Tag Archive for 'genitori'

Today what we ask parents to do

Today, we ask parents to adopt an educational approach that promotes the development of self-esteem in their children, with a focus on several key aspects. Here are some important practices we can ask parents to implement:

1. Active Listening and Emotional Support

  • Ask parents to listen attentively to their children, respecting their emotions and feelings without judgment or rushing to solve problems. This helps the child feel understood and valued.
  • Create a safe environment for emotional expression, where children feel free to express their vulnerability.

2. Encourage Autonomy

  • Allow children to make age-appropriate decisions and learn from their mistakes. This fosters a sense of competence and responsibility, strengthening their self-confidence.
  • Assign appropriate tasks that stimulate a sense of accomplishment, such as helping with household chores or taking on small personal responsibilities.

3. Acknowledge Efforts, Not Just Results

  • Encourage effort and perseverance, rather than praising only results or performance. It’s important to teach that value doesn’t depend on external achievements but on personal effort and growth.
  • Avoid comparisons between siblings or friends, which can undermine self-esteem and create negative competition.

4. Model Positive Self-Esteem

  • Be a role model of self-confidence: children learn a lot by observing their parents. It’s important for parents to demonstrate a balanced attitude towards themselves, never demeaning their own abilities or worth.
  • Teach self-compassion, showing how to accept mistakes without excessive self-criticism.

5. Build an Environment of Unconditional Love

  • Regularly express love and affection, regardless of the child’s successes or failures. Knowing they are loved unconditionally strengthens inner security and self-esteem.
  • Value the child’s uniqueness, recognizing and appreciating their individual qualities and talents.

6. Foster Positive Communication

  • Use positive language, highlighting the child’s strengths and abilities. Constructive criticism should always be accompanied by suggestions for improvement, avoiding negative labels.
  • Help children solve problems independently, offering support and guidance but allowing them to find solutions.

7. Teach Resilience

  • Teach children how to face and overcome challenges, promoting the idea that mistakes and failures are a natural part of life and an opportunity for growth.
  • Help develop a growth mindset, encouraging them to believe they can improve over time with effort.

8. Support Social Relationships

  • Encourage participation in social activities and relationships with peers where children can build confidence in their social and interpersonal skills.
  • Help develop conflict resolution skills, encouraging peaceful resolution of disagreements.

In summary, we ask parents to offer a combination of support, autonomy, affection, and emotional skill-building to help children develop a strong and positive sense of self, preparing them to face life’s challenges with confidence and resilience.

Parents’ role in the children sport development

Families are often faced with the decision of which sport their children should practice, and the media has recently been offering advice on this topic. There is ongoing debate about whether it is better for a child who is considered shy to engage in a team sport or an individual contact sport. Which option is best for encouraging socialization or building confidence, and so on?

People tend to forget that it would be better for children to practice multiple sports instead of just one, or that any sport is practiced in a group where each participant must collaborate. Usually, no one explains this to parents, who remain caught in the web of single-sport clubs that compete for their attention.

I also understand that a soccer school, a swimming club, or any other sports organization must pursue its own goals, which are to recruit as many members as possible to participate in a specific sport. In Italy, there is no solution to this issue with sports, so this model will continue.

However, there is an important role that parents can play, and they can do so entirely on their own. It concerns the free time that children have outside of school and their two sports practices. What do they do in this free time? Do they move, play with others, go to the park, or something else? Or do they stay at home alone, playing on the PlayStation or smartphone?

This time is extremely important for them to organize games and activities with their peers and learn to feel self-determined and progressively more autonomous. I would say this is a significant role that families can play, even while having fun with their children and fulfilling their educational role.

10 things that are forbidden for young people today

10 things today’s soccer (and other) kids can’t anymore:

  1. play in the backyard
  2. play sports unless someone accompanies them
  3. be in the backyard playing with friends
  4. not always have their parents watching them play sports
  5. play sports when they want to
  6. play without worrying about what the adults (coach and parents) will say
  7. play, because now they are practicing
  8. play for hours and hours and stop when they decide or it becomes evening
  9. choose teammates and be chosen
  10. take turns playing in goal

Certainly soccer is not the only sport and all that has been described can be applied to many other play situations, which when we were kids we could do. Today this is impossible and creates the dependence of young people, children and adolescents, on adults and the organizations they set up to imprison the play.

