration from athletes that I work with. I hear it from parents as well. And really two instincts kick in as a parent. First, it's like we're a little frustrated with the coach and their decision to do that, and then we start to dive into the thoughts of, well, they leave this person in, but they pull my daughter out and it feels unfair and we can go down that rabbit hole pretty far. Right. And then also with your daughter, like she's potentially frustrated or embarrassed not knowing what to do. So. We wanna know how to navigate it with her too. And today we're gonna be talking about both those things and what actually helps. Now, if you're in this situation right now, know that I, I do understand it's frustrating and I'm also going to speak from my experience as a coach. I've been a head coach for 14 years, so I get to work with athletes directly and I am, I'm in this situation as a coach where I make decisions around playing time and if an athlete should stay in. So I'm gonna give you a little insight. Into decisions that I have made as a coach when it comes to this, and sometimes I think that helps shed some light on, on what's going on. Okay. For better or for worse. Right. But I also think that just, you know, across the board, one thing that we want to avoid doing in this situation as parents is to vent about it with our daughters. Okay. Because I think that the pull to vent and talk about why the coach made bad decisions and why this isn't unfair and why this player got to stay in and that player, you know, all, all of that. Again, we can go pretty deep into that and it can feel like bonding when we do that with our kids. But what it does is it signals a really valuable lesson to our kids that when we're in situations that we're not happy with or we don't like, we just complain about it. We complain and we blame, and we become, we become victims of it. Now, that doesn't mean that we. Ignore your daughter's frustration. I'll talk about kind of a framework on how you can help her with this, but we really need to ground ourselves as parents when they're in this, in this situation, realize that it's okay for you to be frustrated with the coach or have questions about it, but what's not okay is for you to influence your daughter's perception of her coach because again, ultimately we need to have a good relationship there and we're talking specifically about this. One thing, getting pulled directly after a mistake. Not all the other things that you might be thinking about your daughter's coach. Okay? And so we don't want to jeopardize or damage her relationship with her coach. And it absolutely will be if you badmouth that coach and, you know, just complain and vent with your daughter about it. So, right off the bat, I, I just wanna make that clear. Let's make sure that as an adult in this situation, that we are always teaching our kids how to navigate. And again, doesn't mean you can't be frustrated that she can't be frustrated, but what we do with that frustration is really important. So I would highly. Highly encourage you to not go down that path with your daughter. You can talk about it with your partner, you know, like all that. Um, but with your daughter, it needs, you need to, as much as possible, remain neutral and curious so that you can help her get to a place of problem solving and, um, a, a path forward. Okay. So that's kind of not what, what not to do. Um, let's talk about what to do. So say the situation has happened and. You know, you can tell that your daughter's gonna get in the car and she's potentially gonna be upset about all this couple of main things that I want you to emphasize with her. And this doesn't happen, just, you know, post this event, right? It, it happens throughout the daily interactions with her, and that is that her performance is not tied to her worth. One of the reasons why this really messes with athletes' confidence is that. They, they tend to think that their performance is tied to how they need to feel about themselves and how other people feel about them. Their identity is tied a lot to their outcome and their performance as a player. And the mindset shift that she needs is to separate who she is from what she does as an athlete, but also in that situation that, Hey, you know what? Mistakes are going to happen. And because you got pulled doesn't mean that you're any less of an athlete that you don't belong on that team. Like, you know, our, our kids' brains go to a lot of different places when this happens. And so, excuse me, you want to, as much as possible be emphasizing that. And one of the things that you can do just in day to day, we talk about this a lot actually on our free training for sports parents, um, is to emphasize. Her qualities and who she is outside of her sport. So, you know, what else is, is she good at? Who is she as a person? All of those things are gonna strengthen her confidence. So that little things like this, and I know it feels like a big thing in her world, but things like this don't rock her confidence in self-image because she's like, well, yes, that situation happened. Um, I got pulled after a mistake. And you know, all of her feelings about it, but it's not rocking her to her core where she's like, oh my gosh, I'm, you know. My, my self worth and self image is being impacted by this. So, um, we call those her positive innate qualities. How can we, how can we make sure that we're emphasizing her positive innate qualities? How can we make sure that we're praising all of the things that are in her control when it comes to her work ethic? Um, her coachability, her ability to. A good