{"id":16931,"date":"2023-10-18T08:00:04","date_gmt":"2023-10-18T15:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/?p=16931"},"modified":"2025-06-26T12:17:33","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T12:17:33","slug":"should-you-follow-live-timing-when-your-kids-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/should-you-follow-live-timing-when-your-kids-race\/","title":{"rendered":"Should You Follow Live-Timing When Your Kids Race?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This article is my third and final in a series on the role of technology in ski racing (here\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/is-being-on-the-clock-in-training-good-for-ski-racers\/\">#1<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/does-tech-use-hurts-ski-racers\/\">#2<\/a>). Today, I will focus on one particular technology that has become ever-present in our sport and is changing the way parents (and kids) follow races. I\u2019m talking about Live-Timing, an online platform that tracks race results in real-time.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-16901 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/SYNC_logo_Options_1200x1200-300x70.webp\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"70\" \/>Let me preface my comments by saying that I have nothing personally against Live-Timing. I periodically use it to follow the racers I work with. But I never used it to follow my daughters when they raced. I also realize that there are many benefits of Live-Timing to many in the ski racing community including officials, coaches, parents, the media, and racers themselves (as exemplified in the <a href=\"http:\/\/live-timing.com\/quotes.php\">Quotes section<\/a> of the Live-Timing.com web site). At the same time, like every form of technology, there are unintended, and not necessarily healthy, consequences that I would like to point out in this article so that everyone who uses Live-Timing can be sure to maximize its value and minimize its liabilities.<\/p>\n<p>Let me share with you some examples of less-than-positive use of Live-Timing before I discuss specific concerns I have:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Parents at races watching Live-Timing on their smartphones rather than watching their kids race.<\/li>\n<li>Parent\u2019s knee-jerk reactions in the finish line or remotely to their children\u2019s race results, whether extreme excitement or stunning disappointment, immediately after their kids finish.<\/li>\n<li>Parents who aren\u2019t at the race calling their spouse at the finish line and the spouse handing their phone to their kid even before they have time to catch their breath.<\/li>\n<li>Parents who are not at the race make assumptions (usually inaccurate and negative ones) and pass judgment (ditto) about how their child did before getting the full story from their young racer.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Behind these overt and fairly egregious uses of Live-Timing are some pretty significant messages that you communicate to your young racers when you use Live-Timing inappropriately or excessively.<\/p>\n<p>The first message that your kids may get from a preoccupation with Live-Timing is that results are what matter most to you. It\u2019s easy to say that your children\u2019s ski racing is about having fun, being challenged, and developing important life skills, but let\u2019s be realistic: we live in a highly competitive culture in which results matter. But, as I have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/sports-results-matter-get-ignore\/\">written about previously<\/a>, your children are more likely to get the results<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-16732 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Atomic-logo.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"183\" height=\"72\" \/> that they and you want if they focus more on the process than the results. Your children already get unhealthy messages from our hyper-intense achievement culture, their schools, their peers, and, often, their coaches. The fewer messages about results they get from you, the better. Yet, when you are all over Live-Timing, rather than focusing on your kids\u2019 experience and performance in the race, you are sending the unhealthy message that results are the priority.<\/p>\n<p>The second message that your children may get involves how important their ski racing is to you. Of course, you are going to care about your kids\u2019 ski racing. Otherwise, why would you devote so much time, energy, and money to our sport. But this investment can turn into overinvestment of your self-esteem and ego in which their results become your ROI (Return on Investment). When your children see you <img decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-16738 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/POC_types_black-300x138.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"115\" \/>using and talking about Live-Timing too much, you\u2019re communicating to them that their ski racing is REALLY important to you which places the weight of expectation on their shoulders. That burden can lead to fear of failure, pressure, and competitive anxiety, all of which will prevent your kids from getting the results they and you want. It also sucks the fun and enjoyment out of their ski racing.<\/p>\n<p>Following Live-Timing rather than your children\u2019s actual race-day experiences can color your initial reactions to their race performances. If you\u2019re paying more attention to their time on Live-Timing than how they are skiing, you might miss how good their skiing was or the mistake they made that resulted in a slow time despite really good skiing. You allow your judgments to be formed based on a time rather than on the gestalt of their racing experience. When you focus on their time, you may miss out on their excitement, determination, and resilience in facing what we all know to be a very difficult challenge every time they ski from the starting gate to the finish line. A race run, whether fast or slow, flawless or mistake ridden, cannot be summed up in a time you see on a screen.