September 26, 2025 • 48 mins
What happens when the already intense world of competitive youth sports collides with the complexities of co-parenting after divorce? Dr. Alec Baker, a psychologist specializing in both sports psychology and family dynamics, joins Dr. Royster to explore this challenging intersection where parental dreams, financial pressures, and children's wellbeing often compete for priority.
Drawing from his background as a former competitive athlete whose career was cut short by injuries, Dr. Baker offers a compassionate perspective on why youth sports environments can become pressure cookers for family stress. His doctoral research revealed a concerning connection – as the percentage of family income devoted to youth sports increases, marital satisfaction (particularly for women) tends to decrease. When divorce enters the picture, these financial and scheduling strains often intensify, creating new battlegrounds for already conflicted co-parents.
The conversation challenges several pervasive myths about youth athletic development. Contrary to the fear-driven narrative that children must specialize early or "miss their chance," Dr. Baker explains why multi-sport participation and physical literacy development until ages 12-14 creates stronger, more resilient athletes. This evidence-based approach not only benefits children's athletic trajectory but can significantly reduce family stress by decreasing financial and time commitments during those early years.
Most valuable for divorced parents are the practical strategies shared for
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to the Kids First Co-Parenting Podcast, the
podcast for smart, intentional,millennial moms raising
resilient kids after separationand divorce.
I'm Dr Carolyn Royster, a childpsychologist coach and a mom.
After thousands of therapyhours with kids caught in the
middle of high conflicthouseholds, I'm here to help
(00:28):
moms like you do it differentlyFrom peaceful co-parenting to
total chaos.
I've got you here.
We talk boundaries, regulationand how to raise a great kid,
even if your ex is beyonddifficult.
We blend science with real lifeand, as always, keep the focus
where it matters on raisinggreat kids.
This is Kids First Co-Parenting.
(00:50):
Welcome to the Kids FirstCo-Parenting podcast.
I'm very excited because onthis episode, I have my friend
and colleague, dr Alec Baker.
Dr Alec Baker is a psychologistwho brings deep expertise in
sports and family issues.
He works extensively with youthathletes, helping them
(01:13):
strengthen focus, manageperformance, anxiety and build
resilience both on and off thefield.
He also specializes in divorceand co-parenting support,
offering therapy for adults andadolescents navigating
separations and divorce, as wellas specialized co-parenting
coaching to help parents developcooperative, business-like
(01:34):
relationships that put kidsfirst.
In addition to his clinicalwork, dr Baker is the executive
director of the Co-ParentingCooperative of Colorado,
colorado's first provider ofco-parent education, serving
more than 100,000 parents since1993.
Their mission is to equipparents living apart with the
tools they need to reduceconflict and support children in
(01:57):
adjusting and thriving.
I'm so excited to have you, drBaker.
We have a lot of overlap in ourwork.
So excited to have you, drBaker.
We have a lot of overlap in ourwork.
We're really hoping today totalk and blend your specialty of
youth in sports and the divorceco-parenting world so welcome.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Hello, thank you very much for having me.
I'm excited to talk today.
This is the topic that'sclosest to my heart.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
I'd love to hear about how you became interested
in this area, because I thinkall of your specialties are such
unique specialties.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
I grew up playing sports and particularly ice
hockey and lacrosse were my mainsports, but I played everything
that there was out there, sosoccer to tennis, you know
multi-sport, summer camp kindsof things, and by the time I was
in high school I was playingnational level ice hockey and on
varsity lacrosse team for myhigh school and really fully
(02:56):
devoted and involved as anathlete, that was very much who
I was and sports were one of thegreatest things that ever
happened to me.
But I lost my sports career tooveruse injuries in my hips from
playing ice hockey as a goalie.
When you watch the abs or in mycase the Flyers now being in
Philadelphia and you see thegoalie on the ice with his feet
(03:17):
out to the side, that does a lotto your hips, I could see.
Unfortunately, that led to someinjuries which there was no
real surgical correction foruntil after I was already in
college and so I missed mywindow.