teammate. Like all of those things, we wanna make sure that we're emphasizing a lot. Now, I have other ideas for this on our free training for sports parents. So if you haven't checked that out, it's at train her game.com. I have strip scripts for how you can do this, how you can build her confidence in her sport, but also in life. So if you haven't already, go check that out. It's at. Train her game.com. Okay. So that is, we really wanna emphasize like her performance is not tied to her worth. Okay? She's in the car with you. Um, you can just kind of feel it out. Like, how is she feeling? I say to moms, to you like, report back what she's saying to you so that you're validating her experience. You're not necessarily. Agreeing with her, but you are validating like, oh yeah, you know, you got pulled after you did that thing and it felt unfair to you. Tell me more about that. And that can help her process. Just kind of those things in that moment, um, so that she feels seen and she can get to a place of problem solving. All right, so that's kind of under main 0.1, uh, or sorry, main 0.1 around. Her performance is not tied to her worth. Let's see if we can kind of process with her, um, you know, so that she can eventually get to a place where we can ask her like, do you want me to continue to listen or do you want me to help you come up with solutions around this? Okay. Um, number two, she needs a skill, not just a speech. You can tell her all day that you know, she is a wonderful person and her worth is not tied to performance, and she can just get back into it, practice hard, be a good teammate, all those things. She also needs a skill to be able to come back from mistakes. And so that is exactly why we teach athletes in our program, the very first skill that they learn inside our program. The elite mental game is something called the snapback routine. This is a two second routine that athletes build for themselves. It's a custom routine where they have a, um, it's a three step thing, a breath. A reset word at the top of that breath, and then on their exhale, they're doing a reset signal. It helps them get back to the present moment in two seconds or less, so that when they make a mistake, they're not derailed by it. Because a lot of times coaches are going to see the mistake, but also the reaction and their confidence around keeping that person in the game after they make some mistakes is really tied to how they, how fast they can bounce back. And so when you are. Athlete can have a skill like this that she's practicing in practice, you know? And so coaches seeing that she, you know, maybe makes a mistake, causes a turnover, whatever, like fumbles makes, gets a hitting error. But she's resetting. Okay. She's resetting fast, her body language is good, and she's calling for the ball again. She's aggressive like. That is signaling to the coach that, hey, I can have confidence to keep her in. Now, one of the things I mentioned that I am a coach and so sometimes I make decisions like this. And what I tell athletes is that this whole thing is kind of like a traffic light. Okay? So green is flow state. I talk about this or more in depth in our training as well. But flow seat is where we want athletes to be when they're playing their best. So they're really not thinking too much. Um. You know, they're playing well and yellow is something happens. So that might be a mistake or a ref makes a bad call or you know, all the things that could happen in the game. And um, we need athletes to be able to recognize when they get to yellow and then come back down to green quickly. And not all athletes have that skill unless they've learned something like the snapback routine. Okay. And then red is they are spiraling. They are. Dysregulated, they're, you know, like wheels are falling off. This is typically like as a coach, if I see an athlete is in red, okay, so they're going from green to red. They didn't do a snapback routine. They're not back down. Like they're making silly errors. They're making multiple errors in a row. I don't really have any other choice but to pull them out of the game and I try to pull them out and like. Talk to them, give them a break, talk to'em about what I'm seeing. Not, I don't always have the time to do that. Okay. And your daughter's coach might not either. So she might just get pulled and now she's on the bench and the coach isn't saying anything to, to her. And whether or not you agree with that? Yes, I do believe that best practice would be to talk to the player, have a conversation, help them get their head back in the game. But. That's not always possible in a game. And you know, I'm just being honest, like, this will happen to your athlete. And, um, I don't think it's our responsibility to put all of the blame on the coach for that. We need to empower athletes with skills to respond in that moment. But also if we can equip them with a snapback routine ahead of this, then they're more likely to be able to stay in the game, to be able to respond, to be able to like. Actually play through something without causing a spiral. Now, some of you might be thinking like the my daughter's coach pulls her out and doesn't even get her a chance to respond. Okay? And that might be true too. We also talk about what can you control? Your daughter cannot control the decisions of the coach, and when she places her blame and her emphasis and her attention on that, then she's wasting her energy. All she can do is develop the snapback routine so that she's demonstrating this in practice. She is, you know, after an error, being aggressive again, having her