Youth distress caused by adult incompetence

The issue of anxiety and depression among many young people is obviously dramatic, and it seems to me that there is a tendency to solve this issue through the bonus for psychotherapy and the introduction of the school psychologist. However, this picture is missing the consideration of an important piece: the psychological training of teachers. Indeed, I would say of adults who work with young people. So this enlargement also concerns parents and coaches. I do not know what the psychological and pedagogical preparation of school teachers is, but I know very well that of coaches, and I am convinced that with little, much more could be done to improve their skills.

When I tell this to the managers of sports clubs, they usually explain to me that they cannot imagine how many problems they have to solve on a daily basis and that even if they wanted to, they could not afford additional expenses. Unfortunately, it is the same answer they have been giving me for 30 years and it reflects their idea of sports: training, competitions and pay everyone little. I remember when with Barbara Benedetti, secretary of the youth and school sector of the FICG, now 20 years ago we managed to make the figure of the psychologist compulsory within soccer schools. It was written in the document that went to the clubs that the psychologist had to have five meetings a year with parents and coaches. The first few times that some psychologists began to offer themselves for this role in the clubs in lieu of compensation they were told that they would receive a club uniform and be invited to the Christmas dinner. Obviously, in the face of the refusal of this exchange, the payment for this consultancy would be finalized. At that time I also drew up a list of activities that, in addition to these meetings, included other actions to be carried out in that area specifying their respective compensation. I used to give them to colleagues so that they could move in that environment in a more professional way.

To many sports clubs I also proposed to increase the cost of membership by 10 euros per year, the difference that was obtained could be the cost of the psychologist. I didn’t want to be told we can’t do that because of economic problems.

This story serves to make the point that the sports environment, and I imagine the school environment as well, is a place where changes, innovations are seen as threatening. Today that many coaches have degrees in exercise science, the basic situation has improved because they studied psychology in college but still do not do internships on how to teach in the various age groups, and there are no federal courses that we have this specific application orientation. In addition, the job of coaching is largely underpaid and, therefore, alienates many from wanting to train further while it is used by others to justify their shortcomings and their proceeding according to their ideas without ever checking them.

On this basis, it is difficult for young people who show psychological difficulties to find adequate psychological support from these adults. Many parents in turn tend to defer the total psychological training of their children to school and sports, hiding behind the rhetoric of “I did not study to become a parent.”

On this basis and the slavery induced by the use of social media, it is difficult for young people who manifest psychological problems to find solutions. Easier to pass off their discomfort as illness so experts will deal with it and other adults who interact with them will finally breathe a sigh of relief.

Teaching critical and divergent thinking

Teaching critical and creative thinking to today’s youth is a complex challenge influenced by various social, cultural, and technological factors. These difficulties include:

  1. Information Overload - The current generation is exposed to a constant stream of information from digital technologies and social media, the quality of which is difficult to verify. This information overload can hinder young people’s ability to discern and critically evaluate information sources.
  2. Technological Dependency - The increasing dependence on digital devices and social media can undermine the concentration and mental disposition required for critical and creative thinking due to constant digital distractions and stimuli.
  3. Culture of Instant Gratification - Contemporary society promotes the expectation of immediate results and instant gratification, discouraging the patience and depth of analysis required for critical thinking and solving complex problems.
  4. Academic Pressure - Young people may face significant pressure to achieve outstanding academic results, leading to a focus on memorizing information rather than developing critical thinking skills. Others may lack academic pressure because they believe that web-based research is sufficient for acquiring any knowledge.
  5. Cultural Changes - Contemporary culture may favor conformity and uniformity of opinions, with less tolerance for diversity of thought and individuality. Influencers often become the primary cultural and interpersonal relationship references.
  6. Fear of Failure - Reluctance to embrace failure can discourage young people from taking risks and experimenting with new ideas, even though failure is often an essential component of the critical thinking and learning process. This mindset undermines the acceptance of errors as a fundamental part of learning.
  7. Limitations in the Learning Environment - Educators may face challenges in teaching critical thinking due to time constraints, pressure to follow the curriculum, and limited resources. They can also be affected by these cultural changes.
  8. Information Distortion - In the age of fake news and online misinformation, young people may struggle to distinguish between accurate and misleading information. This makes the acquisition of critical analysis skills for evaluating sources and verifying information crucial.
  9. Abundance of Digital Entertainment - Constant access to digital entertainment and games can compete with time dedicated to reflection and critical reading. The ubiquitous presence of entertainment devices can discourage intellectual depth, as digital entertainment often presents learning as a game that is abandoned if not enjoyable.
  10. Online Social Interaction - Frequent use of social media and messaging platforms can promote superficial and rapid communication at the expense of meaningful conversations and critical reflection. This can limit opportunities for in-depth idea exchange. In sports, only the most significant moments of performances are watched, while the rest is considered boring.

