\u00a0<\/strong>In your zealousness to see your children find ski racing success, you are in danger of becoming so involved in your children\u2019s efforts that you may not distinguish between your own needs and those of your children. The University of Washington researcher Frank Smoll calls this the \u201creverse dependency trap\u201d in which parents overidentify with their child\u2019s experience and define their own self-worth based on the success of their children.<\/p>\n Ski racing may actually become more important to you than to your children. This excessive interest on your part, rather than promoting your children\u2019s participation, undermines their interest by taking away their ownership of our sport. Your children may develop the perception that ski racing is no longer theirs because you seem to be doing more than they are. In essence, you merge with your children<\/em> in their ski racing efforts.<\/p>\n The clearest and scariest signs that you might be merging with your child is if you enter the \u201cwe\u201d zone, meaning you begin talking about your children\u2019s ski racing in terms of how \u201cwe\u201d did, for example, \u201cWe had a great race today\u201d or \u201cWe qualified for States.\u201d<\/p>\n Red Flag #2: Living Vicariously Through Your Children<\/strong><\/p>\n One of the great joys of being a parent is sharing in your children\u2019s achievements. Your excitement for their successes and your disappointment for their failures are a normal and healthy part of parenting. But sharing<\/em> your children’s ski racing doesn\u2019t mean living through<\/em> their ski racing.<\/p>\n Sharing their experiences places the focus on them. The emphasis is on what the experience means to your children, the emotions they are feeling, the lessons they learn, and the benefits they gain from their ski racing. When your children ski well, you are thrilled for them. When they ski poorly, you feel their sadness. With sharing, it is all about your children<\/em>.<\/p>\n When you are living vicariously through your children, the focus is on you: your emotions, what the experience means to you, what you gain from it. When your children have good races, you feel that you have succeeded. When your children have bad races, you feel that you have failed. With living vicariously through your children, it is all about you<\/em>.<\/p>\n Red Flag #3: Placing Your Happiness on Your Children\u2019s Shoulders<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s tough being a kid these days. Your children have so many responsibilities including school, family, social life, and ski racing. These challenges alone are sufficient to burden your children. Yet when you become overly invested in your children’s ski racing, you may also place on them the additional responsibility of making you happy. If you do not gain sufficient meaning and satisfaction from your own life and look to their ski racing as the primary source of ego-gratification, your self-esteem becomes dependent on your children\u2019s ski racing.<\/p>\n Imagine the burden. Every time your children race, your happiness is squarely on their shoulders. If they succeed, you will be happy. If they do poorly, you will be unhappy. Imagine the pressure your children will feel when they get in the starting gate. Your happiness is on the line and it is entirely on their shoulders!<\/p>\n The first red flag that might signal that you are placing your happiness on your children\u2019s shoulders relates to the strength of your emotions compared to theirs. Are you more nervous before races than your children are, more excited when they succeed, and more disappointed when they don\u2019t ski up to expectations?<\/p>\n Another red flag is if you\u2019re more concerned with results, points, and rankings than the developmental benefits of ski racing. What is the first thing you ask your children after a performance\u2014\u201cHow did you do?\u201d If the results of your children\u2019s races take precedence over the fun and life lessons learned, then you may be placing your happiness on your child\u2019s shoulders.<\/p>\n Red Flag #4: Losing Perspective<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong>Ski racing is a seductive sport. Fame and fortune resulting from success in our sport appear to be waiting for your children if only they have the talent and determination to reach that level. They could be the next Ted Ligety or Mikaela Shiffrin. This dream can cause them to lose perspective on ski racing\u2019s intrinsic value of fun, life lessons, and love of a lifetime sport.<\/p>\n If you also buy into this unrealistic perspective and direct your energy based on this illusion, you may be setting your children up for failure and you for disappointment. If you are seduced by the same naive perspective and encourage this view in your children to the exclusion of anything else, you are inflicting potentially long-term and irreparable harm to your children\u2019s personal development.<\/p>\n The odds of your children becoming great ski racers are also infinitesimally small. How many Vonns or Svindalls emerge in any generation? I\u2019m not saying that your children’s shouldn\u2019t dream big (if they don\u2019t aim for the sky, they won\u2019t even get to the top of the mountain), but that shouldn\u2019t be your focus as ski racing parents. And you definitely shouldn\u2019t expect a financial return<\/a> on your investment in your children\u2019s ski racing.<\/p>\n Red Flag #5: Overmatching Your Child<\/strong><\/p>\n In your zealousness to encourage your children\u2019s development as ski racers, you are in danger of pushing them harder and harder, even when they may not be prepared for the increased demands. For example, you might commit your children to ski camps all summer at Mt. Hood when they would benefit more from a few weeks on snow along with a vigorous physical conditioning program and participation in a summer sport. Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, the author of What Every Baby Knows<\/em>, observes that \u201cparents today seem to be anxiously concerned with early learning. With a [child] who has a slow start, parents\u2019 anxiety to prove she\u2019s OK may lead them to push her to do things before she\u2019s ready\u2026An environment full of pressure is likely to become a strained, joyless one\u2026Eventually they have trouble coping with the demands of our complicated society.\u201d By placing your children in training and race situations in which they are overmatched, you may be inadvertently inhibiting, rather than facilitating, their interest, achievement, and enjoyment in ski racing.<\/p>\n The essential question: Why would you put your children in situations in which they are overmatched? One reason may be that you might overstate your children\u2019s capabilities. You\u00a0 may not have a realistic understanding of their ski racing abilities. You may use peer comparisons in your judgments. You may think, \u201cMy Stephanie is a better skier than her friend Jenny, so she\u2019s ready move up to the next level of training.\u201d Your own ego and achievement needs can cause you to overmatch your children. Because of your emotional investment in their ski racing, you may have difficulty admitting that they are anything but the most talented skiers out there.<\/p>\n Wanting to \u201cfast-forward\u201d their development is another reason for overmatching your children. In our society where achievement is so highly revered and rewarded, you may feel pressure to give your children every advantage by putting them on what you believe is the fast track to success. This urgency shows itself in the need to get your children involved with personal trainers, too much time on snow, and racing too much at too early an age. You may also feel the need to \u201ckeep up with the Joneses\u201d \u00a0and your children will suffer from this \u201cneglect.\u201d Unfortunately, you may not realize that development can\u2019t be rushed; the necessary time and effort has to be put in and your children have to be allowed to develop at their own pace.<\/p>\n Dr. Benjamin Bloom, the author of Developing Talent in Young People<\/em>, believes that pushing children too quickly up the development ladder will actually slow their progress. He describes the initial romance stage of development as emphasizing play, fun, and exploration. During this stage, children learn fundamental skills and develop a love for the achievement activity. Dr. Bloom found that rushing children through their development interfered with the emergence of these areas and left them with inadequate motivation and skills to be successful later in their development in the achievement activity.<\/p>\n![\"Atomic\"](\"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/Atomic-logo.jpg\"){kind=logo}
If you merge with your children, you will assume roles that are outside of your purview as a parent, such as doing all scheduling without your child\u2019s input, talking too much about ski racing, attending all training and races, and coaching your children (even if you don\u2019t really know much about ski racing). A early sign that you might be merging with your children is that you take responsibility away from them, such as constantly asking them whether they have maintained their equipment properly or are adequately prepared for an upcoming race.<\/p>\n