How to prepare kids for comps

Kids competition can be a fun time or a traumatic time for kids. The last thing you want to happen is that they become afraid of competition and drift away from the sport. Hence, you need skilled 'understanding' parents and coaches who can grasp when the child is having anxiety before, during and after the competition and deal with it before the child decides to deal with it themselves. That usually ends negatively. I have seen extremely gifted children from more than a few clubs walk away from the sport just because they didn't have the psychological skill sets developed to deal with the pressure and parents and coaches where oblivious or adding to the situation. In fact, if you ask most club owners when do they loose most of the kids it is usually after competitions.....

However, below is a few ideas, much of which this is age dependent, or temperament dependent on the child:

• make sure that they are having fun and the environment is safe (btw, don't take concussion lightly, if they have fallen or where thrown)
• no child should face failure or success alone
  
  • The coach should take responsibility for all failures (especially the very young), and
  • give responsibly to the child for their success.
  • reinforce the good work and ignore the badness.
• the children need to be kept in their skill and weight buckets at all time especially at those children margins (ultra small, ultra big kids, ultra mature)
  
  • putting a larger kid with older kids just on size alone is a mistake (psychological age and readiness needs to be understood)
  • knowing the children's physical limitations around joints (elbows, shoulders, knees, hips) is important since you will want a match stopped potentially before a joint is hurt (especially those less than 16 years old...)
• Make sure they know tapping is more important that getting hurt.