Encouraging critical and creative thinking among young people requires a collaborative effort by educators, parents, and society as a whole. This may include adopting educational approaches that prioritize critical thinking, promoting mindful technology use, and offering experiential learning opportunities that enable young people to apply critical thinking in real-world contexts.

Parent role in the motor learning

This blog is for parents to illustrate how important it is for their children from the earliest years of their other lives to be outdoors and to be able to move freely so that they can develop the motor skills and intelligence necessary for their development.

In the early years of life a young person needs to learn basic movements, and the purpose of movement education is to teach boys and girls in a fun way to move effectively and efficiently, in a safe environment and with an awareness of what they are doing. Achieving this is as important to a young person’s education as the acquisition of language and mathematical literacy.

Specifically from the ages of three to six, children must acquire the basic motor skills (e.g., bending over legs) that are the foundation of all physical activity and from the combination of which arise the main skills of any sport. These are the years in which the following skills should be developed: stepping (gait), bending over legs, moving quickly forward, bending, pushing, pulling, twisting and twisting. Complex movements are composed of these different basic elements, and the child’s actions will be appropriate if he can integrate the different motor sequences with each other. For example, jumping is based on the movement of bending over the legs, while in throwing a Frisbee, pushing and twisting are added to this movement. In every sporting gesture, even the most complex, these basic motor patterns can be traced. Therefore, if a young person has not mastered them, his further motor learning may be impaired or reduced.

It is not, however, just a matter of teaching basic movements in a literal way, since any form of schematization results in oversimplification of motor reality and reduction of movement experiences. It is therefore necessary to provide children with opportunities to experience the widest range of behaviors. For example, from the age of two they can already be taught to ride inline skates, ride a bicycle or climb if parents are willing to teach their children how to do so. This finding highlights the decisive role that adults, in this case parents, play in fostering or hindering motor development, including the psychological and social implications associated with it. Overprotected children who is three years old do not get on the swing by themselves or walk little because it is more comfortable to carry them in a stroller or leave them at home to watch television are examples of how one can daily develop reduced motor skills and develop a sedentary lifestyle.

It can be said that in the course of development the child is the main architect of the construction of its cognitive processes whether they are typically motor, cognitive-affective or social. Underlying this developmental path are certain factors that constitute the causes of development. The first refers to the maturation of the nervous system, which is necessary for more advanced forms of autonomy to take hold. However, this is not the only factor since acquired experience and social interaction represent two other equally necessary developmental factors.

