Reducing Stress in Middle-level Adolescent Athletes by Teaching Communication Skills to Parents

Date of Award

2018

Document Type

Undergraduate Capstone Project

Degree Name

Psy.D.

Organizational Unit

Graduate School of Professional Psychology

First Advisor

Jennifer Cornish

Second Advisor

Judy Fox

Third Advisor

Jennifer Paz

Keywords

Athletes, Adolescents, Stress, Communication skills, Parenting, Development

Abstract

This paper focuses on identifying common difficulties for parents in their attempts to encourage and support adolescent athletes who play competitive sports, but are not competing at the highest level, and who have a low likelihood of playing collegiate or professional sports. Often in their desire to support their child, parents can become overly invested in their child's perceived success, leading to internalization of every success and failure. This can commonly result in the parent(s) failing to recognize the needs of the player in the moment, or in later, negative conversations about their performance. As a result, adolescent athletes may experience greater levels of stress and pressure being placed on them by their parents that is unintended but can be very disruptive to the player's self-esteem and anxiety levels when engaging in sport. Upon identifying those common difficulties this paper will establish a tool for teaching parents basic therapeutic techniques to reduce stress in their adolescent.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. Permanently suppressed.

Extent

24 pages

This document is currently not available here.



Share

COinS