As a boy, Andre Agassi never played very well.
His father, a former boxer and Iranian immigrant, saw an opportunity in tennis, and though he never reached the highest level of the sport, Andre was undeterred, training relentlessly under the Las Vegas desert sun.
Mike Agassi drove his youngest son to Nevada, Arizona and California to compete in tournaments, and when his father entered him in the 10-and-under division, his son won almost every time.
On the rare occasions when he lost, Agassi would slumber. He would sneak off to his car. His father would scold his son for not doing what he'd been taught. Or he would say nothing, and his son would wallow in silence.
Our sons and daughters may not be sporting prodigies like Agassi, but we sometimes treat them as such. We invest time and money into their sporting experiences. When the game or match is over and we are not happy with the result or with the way our child played, we want to “right” the situation.
But before we speak, we need to consider the power of our words, especially when we are hurling criticism at kids or offering suggestions that we think are constructive but that actually have a negative impact on their perspective on sport.
We think of Agassi as an eight-time Grand Slam champion, but long before that, he was a sensitive child who needed his father's encouragement and understanding.
“I never doubted my father's love,” Agassi wrote in his autobiography. Open“I wish he was calmer, listened more, and was less angry. In fact, sometimes I wish my father loved me more, so maybe he would back off and let me make my own choices.”
The aftermath of a “bad” match is an ideal moment for parents to show empathy and support, and also because constantly trying to fix a child can drive parents and children apart.
“What's the goal of our relationship?” says Ryan Made, senior director of behavioral science for the Kansas City Royals. “Do kids want a coach or do they want a parent? And what is the role of a parent? I think it's about understanding those boundaries and clearly understanding how those boundaries work.”
USA TODAY Sports spoke with Maid and Laurel Williams, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Baylor University College of Medicine, about the steps we can take to handle those delicate situations when kids are distressed after a game.
1. If your son or daughter has just finished playing a game, give them (and you) some time to cool down.
We can get so wrapped up in our kids' sports that we don't realize that they're just as upset about what just happened as we are.
Professional sports teams don't allow the media to talk to players for at least 10 minutes after a game ends. Your child needs more time to decompress.
Whether it's a child, a Navy SEAL or a major league baseball player (Maid has worked with them all as a psychologist), their nervous systems need to calm down. Maid suggests waiting about 20 minutes before bringing up the topic of games with your kids.
You too need to take a breather, this is not to correct, certainly not to punish, but to let them heal.
“Hey, I'd like to talk to you about gaming,” you can ask. “When is a good time for you?”
If they don't want to talk about it, wait a day. You've already given them control over the situation. Agassi never had that.
2. Help them normalize failure and understand how it makes them feel.
As a boy, Agassi won a sportsmanship trophy at a tournament, though he never won. His father smashed it in the parking lot and threw it in the trash.
Just as his father taught his son how to hit a backhand, he also dramatically demonstrated how he should feel after losing.
Agassi recalls a moment as a boy when he felt what his father felt after losing a match he should have won.
“I had internalized my father's temper, his perfectionism, and his anger to the point that his voice not only felt like my own, but like my own,” he wrote. “I no longer had to be tormented by him. From this day forward, I could do it all myself.”
You can shape your child's sports experience by making it a positive one, or you can ruin it by making it a negative one. Either way, you need to let your child experience failure and embrace it.
“How do you build resilience?” Made says. “Understand that failure is normal in life and failure in sports is normal.”
You can also let them know that it's normal to feel anger, sadness, or embarrassment when they lose, but they don't have to “win” to get something out of the game or feel something positive about being part of a team.
Long before she became a psychiatrist, Williams played on the tennis team at the University of Southern California. The coach made her his manager. She wasn't good enough to play in tournaments, but she got to practice with the team every day. She got to do what she loved, without the pressure of a top-six player.
“I had a pretty strong sense of who I was,” she says. “I wasn't going to be a tennis star, but I loved tennis and I wanted to stay involved in it. So I always tell people to be as good as you can be. Like, what's the best thing I can do in this area? But I'm not just that. There's so much more.”
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3. Remind them why they play sports: Because they love sports.
Agassi was also passionate about soccer as a young man, playing three times a week as a boy and loving the feeling of running around the field with his hair flying, demanding the ball and laughing with his teammates.
“This feels right,” he thought. “This is me.”
Mike Agassi pulled Andre off the field in the middle of a match the moment he decided that football was interfering with his son's tennis. His father didn't like the idea of recreational sports. It was a business, not a pleasure.
Agassi never had the chance to fall in love with tennis – his father forced him to play and correct his forehand and backhand, which led to him hating the game, a feeling he carried throughout his career.
If we push our kids to play sports in order to become professional or college athletes, we're missing the point. Only 1-2% of high school athletes earn an athletic scholarship to help pay for college. Instead of chasing scholarships, stay in sports for the reasons you started in the first place.
As part of his work with the Royals, Made interviews hundreds of Royals prospects each year. Why do they play? Most say it's because they love it. And so should your child.
“If we focus too much on the pressures of sport, kids lose sight of the love of sport,” Made said.
Constant scolding can put pressure on your child, instead, it's important to remind them why they play sports when the game doesn't go as expected.
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4. If a child is anxious about something, we want to reinforce it, not reassure them.
If you love sports, you can benefit greatly from the lessons it offers: doing your best, learning how to handle conflict, being a good person and teammate, accepting instruction and having confidence in yourself, having a positive attitude, and, of course, how to fail.
After tough losses, what Made said is a fundamental principle of the sport can be reinforced.
“You did a great job today, son,” you might say. “That's great. You didn't win, but you played really hard. That's life; sometimes you do your best and the results don't go your way.”
You can reinforce these beliefs before your next match.
Reinforcement is about encouraging growth and development through experience. It is not the same as reassurance, which is avoidance. Telling a child “played well” when they didn't, or that they are better than they are, is a form of reassurance.
“We actually build our self-esteem through failure,” Williams says, “not by exaggerating and saying we're good at something when we're not.”
Sometimes, to ease our feelings of failure, we give our children a false sense of understanding about what happened or who they are.
“We don't give them enough credit for what they know,” Williams says. “We just hope that if we say it enough times, it will become true. But they say, 'I'm not as good as that person. I know that. You keep telling me that and it undermines their trust in you. You're lying about this. So what else aren't you telling me the truth about?'”
5. You don't have to be the fixer, just listen.
“A lot of times kids just want someone to listen,” Made says. “There's one quote that's stuck with me: 'Unsolicited advice is always unspoken criticism.' Kids who are learning sports want their parents to support them, and sometimes they just want someone to think with them and just listen.”
“One of the most important things we do is listen with an open mind.”
Many of us take notes during the game about how our kids can improve, either physically or mentally. Once the game is over, put those notes away and take notes later, in a more natural situation, like while they're playing catch or shooting a basketball.
For now, resist the urge to make the situation better and listen to what your child has to say — maybe they want to try a different sport after the season is over, or maybe they just want to vent about what happened.
Both occasions would have brightened the mind of a young Andre Agassi.
Steve Borelli, aka Coach Steve, has been an editor and writer for USA TODAY since 1999. For 10 years he coached his two sons' baseball and basketball teams. Today, he and his wife, Colleen, coach high school and middle school sports. His column appears weekly. Past columns are here.
Have a question you'd like Coach Steve to answer in a column? Email us. sborelli@usatoday.com