In the first case we refer to the actions and repetitions of actions, the exercises that the child performs independently on the environmental reality in which he lives and the perception of awareness that results from them. In this way he becomes acquainted with the properties of objects, experiences them, and relates them to himself, thus enriching his knowledge of the world and how to relate to it. Think of the different ways of getting on and then off, for example from a sofa, which the child enacts through a large number of repetitions. He thus rehearses basic motor patterns, each time differently from the one before, spontaneously makes them up in different sequences, and through repetition comes to develop a specific motor skill. This learning process can be accelerated through social interaction, which occurs essentially through language. In this regard, interaction with an adult who observes the child in this action will be positive if it is aimed at encouraging him and ensuring that he performs in a safe environment. It will become negative and, therefore, hinder the experience if the adult intervenes to inhibit the action or make it too easy. Consequently, the opportunity for experience and social interactions represent the context within which the child performs his actions

The decisive causal factor for development is the balance factor, which delineates an active rather than a passive child who changes through his or her relationship with the environment. This factor must be understood as achieving a balance between external perturbations and the child’s activity. It thus becomes more evident why the physical and social environment represent settings in which to exercise one’s actions. Balance and consequent adaptation are achieved through the processes of assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation consists of making one’s own the elements of novelty that enrich one’s motor and mental patterns; in doing so, data from experience are incorporated according to existing internal structures. Accommodation, on the other hand, is the process by which internal structures are changed by external experiences, allowing the child’s developmental processes not so much to be enriched by new elements but to develop to higher developmental levels. Thus, assimilation is a process of preservation and enrichment of skills while accommodation represents novelty in the developmental process.

In conclusion, the child’s motor evolution occurs through improved adaptation to the environment. The child evolves from primary movements through the maturation of the nervous system, experience and social interaction, which constitute the ground on which the balance factor intervenes. This factor allows the child to act on the environment through the motor and psychological skills he or she possesses but at the same time these same skills are modified according to situations.

I just want to play having fun

If you think I always have to be the best, don’t come.

If for you the result is the most important thing, don’t come. If you’re going to yell at the referee every time you think he’s wrong, don’t come. If you can’t stand me being on the bench. Don’t come. And if you’re going to get angry every time I miss, don’t come. If you come, come to enjoy, to cheer. And to rest.

I just want to play happily. And to see you happy. Soccer is a game and we are stealing it from the children.

Fundación Brafa | Escuela deportiva Barcelona

Too much sedentary life for young

Since young Italian people, children and adolescents, no longer have the opportunity to play and do sports spontaneously in the oratory, in the street or in the gardens of the city and spend only two hours a week in school doing physical activity, the only way not to create sedentary people or people who are for too many hours of the day sitting at a desk or on the couch at home is necessary that municipal organizations, sports, schools, federations and parents build a network to overcome this very serious problem, which limits the development of young Italians.

Interview with Dino Zoff

How have young people changed?

“We used to go out of the house and play until dark. There was a sense of freedom that is unthinkable today. They have to be brought in to play sports and they have an hour. And they pay. And when you pay, everything changes. Just as parents have changed, covering for them when they make mistakes, defending them. A self-defensive behavior: they do it only to cover and defend their own limits as parents. Their own mistakes. Then you see things at 12, 13 that you can’t explain. Yes, the kids have changed and with them, inevitably, the sport has changed. And maybe this is the thing that pains me the most”.

Mental health: something is moving in the sport world

Let’s read this text and try to understand that mental health even in sports is a topic to be addressed without hiding behind medals won and a machista culture or more simply behind the indifference of the “I don’t care” philosophy.

CHICAGO, Sept. 30, 2021 /PRNewswire/ – Hilinski’s Hope Foundation (H3H), founded by Mark and Kym Hilinski to honor the legacy of their son Tyler, today announced that 50+ schools around the country will be participating in the second annual College Football Mental Health Week. The week will focus on a series of mental health initiatives, beginning October 2, which will honor Tyler, those lost, and those suffering, and will culminate on October 9.

To date schools from around the country are participating including:

Hilinski's Hope 2021 Schools

 

Hilinski’s Hope 2021 Schools

 

