Do You Become Frustrated When You Lose The Lead in Tennis?

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Do you have very young players that play in tournaments but yet struggle with the mental game? Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn and today I answer a question from a tennis parent about her son who's only 8 but gets down on himself when he lets the lead slip away.

Dr. Cohn, Fiona, a tennis mom, has a question about her son's tennis game. I have a question about your program, Tennis Confidence. Is this something that I could use for a young player? My son is eight and plays tournaments. He tries hard but gets down on himself, particularly if he lets a lead slip away. He continues to battle, but I can see that he is frustrated. He starts getting upset and may lose some points just from all the negative energy. Is the program something that an 8 year old could understand?

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Hi Fiona, this is a very common problem for very, very young players and your son is pretty young, obviously eight. He's playing in tournaments. The issue is he's probably very competitive and he has some expectations about playing well in matches. If he tries hard but gets down on himself, well, getting down on himself is obviously an issue because if he's got a lot of negative self talk or he gets frustrated easily, for example, that's going to lead to bad decisions. However, if he keeps trying hard, he keeps grinding it out. That's a positive because most of the time kids that get frustrated and upset, what they'll do is they'll simply check out for the rest of the set or check out for the rest of the match, they don't have the skills or the mentality to turn it around. So he probably could use some mental skills in the area of emotion control and letting go of expectations and continuing to grind it out when things aren't going his way. Now, the best option that I have, as you know, I have tennis confidence mental strategies for tournament players. However, I don't know if that's necessarily appropriate for an 8 year old. I would say an 11 or 12 year old could comprehend a lot of the information in that CD program. However, we have another program that might be more appropriate. It's not specific to tennis, but it's called Kids Sports Psychology and You can learn more@kidssportspsychology.com the purpose of that program it's an online mental training program for parents and their young athletes. What you'll find there is a lot of very simple resources, ebooks and videos and articles and interviews that we've compiled that will help your son improve his mental game. But also more importantly is there's some great resources there for sports parents as well to help you understand the mental game, to help you understand the challenges, and also for you to be able to say the right thing prior to matches, say the right thing after matches on the car ride home as well. So it's really a combined thing. When I'm working with kids as young as eight and their parents, it has to be something where you're on board 100% because some of his challenges may be related to how you impact his mental game. So start with kids sportspsychology.com go and check that program out. That's a great place to start for athletes from 6 to 10 year old range. And if that doesn't work for you, contact me and we can certainly do some one on one personal coaching with you and partly with your son as well. Thanks for the question and good luck with his game.

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