<\/p>\n<p>One of the biggest defenses I hear from parents is that Live-Timing allows them to share their kids\u2019 race experiences when they can\u2019t be at the race. I get that parents want to be involved in their kids racing. At the same time, I would suggest that staring at a bunch of numbers on a screen doesn\u2019t quite equal sharing their kids\u2019 racing experience. Live-Timing can also become another manifestation of the (creepy) \u201ctracking your kid\u201d culture in which you are following them constantly without their awareness of it.<\/p>\n<p>Also, by engaging with them indirectly (called \u201cmediated experience\u201d in tech-psych speak), you are missing out on engaging with them directly. With a screen between the two of you, you as a parent are going to be missing the stuff of which young lives are about, namely, challenge, pushing limits, and the satisfaction of a great effort, as well as the nerves pre-race and the feelings after, whether a great race or a great crash. You will also miss out on what a deep parent-child relationship is based on, namely, real connection (in the old-school sense of the word), emotions, physical contact, and all of the subtle information you garner from your children when you share their experiences directly and miss when you have a screen between the two of you.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, one of the most important aspects of ski racing in children\u2019s development is their experiences after their races, what they will perceive as a success or a failure. The time after they cross the finish line (or don\u2019t) is when they learn their greatest lessons from our sport, for example, overcoming disappointment, staying motivated and positive in the face of mistakes and adversity, and learning to reconcile their aspirations with their performances. When you track them with Live-Timing or intrude on this time by asking them to talk to their non-present parent on your smartphone, you deprive them of the valuable time they need to process their performance and experience its emotional impact.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m not saying that you should swear off Live-Timing completely. As with most forms of technology, it\u2019s not whether you use it, but rather how, when, and why use it. Here are some suggestions for you to use Live-Timing as a tool to support your children\u2019s racing efforts rather than as a weapon against them:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If you\u2019re at a race, keep your smartphone, and Live-Timing, in your pocket. Allow yourself to fully experience your child\u2019s race directly rather than through a screen. Then, connect with your child after the race in the most caring way possible. Finally, when they\u2019re hanging out with their friends and have put the race behind them, you can sneak into a corner of the base lodge, pull out your phone, open Live-Timing, and do a detailed analysis of his or her times and result (or, better yet, don\u2019t and just hang out with other parents and have fun yourself).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If you\u2019re not at the race, don\u2019t track your child\u2019s race second by second and interval by interval; the inevitable emotional roller coaster doesn\u2019t feel good. Instead, get a full report from your child after the race (when they\u2019re ready to engage with you) before you look at Live-Timing and make the inescapable judgments and comparisons with his or her peers (or, better yet, just bask in the reflected experiences they shared with you and be grateful you have the opportunity to share those experiences with your children).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And my comments so far haven\u2019t even included racers\u2019 use (and misuse) of Live-Timing. Don\u2019t even get me started on seeing a bunch of kids sitting a table in the base lodge between runs, each with their phone out, looking at first-run results on Live-Timing. When racers play that \u201ccomparison game,\u201d the hurt feelings of the many far outweigh the exultation of the few.<\/p>\n<p>Look, I\u2019m a realist and recognize two things related to Live-Timing. First, I\u2019m going to get some blowback from parents who just don\u2019t agree with my stance on Live-Timing and feel that it\u2019s a perfectly fine way to follow their children\u2019s racing and stay connected with them. And I\u2019m certainly open to being shown what I\u2019ve missed. Second, that most parents aren\u2019t going to be able to resist the Siren\u2019s call of Live-Timing when their children are racing. But if I can convince just a few parents to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/parents-worse-kids-media-use\/\">set their media aside<\/a> on race day and really be in the moment with their children, that sounds like a win to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This article is my third and final in a series on the role of technology in ski racing (here\u2019s #1 and #2). Today, I will focus on one particular technology that has become ever-present in our sport and is changing the way parents (and kids) follow races. I\u2019m talking about Live-Timing, an online platform that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1516],"tags":[58,771,1139,394,64,153,290,155,105],"class_list":["post-16931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ski-racing","tag-competition","tag-devices","tag-live-timing","tag-mental-training","tag-parents","tag-ski-racing-2","tag-smartphones","tag-sport-psychology","tag-technology-2"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16931"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18988,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16931\/revisions\/18988"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}