Positive thinking

I spent countless hours sitting on the side lines watching and waiting. There were times when I took advantage of being at a track and walked. Other times, I would read or simply enjoyed being in the company of other adults.

The difference between mothering and any job is that mothering is a 24/7 job. Most sports that my children were involved in required some kind of parental participation. Whether or not I was actively involved I preferred to stay and watch to see how my children were doing. This way I also learned a thing or two about the sport. On days they were not practicing or competing, I helped them practice. When they were involved in track I would take them to the track and ran with them. This was mostly during their elementary school years. Now that they are teenagers, I do not even attempt to compete with them. Oddly enough one of my teenaged daughters asked me why I stopped running with them. The question caught me by surprise. This girl holds the shock put record for her school and is good at most things athletic.

I hesitated for a moment then I said, “Because I do not want to embarrass myself.” They are very competitive and are at a level that I have never been. I still interject and try to tell them they need to step up their game. At times they look at me and smile and other times they would say, “That is impossible.”

A few weeks ago three of them went to the regional track meet. The next step would have been state. One girl ran the one hundred meters dash in a little under twelve seconds. For weeks I had been telling her in order to get to state she would need to decrease her time to ten seconds. She looked at me and laughed. Needless to say she did not get pass the qualifying round. I did not attend that meet so when she got back, I asked her how she did. She said that she did well. She came in second to last in her heat.

I then said to her, “Were you not the person that laughed when I said, you need to decrease your time?”

“Yes,” she said, “but that would have been impossible for me because I am a freshman and everyone else are seniors.” Perhaps she was right in that the seniors might have been at this longer than she has. During the discussion we had about improving her time, I had told her it was a mind over matter thing. Based on her response I realized that she did not grasp what I was trying to impart to her. To be a winner we need to think like a winner and that will enable us to perform more like one. I do believe with time she will decrease her time. I do not run with them anymore but it is still my desire for them to do well. I also know that if they go into a race believing that they will not win there is no point in attempting the race. For her to be a winner, she needs to believe that she is a winner. She said she did well because she believed that was the best she could do. She never attempted to decrease her time because she thought it was impossible to do so.

It is not an easy task getting a teen or anyone to change the way they think. The one thing I do know about teenagers is they do believe they know everything. Influencing the way my children think is another unusual challenge but nonetheless a very real one.