My son is 13 and this is his first year swimming in a club. For many different reasons he was late getting into the sport and slow to warm up to it but right now he is loving it and wants to do everything he can to get better. The problem is he is not getting better fast enough (for him). I keep telling him to be patient and put in the work, but it's completely devastating to him to go to meet after meet and have marginal improvements. I want to stress that he is the one who wants this - to improve his times, to get faster, to not be dead last in every event. He is very much aware of where he is right now. He does not want to be an Olympic swimmer, obviously, just a better one than he is right now. We talk about improving in relation to his own times, not comparing himself to others, enjoying the fun of it, but he is 13 and I guess it's not great for your self esteem when your times are so much worse than your teammates. He keeps asking me, when is it going to kick in for him. Right now he swims 4 times a week about 2 hours each practice. He does some dryland (not much). I guess what I am asking is - what can we do to help?
I loved my swimmer identity and loved the version of myself willing to put in hard work even for minimal results. Swimming was worth my time, $, energy, and emotions, and if being a slow swimmer was what it took to be a swimmer, that's what I had to take.
Thank you for this. Definitely on to something here. I see that he is proud of the work he is doing and it is giving him a lot. Its a bit hard for a 13 year old to grasp that this right there is enough but this kind of thinking is definitely something I would love to see him "get".
I loved my swimmer identity and loved the version of myself willing to put in hard work even for minimal results. Swimming was worth my time, $, energy, and emotions, and if being a slow swimmer was what it took to be a swimmer, that's what I had to take.
Thank you for this. Definitely on to something here. I see that he is proud of the work he is doing and it is giving him a lot. Its a bit hard for a 13 year old to grasp that this right there is enough but this kind of thinking is definitely something I would love to see him "get".
