Podcast Segment for Goalie Parents – Episode 272

I have a question that I have seen come up a lot, and I saw it again this week, and I thought it would be fun to tackle. And that was someone wrote something along the lines of, my kid says they love the game but there's a lot of times I'm watching and they just don't look like they're trying very hard. What can I do? First thing I want to start with as I have many times is you know your kid better than I do. So take my advice for what you will.

But there's a few thoughts here based on my experience as a coach, as a teacher, and as a goalie parent. So I would like to say that we have all been there guys. I would put my son today, I'd put his motivation and work ethic up against anybody at any level. But there were definitely days of practice growing up when he was younger that he wasn't pushing himself as hard as maybe I would have hoped to see. And growing up, there is no question.

He played against goalies where it really seemed to us that the parents liked the game more than the goalies on the ice liked the game. They maybe even looked disinterested in games and we wondered what's going on there. So if you're in that position, whether it's, over a long haul or just once or twice, what can you do? You have doubtless heard before that motivation has to come from within. We can't teach kids to work as hard as Connor Bedard, Sidney Crosby or whoever.

And I do agree with that, but but only to a point. I think there's some things that we can do to help. I have never believed that you can just sort of nudge, push, force, cajole, whatever word you want a child into loving the game. And, having that whatever it takes, mentality, it's not something that you can you can really teach them, but it might not even be healthy for them. Think about that.

Pushing too hard, getting angry, that's not so good for your kids and it's not so good for your relationship with them. You're probably just gonna make them hate the game, maybe even you. So I think we need to be careful here. And, and I think if we do try and push them, especially, you know, going that anger route, getting upset at your kids because they're not working as hard as you'd like, you're gonna find that they're gonna push back and you don't want to raise a goalie who's only out there because they're they're fearing you or a coach or or whoever. When my son was, younger and there were days that he wasn't interested in pushing his hard on the ice, and if there was a time that it was frustrating me, I really had to just remind myself he's a kid.

He's here to have fun and we want our kids to learn the lessons of hard work. Sure. But it has to come from them and for the right reasons. So I was a goalie coach in that situation for quite a while, for many years. And for me, I always put my personal relationship with my son first in situations like this.

And and I actually think as a parent watching from the stands, you probably should as well. So I would just let him be. If he didn't wanna push that day for some reason, if he didn't wanna learn something new, that was okay because look, one u 11 or u 13 practice is not gonna make or break his hockey experience. I think the central question that you need to ask them though is is, are you happy? Are you enjoying playing?

And if they are, then just let it go. They can learn to push or not on their schedule. But why do some kids get that fire burning inside them to work hard? And and is there anything I can do as a parent to stoke that fire? Well, first off, let's just acknowledge that you can raise two children exactly the same and you will find that they do develop different personalities.

So there's no simple answer to that. And and the question does come, what do they want? My son has been lucky to have lots of interesting opportunities as a goalie and training and games and so on. But I've always simply presented opportunities and I let him choose them. He didn't always say yes and that was okay.

I didn't always present every opportunity by the way either. Sometimes time and money get in the way, but I was always upfront with him. So he had, you know, some ownership over the situation and understood what was going on. Now, things didn't always go the way he wanted. He would have a tough game.

Maybe he didn't get selected for a team, had some tough seasons. We start with a hug, give him a chance to be a little bit upset, but then I would ask at some point, what do you wanna do about it? I'd let him know that I'm there to support, and whatever the answer is, if he's happy where he is or even wants to take a step back or not play, that's okay too. But if he wanted to do a little bit more work, if he recognized the people around them were working a little harder, then I'm there to support as well. Look, I wasn't as direct as to say, if you want to be a better goaltender, you're going to have to work harder because that sets up a tough dynamic with your child.

It's more of a guided conversation. What do you think you need to do to take another step forward? Part of those discussions have always been having an open dialogue too because we can't make assumptions that it's just that our kid is lazy or something. Maybe there's another reason why they didn't look happy out on the ice and you should have a conversation and ask them why. Maybe they had a tough day at school that you weren't aware of.

Maybe they didn't eat enough or they didn't eat at the right time before practice. Maybe they got hurt by a shot early on and never really settled back in. There could be a thousand reasons beyond what you're seeing as maybe just being a bit lazy. I I've got a great book on the shelf here guys called the myth of laziness. And it is more from a teacher's perspective and it is more about there being reasons that you might think that a child's lazy, but there's a lot more going on in the background.

I think as a parent, we need to we need to dig gently. But the ownership needs to be in the hands of our kids. We're there to guide and support them, and that's it. I also think, by the way, just to finish off here quickly, I think that kids learn from from our example as well. And and I probably let Matthew down in that respect.

I'm not a hard charging guy in the gym or anything. But he did see me working hard at my job, and he saw that I loved playing beer league and how much I love being a goaltender. And I'm sure that influenced him to some point. And I also love reading and learning about athletes who work extremely hard. So I took advantage of that.

