Remember which one of you is the swimmer and do not overburden your child with pressure to win or achieve best times. It’s a sport, it is supposed to be a pleasurable experience for your child. Let him know that first, he is the child you love and second, he is a swimmer. Stated another way, place the athlete first and winning second. This doesn’t mean that winning is unimportant; striving to win is essential to enjoyable competition and swimming is a competitive sport! However, an obsession with winning often produces undue pressure, resulting in below par performances and unhappy children. We award medal and ribbons to the winners, but that doesn’t mean that everyone else in the race is a loser!  Remember that fun and improvement are equally important and worth striving for. Accept both your child’s successes and failures as belonging to the child. Neither is a reflection on you! You did not swim the race just as you do not practice and train for the race. In a recent study conducted in the Pacific Northwest LSC, “58% of coaches believed that parents sometimes, often or almost always lived through their child and defined their self-worth in terms of the child’s success.” If swimming is important to your child it should also be important to you. But don’t forget that being a swimmer is only part of who your child is.