Coaching Your Own Kid

Coaching kids is one thing. Coaching your own child can feel like stepping onto a field where every word carries twice the weight. I’ve been thinking about why so many coaches avoid coaching their son or daughter, even when they love the sport, and I’ve come to a simple reframe: the real question isn’t “why is my kid hard to coach?” It’s “what changes in me when the athlete is someone I love?”

I walk through three shifts that quietly sabotage parent coaching. First, we stop seeing the child and start seeing the future, which turns development into pressure and makes kids feel the distance between who they are and who we wish they’d become. Second, our parent identity collides with our coach persona, and kids are incredibly sensitive to that mask. If they sense we’re performing a role instead of showing up as ourselves, resistance is often a response to inconsistency, not stubbornness.

Third, love creates attachment to outcomes. When your child’s success feels personal, it’s easy to react to what a moment means instead of responding to what’s actually happening. Using a Stoic approach, I separate what we can control (effort, habits, behaviors) from what we can’t (results), and I offer a better way to measure success: enjoyment, learning, and the strength of the relationship over time.

If you’ve ever felt torn between being a great coach and being the parent your child trusts, this one’s for you. Subscribe, share it with a coach-parent you know, and leave a review with the biggest lesson you’re taking into your next practice.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Midweek Reflections episode. Today's episode has come off the back of me having a conversation with an old mate, talking about how difficult it is to coach children. And it got me a little bit because this is a common thread that a lot of coaches say they really struggle with, coaching your own child. It's very, very common. If you've got children who try to coach them, it's sometimes difficult. I personally don't find it difficult. And I'd like to sort of dive into that today. A lot of coaches out there actually actively try not to coach their kid. Even though they love the sport, they love the game at all levels, they avoid it. Like the plague. Now, this is a fascinating topic because almost every coach who has coached children eventually bumps into this. On the surface, this kind of it looks like a coaching problem, but underneath there's something else. There's another sort of problem. Maybe it's an identity problem. And the question becomes why can't I coach my child? And I love to think about it slightly differently when I analyze this because I love just dwelling in and giving people feedback on this sort of stuff. The better question potentially is what changes in me when the person I'm coaching is someone I love? Ooh.

Why Coaching Your Own Child Hits Different

SPEAKER_00 1:15

There's something more in that. And I've just thought about sort of three areas where it's good to actually have a little bit of philosophy and kick back and think about if this applies to you. So here it is. What changes in me when the person I'm coaching is someone I love? Number one, it's very common. You actually stop seeing the child and start seeing the future. Now, one of the great traps of parenting is that we don't see our children as they are, we see who they could become. As coaches, we are trained to identify potential, close gaps, and you know, speed up growth. But as parents, we desperately want our children to flourish. Now, two things combined, like these, can create a mix which is which is troublesome. Instead of coaching the child in front of us, we're we're coaching a future version in our head. The son who can make the first 15, for example, or the daughter who could get a scholarship for wherever. The athlete who could fulfill potential, all that stuff. The problem is, your child starts to feel the gap between who they are and who you wish they were. Gee, and that's heavy, right? That is heavy. Now, they they kind of start there there's a philosopher called Martin Buber who I had a look up and he spoke about the difference between treating someone as a I thou versus an I it. Now, one is a relationship thing and the other is a project. And children know the difference here and they can feel it, just

The Question That Changes Everything

SPEAKER_00 2:41

like your players can feel that kind of thing as well. The children feel if they're

Stop Coaching Their Future Self

SPEAKER_00 2:45

a project for you. So the solve is really just to spend more time noticing than correcting. It's as and I reckon it's as easy as that. Spend more time noticing things than correcting it. Ask yourself, am I coaching this child in front of you or the version I hope they become? It's a good question to ask, I reckon. Number two, the parent and coach identities begin competing. And here's what I mean by this. Most coaches have a coaching persona. You have it, whatever that is. Maybe you're demanding or you're direct or you're challenging, or maybe you're highly accountable, whatever it is. But your children know a different version of you. They know the person, the mum or dad, the sitting on the couch, the person who burns the toast, the person who gets tired and frustrated, the person who loves them unconditionally. And then suddenly you walk up into a field or you sit behind them doing their homework and become somebody else. And children are remarkably sensitive to that sort of authenticity. If they feel that you're performing a role rather than just being yourself, you know, resistance often follows. And that's where clashes can come. Not because they reject your coaching, but because they're rejecting your inconsistency. Now, another one I had to look up, and I had to look this guy up, Carl Jung Jung, talked about the persona being the mask we wear to meet the world's expectations. I think this concept around the persona and the mask we wear in coaching is particularly relevant. So, because the more you wear it, the more we become the mask,

When Parent And Coach Collide

SPEAKER_00 4:16

the more disconnected we become from who we actually are in ourselves. And sometimes coaching your child is difficult because your child is the one person who refuses to buy into that mask. They know who you really are. Now, the soul for this one, I reckon, is really just being less of a coach and more of a human. And that's a that's a good thing to have anyway, whether whoever you're dealing with when you're coaching. And I think the your children just highlight it more. You need less instruction, you need more curiosity, you need, I don't know, less expertise and more conversation. Your child, I don't reckon, needs another coach. They already have one. They need a parent they can trust. And that's that consistency piece. So when you're wearing a mask, your coaching persona, think about if you're coaching your child. And then ask yourself if you actually even need that mask or that persona. Or can you just be you when you're coaching? I think it's a massive one, that persona. Number three, love creates attachment to outcomes. 100%. The hardest thing that we do as coaches is trying to remove attachment. We want players to improve, we want teams to win, of course. But good coaches learn to separate that side of things, you know, separate that in themselves from the outcome. But parents, they really struggle with this. I uh you do, because your child's success feels highly personal. When they get disappointed, it hurts you. When their struggles frustrate you, their failures can feel like your failures. I know the amount of parents I deal with, a lot of parents can live vicariously through the successes and failures of their children. And this is when coaching, when you're a coach and you're doing that, this is when it becomes emotional. You aren't responding to what's happening, you're reacting to what it means. The ancient Stoics, whom I absolutely love, spoke often about the difference between what we can control and what we can't. Or not even just what we can't or what we don't control. We control effort, we influence habits, we guide behaviors, but we do not control outcomes. We can influence those, but we don't control them, not completely.

Love Turns Results Into Pressure

SPEAKER_00 6:34

So when we're coaching your own child, that line becomes a little bit blurry because sometimes you think you can. So the solve is to measure success differently. Just your definition of success. What how do you measure and define it? So instead of asking, did they perform asked, did they enjoy it? Did they learn? Did they, did our relationship get stronger today? And I that is some really important questions to be asked. And if you're asking it of you in your child's relationship, you can really cut and paste that to your players now and pretend they're your children. But in 20 years from now, your relationship will matter so much more with your child than today's performance, and so will any interaction between your players right now. So I want to leave you with a thought, coaches, about this is perhaps the reason coaching your own child is so difficult is that they are the one athlete who exposes all of your blind spots, every little insecurity, every expectation, every frustration, every attachment, every mask. Most players won't show you those things, but your children will. Which means the challenge isn't really coaching them, the challenge is coaching yourself. And I'll just repeat that. It means the challenge isn't really coaching your children. The challenge is coaching yourself. And maybe that's why it's one of the most important coaching assignments you're ever gonna get. Ooh, gee, that's a powerful statement to finish. I'll just give myself a little breath there. Until next time. Stay well.