Untitled - April 22, 2026
00:00:00 Speaker: It is summer sports time here in the Taunton household. Hi, it's Denise and thank you for listening to the Working Moms Redefined podcast. That sounded very officially and totally reverted back to the radio days. Ignore that. But what I don't want you to ignore is the thought process of parent coaches. Hi, my name is Denise and I am a parent coach. Do I see myself coaching in middle school and high school? Probably not. There are much more qualified people that have power to teach our children more than I. And yet, in this season of life coaching, third and first grade, I'm okay for that. That is my caliber. I'm not digging all myself. That is truth. And yet, a hard conversation had to be had with Sydney not too long ago on the volleyball court. Volleyball was my best sport. I'm still slow, but I. It was my best sport and I enjoyed it the most, so I have the most passion for it when I coach right now, I love the opportunity to You impact kids in a way in which I wished I would have been, or I was at that age. I'm the first person to tell you that I have leadership activities from time to time at practice. Mental coaching is a dynamic and mental training is a dynamic for any age. So of course we're going to do that at third grade. If I coached Hudson, we would do it there too. I digress, however, for Sydney, sweet Sydney and I'm encouraging each and every one of you who parent coach your child to input their name here. Had a little bit of a struggle a couple weeks ago when mommy turned into coach, but Sydney didn't get the memo. And there's a dynamic. I am the type of parent that will be the first to ask you what your thoughts are. Why might you be feeling this way? I'm not the type to say, go to your room and deal with it yourself. Like that is not. However, I am very direct as a coach. Get your feet to the ball. Why'd you use your hands? Come on guys, move like there is force behind my words. As a coach, there is directness as a parent. But I'm kinder in that nature. Same concept if you are leading a team at work. But that team off the court is a little different. And I want our kids to be coached by their other coaches in the same way, right? Like we are not cuddling, dare I say. That's how we got to the point of participation trophies. I digress. Sydney didn't handle it well because what she saw as a nine year old, understandably so, was her mom, very forcefully telling what we should do because she messed up more than once. And how do we learn? We correct and do it differently. But if you do not get corrected, you will not do it differently, and you can tell the headedness that is going on right now, even as I'm speaking about this. Well, I pushed her apparently too far in her opinion, and she came off the court and she sulks. And I looked at her and I said, we cannot act like this if you are going to play. And then there goes the waterworks. And I, I talked with her a little bit about it, but probably not as much as I normally would. And it's probably because I'm like, I'm not going to see your side to a certain degree. She was expecting me to be calmer, my steady pace that I am as a parent on the volleyball court, as her coach. Those two things do not always align. And I'm okay with that. And I am telling you this. Not to very quickly make excuses for the tone in which you use at work, because if you are yelling and giving orders at work more often than you are not, that is wrong. And I can say that I don't do that, but I do it as a coach because we only have a finite amount of time in practice. We have an hour and a half in that game to correct what was done. We have a very finite amount of time. Now. I have read like, you can't really correct too much in a game because that's when you should be correcting as in practice. I get that, but I also like to win and I don't want the same mistake to continually happen, especially if a ball gets dropped and it doesn't get touched. I now understand what my previous volleyball coaches meant, not only by that statement, but by the frustration of when it happened. Like understandably so. Why they yelled, I would rather you touch the ball than let it drop. And I'm going to tell you that in a very competitive, forceful tone. Sydney is crying now on the sideline and I dismissed it and I don't feel bad about it. Jeremy came over, made sure she was good, explained why I don't know what was said, and we kept on rolling. We did talk about it a little bit afterwards, but I explained to her, mommy is your coach, but your coach is not mommy. Because there is a difference. And that's okay. I told her it did not make it any less. And I also offered the opportunity like, hey, if you don't want me to coach in this way, I will step back. I will be a loud cheerleader on the side. And she's like, no, I want you to. Okay, well then you can't be mad when I help you become better. I am not a yeller. Most of the time. But give me a coach clipboard and a team of girls that I can't wait to lead because I want them to be better individuals. I'm gonna yell. But in practice, that's where the relationship is formed. I am not there as a parent coach to coddle your child. I am there to help them see what their capacity and potential is, and I'm going to help them reach it. Again, third grade and first grade. I might be a different. I might sing another tune. Softball season is coming up and there has already been conflicts. Again, I love conflict, I love conversations, I didn't label them hard conversations because they are only hard conversations if you decide them to be. It was a conversation and there was drama and I just will not stand for it. And I said, we will not act like this. We will not act like this and we will not participate. And the cool thing is, when you set that as the precedence, it stops happening. I stopped volleyball practice the other day because a girl started placing blame on another girl. Now she should not have placed blame, but even if she had all of her reason to, we do not place blame. We take accountability for our own actions and as a coach in life for our kids. Isn't that what you want? Isn't that what coaches really do? Yes, we're playing sports, but that's a byproduct of life lessons kids are learning how to be, how to handle conflict, how to deal with pressure, how to realize that we can't speak to people like that and we cannot place blame. And that when you eye roll or side eye somebody, I'm gonna call you out. Because how we live at a nine year old is oftentimes how we will act at a twenty nine year old level. Do you want a nine year old who sasses back and rolls eyes and dismisses you, or doesn't look you in the eye? No. And so I'm going to call that out. I stopped practice to say we don't act like that. And she said, act like what? And I was like, oh man, come at me, bro. Nine year olds are my jam. I literally heard Sydney go, uh oh, off to the side, like, right. Like, ha ha. And I said, oh, we also don't talk to me like that now. Operating or giving out the go run five laps is like telling a kid to go to their room now. Did they run five laps? Yes, absolutely. But first we said, how would you like it if I spoke to you like that? Like what? Like you don't care about somebody. And that stopped her dead in her tracks. See, you can be kind and also direct. And with a nine year old, like sometimes people say that kids intimidate the heck out of them. Why? Because they tell it how it is or how they actually. They don't hold back their thoughts and feelings. Okay, but let's do this in a kinder manner. So as a parent coach, you get the opportunity to lift these kids up in more ways than how to set a volleyball. You're teaching them what to and to not allow in regards to the way in which they treat people and to the way in which they are allowing others to treat them. They're standing up for themselves. We're learning that you make eye contact when the coach is is looking at you. We learn to go shag your balls. You're not lazy if you messed up and that went off. You're not leaving that for somebody else. Go clean it up yourself. All of these things that they don't put on a it's like a as duties as assigned when you're first contract, right? Like you look down your whole list of duties and then you see and to be determined duties as assigned. It's like that you might not realize the impact that each and every one of you is having as a parent, coach or as a supporter of a parent coach. But coaches are teaching our kids much more than how to play the sport, and we have to let them. I haven't had anybody come at me yet as to my coaching style, but there will be, and I can't wait for that day because I'm going to get to share them with them. Yeah, they might not be doing the sport as well as you might like it. I like them too, because they're not winning. But are they a better person? Because coaching teaches people how to be really in playing sports, right? Teaches these kids how to be better citizens. So how are you coaching your kids? And you don't have to be a sports coach. How are you coaching your kids when they're in public? When they're at home? Are we hoping that they learn the things that you were taught or are we teaching? Are we yelling or are we being steady? Are we sending them off to their room to go deal with feelings? Or are we listening ears. You get to decide how you coach your kids, and there is a difference how you do it at home and on the court. Thank you for listening to the Working Moms Redefined podcast. It is not lost on me that you chose to spend time together. Thank you. Let's connect outside of the space on socials. We'd love for you to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest. We've got it all to connect with you. If you feel as if someone in your life could be impacted by this message, feel free to share it. That is the biggest compliment. As we part ways together, remember you can do hard things.
