Here's my blog post about mentality coaching advice when a child is having a hard time to regulate emotions on court. Please visit my website for full free post. I'm building a blog post to help junior players, coaches and parents. I wish I can be a help for them to be successful in a senior stage as well.
From 4–1 to 4–5
My son was leading 4–1. Then, before long, it was 4–5, and in the end he lost the match. That same morning, with a confident face, he had said, "Mom, I can win this!" Matches rarely go the way we picture them. Maybe the words from that morning came back. He must have felt embarrassed and angry at once. And then, right there on the court, the racket went flying.
"What should I say to my child?"
Inner strength and respect grow together
As coaches and as parents, we have a few values we really want to pass on to junior players. The two that matter most are inner strength and respect. Today, it seems, both were hard for him.
The two are closely linked. A person with inner strength doesn't rattle easily, whether the result goes badly or an opponent starts swearing at them. A steady mind keeps a person centred, and only from that centre can they stay respectful towards others. It works the other way, too: the effort to stay respectful builds inner strength. When something unfair happens, or a result goes the wrong way, that effort makes us rein in the feeling and take one more look at how we're behaving.
That's why a thrown racket is hard to let slide. In that moment, inner strength and respect both gave way. But before telling the child off, there's something worth thinking about first.
The court a child plays on is bigger than we think
It is very hard for a young child to hold on to both inner strength and good manners all the time. Children who are still growing often can't yet tell what they're feeling, and even when they can, they don't know what to do with it.
It's harder still for kids who play international events like ITF junior tournaments. Players come from all over the world, and each of them thinks and behaves differently. Match after match against opponents who grew up by other rules, the values a child has held onto can easily be shaken.
So the homework starts with the parents. In the end, we're the ones raising and teaching them. Only when we first know what courtesy and respect look like in different cultures can we teach a child both inner strength and respect.
Manners differ from culture to culture
The first thing to accept is that the world holds far more cultures, and far more kinds of people, than we tend to imagine. What counts as polite in one place can come across as rude in another.
Reacting to an opponent's mistake is one example. Korean juniors are taught that good manners mean showing no pleasure when the opponent double-faults or makes a costly error. At junior events in some countries, though, it's common to hear a loud "Vamos!" or "Come on!" even after the opponent misses, as a way for players to fire themselves up [1]. A child who doesn't understand this as a culture of self-encouragement, rather than an insult, will easily lose their composure on court.
Showing emotion is another. In Korea, children are generally taught from an early age to keep their feelings in and manage them [2]. Showing irritation because a match is slipping away is seen as bad manners. So Korean players learn to take a deep breath and push the frustration back down.
Novak Djokovic, on the other hand, tends to acknowledge his emotions rather than suppress them. In one interview, he said what separates the biggest champions from players who struggle to reach the top is "the ability to not stay in those emotions for too long" [3]. When a feeling comes up, he acknowledges it first. Sometimes he lets out a scream on court, and then he bounces back and starts again. In the same interview, he admitted he has broken rackets, and said he isn't proud of it and feels ashamed when he does [3]. For a player who thinks this way, one shout isn't rudeness. It's how the feeling gets out.
Rafael Nadal, also European, is a different story again. He is famous for never smashing a racket. His uncle and coach, Toni Nadal, reportedly told him when he was six, "Throw your racket once and I'm not your coach anymore. There are millions of kids in the world who don't have a racket and can't afford one" [4].
The same feeling can be handled in very different ways, and it's hard to say that only one of them is right. Accepting that is the first step.
Still, some lines shouldn't be crossed
That doesn't mean anything goes. Some lines hold everywhere, like swearing openly at an opponent or doing something that could hurt someone. Inside those lines, what's acceptable shifts a little depending on the country and the tournament. That's why parents need to learn how manners work in other cultures, and where those lines sit.
That homework protects against two mistakes. The first is insisting on our own values wherever we go. One family might think, "Throwing the racket once in a while is fine. Getting out of a bad mood fast matters more for the match." That thinking won't hold up on every court. The second is judging other players too quickly. It's just as important not to decide, "Screaming because they're angry? What a rude player," and judge that player on it.
Steady in ourselves, respectful of others
What matters is keeping our own values and our centre while still respecting other players and their cultures, and becoming strong enough that someone else's rudeness doesn't easily hurt us. A person like that doesn't get knocked off balance when someone behaves badly.
In the end, that's also what a child who has just thrown a racket needs. When a parent already knows how manners work in other cultures, the conversation can go further than "Don't do that." Together, they can talk about why that particular line shouldn't be crossed, and how to make sense of another player's unfamiliar behaviour.