We had a season where he would have to drive an hour and fifteen minutes to practice. I would have to drive. He was with me. And so we would listen to ebooks on the way down to practice. We listened to David Goggins, for example, his first book, one of the toughest, hardest charging athletes out there.

Caution parents of young kids. There's some really tough languages and experiences he recounts in there. We listen to biographies of guys like Kobe Bryant, legendary hard workers. But I think the the My key point to all this is it is in their hands. We can create an environment for them.

We can share some experiences, but it's got to come from them and just let that be okay. Those are my thoughts, guys. Hit me up with your thoughts, with your questions. parents@ingoalmag.com. I always love hearing from people, whether it's another question for a future segment or you just wanna tell me your thoughts on today's topic, I'd love to hear.

Just realize something. The way I listen to a parent segment is totally different than my engagement to the Gear Segment or the Feature interview. Engaged fully in in all three, but it's it's very different. I have this just massive desire and respect for you to to give me this information and learn from you in in this regard, as a parent and not even as a goalie parent, just as a parent and how I can learn the myth of laziness. I just learned something there that I can read and translate into how I talk to kids or my or my own children.

That that's that's very cool. But just was looking at this going

Thank you.

Woody and I are both looking at this differently than we than we do when we're talking about the Gear Segment or the parent or the the feature interview.

I'm actually pissed. Why?

No. Andrew Woody's back. Again?

Chip on the shoulder. He's mad again because I want because I needed this advice like a year and a half ago as you were citing these things. I'm like, shoot. I should have done that. Yeah.

Because I dealt with this, like and and

It's really easy for me to preach. It doesn't mean it was easy all the way along.

No. But the examples of listening to stuff in the car instead of and having other people show the way, instead of being like, hey. If you're not gonna work harder, we're not gonna invest all this money into all this extra training if you're not gonna do extra work like that kind. I know that's not the right way to go, but there were times we went that way. But yeah.

We would been a lot better. Yeah. It would have been a lot better to see those examples.

I will say, just to be fair, I mean, you have to couch those discussions carefully, but I have had situations where I said, k. This is your choice if you wanna do this or not. It is a significant investment for your mother and I, and here's how much it is. If we're gonna go down this road, you do have to give it your best or you're willing to do that. And I if he if it looked like he wasn't at any point, I didn't go and and sort of break that confidence and and get into an argument around it, because I I realized all along there's more going on than I knew.

But I do think it's okay to have that conversation to be upfront. Like I said, you're you're you're trying to create some ownership in the whole experience.

Yeah. Having that conversation and then when you see what you don't think the your expectations of what hard work, like, that's where it becomes hard as a parent to

It is really tough.

And our expectations aren't always realistic to Right.

That's the other thing.

Athlete's life. That's the part that I I learned a bunch, Hutch, and I wish I'd I'm kinda wish I could hit rewind on a on on the last year and a half and a couple of discussions I had with my own daughter, I didn't probably do the right way. Or as much as I enjoyed our Taylor Swift drives and singing along to music, there could have been some benefit to mixing in a little third party.

You know? You're never gonna forget those experiences singing T Swift with your daughter. That's all that's all good.

Well, I hope she forgets them because I think they've left a scar.

Well, I hope she filmed them.

I'd love to

go back to Parents at ingoalmag.com, Livvy.

I would love to hit the rewind button on all of that. Hutch, that's that's really good. And my expectations, I know were not realistic for the moment for for her.

Do you know something? Woody brought up the point about, you know, knowing a teenager's life and and my my teacher hat went on there. I don't think I even realized it until I started teaching. And then I I thought to myself, wow, here I am specializing in one subject teaching two or three classes, but but my attention is drilled in on one thing that I already know pretty well. Our poor kids have to take five, six classes all at the same time managing, learning those five or six different subjects in amongst all of their having a social life and their sport.

Subjects. Yeah.

Yeah. They have it much harder than we do. And I think we just need to acknowledge that.

And the expectations of being an athlete oh, you're an athlete. So, like, you need to make different decisions than some of your friends, but they're still seven in my case, 17 years old. Like, you still have to let them also be that too. And that doesn't just because I'm surrounded by professional athletes doesn't mean the 17 year olds can act that way or behave that way in a consistent basis, or they'd all turn into a bunch of parent hating robots.

It's one of my favorite things about InGoal Radio Podcast is, we're not here just to have hockey talk, out and be the person that's sounding like the greatest expert or the know it all, saying the right thing as a podcaster broadcaster and being so authoritative. Like, there's some honest conversation that that happens every episode, and this is a great example of it. There's chirping around the Gear Segment. There's a fun commentary with the feature interview, but the parent segment is just us basically baring our soul and admitting there's there's some therapy here, you guys. It's with Woody and I anyway.

With with

Oh, me too. Hard to

onion and and admitting some mistakes here. So it's it's it's fun.

Lots here too, buddy.

Not a lot of like, just you gotta do it this way. Just admitting admitting faults.

I can assure you many of those days when I skated away and just let him do his own thing on the ice, I was biting my lip hard as I was turning in the other direction. It's not easy.