Last week, we hosted a webinar with Soccer Parenting Community Members. A special thank you to Stephanie Schmidt, Paul Reddy, and Jennifer Ruggeri for joining us and sharing their insights from their journey. If you were unable to attend, here is a clip from the discussion where we discussed supporting your child: advice for parents, from parents.
You can access the full hour-long Webinar on our education platform, the SoccerParentResourceCenter.com.
In the interview we discussed:
- Experiences as soccer parents
- Lessons learned along the way
- Advice for parents working to ensure their child is inspired and thriving
- And more!
Supporting Your Child: Advice For Parents, From Parents
TRANSCRIPT:
Skye:
With that little lecture behind us, any wrap up questions or final thoughts that you want to share as we're wrapping up here?
Jen:
Stephanie, thank you so much for sharing your daughter's story. My little girl's only 10, so she has big hopes and dreams, but you being so open about what the path could look like for her, being older and being such a great mom is just very inspiring.
Steph:
Thank you. Thanks. Again, the path I saw at age 10 isn't where we ended up at age 16, but I'm just happy she's still happy and she still wants to play at some level, and she supports her teammates and they have a game in a couple hours that we'll be waiting by the phone to see how they do. So I mean, that's all we can ask for. I mean, again, we had an exceptional team, exceptional experience. But my parting words are to parents. Just be in constant contact with your kid and be realistic. You don't get let down as easy. You don't, things don't shock you as much when you're just realistic. And don't always point the finger outward. Sometimes the issues may be in the house, so don't always look that someone else has to fix it for you and just be realistic, be real. Support your kid. It goes by fast. And there's lots of soccer to be played at many different levels now and forever, so good luck to everybody in your kid's journey.
Skye:
Thanks, Steph. Paul, any wrap up comments?
Paul:
I would say that my sense is that my kid's propensity to keep on playing soccer or softball or whatever it is throughout the rest of her life, which is my hope, is directly proportional to the amount of love you can build for the game before they're 12 or 13. And so the more you can focus on having them fall in with all aspects of the game, watching, refereeing, whatever it is, before they get to the point where they're kind of making their own decisions, the more likely it is that they'll stick. And we've seen both sides of that among our friends.
Skye:
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks.
Jen:
Be their safe space. That's what Alex always tells me. I'm her safe space.
