Reflect
Next time you enter your house through the front door, imagine that instead of opening it and walking through, you instead take a long run-up and jump over the top of the front door instead. If you could make that jump, you’d be getting close to Hamish Kerr’s high jump of 2 metres 36 cm that brought a gold medal for New Zealand.
India’s Sheetal Devi is just 17 years old. She took home a Bronze medal in the Paralympic archery. What’s remarkable about her achievement is that Sheetal Devi was born without arms. She holds the bow with her foot, draws the string back with her upper body and releases the arrow with her mouth. It’s astonishing to watch.
An Olympic summer shows us the human body doing things that most of us can’t even imagine attempting. We witness athletes who have devoted their lives to pursuing excellence compete under the most intense pressure imaginable. Whatever the sport, even if it’s a discipline you barely knew existed until a few moments ago, we hone in on these human stories and the intensity of triumph and heartbreak.
Sporting events - the Olympics, a World Cup, an Ashes summer – become milestones in our own lives, even though we’re not the ones taking part! My son is eight and this was the first Olympics, and Paralympics, that he was really interested in watching. It meant a month of questions on every conceivable topic: What country is that? How does the scoring work? What are the rules? How do some people jump so high? What sort of disability is that? I didn’t always know the answers, but I could see the Olympics opening up his view of the world, one skateboard flip and one javelin throw at a time.
Perhaps because I’m older – my first Olympic memory is Linford Christie’s 100m win in Barcelona 92 – it’s the stories of longevity and resilience that move and impress me the most. British Paralympian Sarah Storey won her 19th gold medal in Paris this year. She won her first at that same Olympics in Barcelona all the way back in 1992. Her achievements represent an awe-inspiring 32 years of dedication and high performance in elite competition. Heptathlete Katarina Johnson-Thompson finally won her first Olympic medal this year in her fourth games, a journey that began at London 2012 at age 19 and has seen her overcome enormous setbacks through injury.
Motivate
If the Olympics and Paralympics have a lesson to teach, it’s an inspiring one but a difficult one too. The Games show us what can be achieved when we commit to fulfilling our potential. But they’re also a constant reminder that success comes at a price: years of sacrifice, the physical toll of training, waking up too early, pitting yourself against others whose natural gifts might be just a little greater than your own.
A curious thing I noticed about Olympic athletes is that they’re sometimes amongst the least disappointed people in the stadium if they miss out on a medal. It’s because they live day in, day out with their own individual targets and personal bests. They’re always competing against themselves, not just the other athletes. If you run a personal best time and finish 4th, your reaction should be pride in yourself rather than disappointment or envy.
For some athletes, the obstacles to overcome are much greater. Consider athletes in the Refugee Olympic and Paralympic teams who cannot compete for their countries of birth. This year saw the first ever medals won by the Refugee Olympic and Paralympic teams. Olympic boxer Cindy Ngamba trains in Britain, but as an openly gay woman she cannot return to her native Cameroon. Paralympic taekwondo competitor Zakia Khudadadi is a refugee from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Both athletes have an Olympic bronze medal, achieved against a backdrop of enormous personal turmoil.
More often though, the road to success is a more familiar one: a child’s aptitude and enthusiasm for a particular sport, enormous and unrelenting support and encouragement from their family, access to facilities and good coaching at the right time, and the dedication to train harder and work longer than one’s peers.
Support
Not all children will become Olympians, but we can encourage a mindset that makes them resilient to challenges and setbacks, confident in their own ability to develop, and enthusiastic to try new things.
Model a growth mindset. To achieve a high standard at any activity we need to make the journey from being a novice to being an expert. Some people seem more inclined to believe in their own potential to develop – a “growth” as opposed to a “fixed” mindset. Talk to your children about the times they’ve learnt new skills or improved at something difficult, and how you’ve grown in different ways. After all, there was a time they couldn’t walk or write their own name!
Praise effort, not outcomes. We want our children to be good at everything! But in reality different people develop skills at varying speeds and show different aptitude in a range of areas. Avoid fixed-mindset comments like “You’re so good at this”. Praise dedication, effort and improvements against their own performance. Avoid comparing them to others.
Support their body confidence. We know that many children lose interest in sport as teenagers, and that body image is a central reason why this happens. Body confidence is about more than simply feeling satisfied or dissatisfied with how we look or what our bodies can do. Feeling body confident involves accepting our body, attending to its needs and protecting ourselves by rejecting unrealistic beauty standards and valuing inclusive body ideals. After all, if you look at Team GB there are many body types represented in elite sport! But these do not always fit stereotypical ideas about what a “desirable” body is.
There are many ways to build children’s body confidence. One of the most powerful strategies is to change our approach to ‘body talk’, by avoiding making comments about our own appearance or that of others, and focusing instead on body functionality and the things that our bodies can do. The free Body Confident Sport programme was developed by a fantastic researcher, Dr Kat Schneider, in association with Dove and Nike. Whilst it is aimed at girls and sport coaches, it is packed with tools and tips that can also be applied by teachers and parents to help support body confidence.
Are you a Tooled Up member?
Tooled Up members can explore our resources on fitness, nutrition, confidence and body image in young people.
Following our successful Reaching Girls Early conference earlier this year – which included this excellent talk on Body Confidence – we are keenly anticipating our upcoming Reaching Boys Early event on November 8th. Join our expert panel covering issues such as appearance-related anxiety, steroid use, positive masculinity and more.
Did you know that we’ve also interviewed elite sportspeople? Listen to Boat Race winners James Ball and Caoimhe Dempsey, England Women’s Lacrosse captain Laura Merrifield, rugby great Floyd Steadman OBE and former karate world champion Geoff Thompson MBE.
In this podcast, Dr Emma Ross of the English Institute of Sport talks to Tooled Up about all things related to women, girls and sport: the need to change the language often used to talk to girls about their bodies, how to keep up their enjoyment and interest in sport, proper nutrition and equipment. There’s also our information on Exercise and Periods.
These are 50 Fantastic Female Sporting Role Models, and if you’re stuck for inspiration here are 100 Sports for Children and Teens to Try.
Younger children need to learn about competition: winning and losing! This resource helps build resilience to losing. Read here about the normalisation of mistakes in family life as an essential part of learning and development.