chin up, having good body control, like that's all she can do. When she gets pulled out, she is, you know, being an active participant on the bench, uh, she's ready to go. She's being coachable. Like all, all of that, she can control. She can't control what decision the coach actually makes. Okay. And so that is what she has to do. But the more that she can demonstrate, like. I make a mistake and afterwards I'm doing my reset routine or my setback routine, and my face looks like I'm ready to go. My body language looks like I'm ready to go. I'm connecting with my teammates. Like all of that will signal a different story to the coach. Okay? What I mean by that is they're gonna have a little bit more confidence in her to maybe have her work through it or keep her in, okay? Now, there are some situations in a game too, like I'll give you that perspective as a coach too. There's some situations where we can't afford to have any more airs, and so if. You know, if there's somebody on the bench who's gonna come in and be able to shake things up a little bit or provide a different situation for the other team to look at, depending on the score of the game or who we're playing or, you know, there's so much that goes into it, that might be what plays into the decision as well. So know that there's a lot that goes into decisions like this, even if it doesn't look like it. Okay. Um, so just, just wanna show you a little bit of the other side of the athlete and like I said, or of the coach perspective. And like I said, I try. To make sure I'm connecting with athletes, if not during the game afterwards to talk about it and, and all of that. And maybe your daughter's coach doesn't do that, but you can't do anything about that. Okay. Now, if you do feel like a conversation is warranted, um, I work with athletes and parents inside our program who are like, I do wanna have a conversation with the coach about this and how I can get more playing time and, you know, all of that. Then, you know, you can empower your, your athlete to have a conversation with their coach, but that would be very specific. About what they need. Okay. Um, only make it about your, your daughter. And I would encourage your daughter, depending on her age to do this herself. Okay. If she's in high school, this conversation likely should happen on her own with the coach or, you know, with what I mean by that is like, you aren't the one initiating the conversation. Um, I mean, she wants to bring another teammate to kind of be there as a third party or like a coach hopefully has an assistant that's also there. But, um, you know, so it's not a, not none of this. Well, you always keep her in, but you pull me out. Comparison. No. Okay. It is, Hey coach, can you help me understand when I make one air. Um, you know why I get pulled up? I wouldn't even say why I get pulled up. I would say, um, how can I demonstrate to you that even after one error, I'm ready to go? Something like that. Or, Hey, coach, I'm noticing that when I get pulled outta the game, it's usually after one error. Um, what can I show you to, to, to show you that you can still count on me after that error? Something like that. Okay. So if a conversation needs to be had, but my last. Kinda emphasis. My point of emphasis I wanna make, and I know I've been all over the place a little bit, but is, you know, you can't overemphasize or over help her controlling what's in her control, her body language, her attitude on the bench, her cheering, her teammates staying, and ga engaged. Like the coach really is always watching. And when I look down the bench and I'm like, okay, who am I gonna put in? The athlete that's engaged and ready to go instead of pouting on the bench is always the one that I will choose. So make sure that you are equipping her with that knowledge of like you can't control everything that the coach does, but you can control your response. And giving her a snapback routine, like I said, is a very tangible skill to do that if you wanna learn how your daughter can get that skill so that she can develop her own snapback routine. That's what I go into detail in. Um, in our free training. So again, train her game.com. Um, you'll learn a few skills that mentally strong athletes have and need to have in order to be confident, mentally strong in their sport, um, and in life because a lot of times. And maybe you've heard this from your daughter's coach, he'll or she'll say something like, you know, your daughter has a skill, but she just needs to be more confident. Or, she's talented but she needs to work in her mental game. Or I need her to be more mentally tough. I need her to come back faster. I need to be able to count on her. And you're like, well, can you teach that skill? Most coaches are not trained in how to teach it. They're not trained in sports psychology to know how to teach those skills. I know I wasn't. I had to go back. And use my own time, money, and resources to be certified to teach these to my athletes. And um, yeah, so if you want to like, don't leave it, don't leave it to your daughter's coach to do this because they probably won't. It's not because they don't care. Right. It's because there's limited time. They're trained in what they're good at, which is the physical side of the game. So make sure that she has these skills on the mental side so that she can navigate this and she can have skills to come back faster because that is something that separates athletes. So again, train her game.com is where you can learn all of that. Alright, parents, I will see you in the next episode of The Raising of the Competitors podcast.