• Baylor University • Northwestern University • University of Colorado-Boulder
• Brigham-Young University • North Carolina State • University of Dayton
• Claremont-Mudd-Scripps • North Dakota State University • University of Georgia
• Clemson University • North Greenville University • University of Massachusetts
• Drake University • Northern Arizona University • University of Miami
• Duquesne University • Oklahoma State University • University of Missouri
• Eastern Washington University • Oregon State University • University of Mississippi
• Florida State University • Pomona College • University of San Diego
• Georgetown University • Sacramento State • University of South Carolina
• Georgia Southern University • Southern Methodist University • University of South Florida
• Idaho State University • Stanford University • University of Southern California
• Kansas State University • Stetson University • University of Tennessee Knoxville
• Lamar University • Stevenson University • University of Utah
• Lehigh University • Texas A&M • University of Washington
• Liberty University • Texas Tech University • Washington State University
• Louisiana State University • Tufts University • West Virginia University
• Louisiana Tech University • University of Alabama • Whitworth University
• Mercyhurst University • University of Arkansas
• Middlebury College • University of Arizona
• Mississippi State University • UC Berkeley
• University of Buffalo

“We are so honored that more than 50 schools nationwide will be participating in this year’s mental health awareness week,” said Mark Hilinski. “This year, more than ever, student-athlete mental health has been in the spotlight and while conversation around mental illness can be tough and even at times uncomfortable, it is absolutely critical for the overall health and well-being of our student-athletes. Throughout the last year, we’ve continued to see support from schools, fans, students and parents as they join us in the fight against mental illness and that is a major piece of the puzzle that will help destigmatize mental illness and increase mental health resources. We miss Tyler every single day, but we are grateful to know that what we are doing is making a difference and that he would be proud of us.”

“The College Football Playoff Foundation is happy to support Hilinski’s Hope during College Football Mental Health Week to eliminate stigma and increase mental health resources across the county,” said Britton Banowsky, Executive Director of College Football Playoff Foundation. “We see teachers and coaches often taking on responsibilities related to the basic needs of their students and student-athletes, and this includes mental health. We hope these mental health resources can make a difference in providing what they need to better support their students.”

Participating schools have committed to at least one of the following during the week: showcasing a lime green ribbon on all players helmets with a “3″ in the middle to honor Tyler Hilinski and remember those lost and those suffering in silence; encouraging students, parents, alumni, and fans to participate in showing solidarity, eliminating stigma around mental health by holding three fingers in the sky during the first play of the third quarter; participating in an internal assessment to evaluate how universities are following best practices in terms of mental health programs and include talks and trainings on campus for players, coaches, and staff.

Additionally, on Wednesday, Oct. 6 Hilinski’s Hope will host a mental health training open to student-athletes nationwide. Registration link: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/7124947916045695501.

To learn more and/or get involved with Hilinski’s Hope Foundation please visit https://www.hilinskishope.org/cfb-mental-health-week.

Letter to the parents

Dear Parents,

  • Do not insult the referee and do not cheer against opponents when your child’s team is playing.
  • Instead, be correct in demonstrating your support in a positive way to all players, coaches and the referee.
  • Do not shout at your son what he has to do on the pitch, do not replace the coach.
  • Instead, let him play and make the choices he wants to make.
  • Don’t yell at her when she makes a mistake or when he plays badly.
  • Instead, support the commitment and show that you’re proud of her.
  • Don’t criticize the choices of coaches and referees a priori.
  • Instead, listen to them, put yourself in their shoes and try to understand their point of view.
  • Don’t get angry when your son’s team loses, don’t feel disappointed and don’t yell at him.
  • Remember, however, that the game is for the children, it’s not you who lost.
  • Don’t tell her that she has deeply disappointed you and that she will never become a champion.
  • Instead, make sure that sport is a fun and exciting experience.
  • Don’t pretend nothing when your child is disappointed or angry about something that happened while she was playing, but don’t tell her that a fool took it.
  • First, instead, listen, let him talk and show him that you understand his mood and then find a solution together.
  • Don’t teach with your behavior to have no respect for others, whether they are teammates, players of opposing teams, coaches or referees.
  • Show that you have respect for all of them and that you expect her to show it too.
  • Do not ally yourself with those coaches who only let the best players play and who show more attention to the best player.
  • Instead, demand that coaches give everyone the same opportunities to learn and show enthusiasm in working with children.
  • Don’t just talk about sports with your child, don’t just watch him on TV.
  • Instead, practice it together, in the open air playing, engaging in any physical activity that the whole family enjoys.