But you know I played with guysthat made it to the AHL, the
minor league hockey, and youknow, played Division One and
was very much on that track.
(03:38):
And so, you know, after collegeI was kind of like, what do I
do with this lifetime ofexperience and it brought me to
coaching and so I started doinga lot of coaching and this was
following along the track ofwanting to become a psychologist
.
And when I went to theUniversity of Denver where I
earned my PsyD, they werestarting a sports psychology
master's program and in thatprogram my goal was to blend in
(04:00):
sport and performance, tohopefully become a coach with
mental performance, mentalskills background and for a
variety of different reasons itdidn't really play out that way.
Mostly, a doctorate in clinicalpsychology doesn't really allow
you to do those extra thingsthat the sport would require.
But I was involved in sportsthroughout and I had some really
(04:22):
difficult coaching experienceswhere the communities that I was
working in really showed somedysfunction and didn't mesh well
with the 27 year old version ofme, and man's were just
impossible to live up to and Ireally found myself wondering,
like what makes parents act theway that they do in the youth
(04:45):
sports environment?
So go on to YouTube and, justyou know, search youth sports
parent and you're going to getcountless videos of people
behaving poorly, and I wasdirectly targeted in some of
those sorts of scenarios.
I don't mean to cast aspersions.
Actually I wanted to take acompassionate view to understand
what is it that's making peopledo this, and what I came down
(05:08):
to was really looking at, listen.
The participation in youthsports is insanely investment
heavy when it comes to time andmoney.
Youth sports is asking so muchand I noticed it just
anecdotally that we were seeingsome really toxic interactions
between parents and kids and itmade me think that, while you
(05:30):
sports has this really prosocial benefit, the way the
system is structured could bereally creating
counterproductive end results.
Right, so we may be gettingsome social emotional benefit,
but if we're tearing familiesapart, we're adding in the risks
social emotional risks ofdivorce which are well known.
We've got to figure somethingout there.
(05:51):
That was the basis of it, and Istarted working with a youth
lacrosse organization and gotback into coaching and doing
some community-basedintervention to talk about
creating a unified team conceptwhere parents were actually a
part of it, and what I startedto really come to is like, as
much as nobody tells us how tobe parents when the kids are
born, nobody's really telling ushow to be a sports parent and
(06:14):
how to be involved in a part ofa team concept.
I've developed programming wherewe really spell that out and
talk about the ways that youthsports performance and mental
fitness actually go hand in hand, and when we focus on them
together, they lift each otherup.
But if we consider them asseparate things, they start to
pull each other down.
(06:35):
The basic idea being this goesinto my clinical practice that
when we focus on mental skillsfor just general mental fitness
these are the same sorts ofskills that we talk about in
sports psychology for focus,management and high performance
we reduce the stress coming outof sport.
We improve mental fitness.
When we improve mental fitness,we make it easier for athletes
(06:59):
to remove the roadblocks betweenthem and peak performance.
That's the way I would kind ofdescribe that.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Yeah, wow, I mean there's so much.
I have so many questions andthere's so much there.
It's interesting because whereI grew up there really it was
like you played rec sports.
You played for the school, andwhen I started my clinical
practice out here in Denver andstarted hearing about club
(07:27):
sports and travel teams and theinvestment, just the sheer
amount of money and then timeand travel and the intensity of
that, and then having kids in myoffice where I'm like, do you
even like this anymore?
Like, is it bringing you joy?
And many of them it is.
(07:49):
And I see a lot of parentstrying to support that joy and
that spark because they love thesport and so why not go all in?
And then, of course, youmentioned this briefly and I'm
sure we'll get into it, but mymind goes to how do two parent
families navigate this?
How do you both support yourkid when you're traveling and
(08:10):
paying all this money?
And what if someone can'tafford it?
And there's so many layers toit.
What I wanted to ask was thisidea that you have around how to
be a good sports parent, andhow do you teach that?
Because as a parent myself, Icould really see how should I
push.
Should I be supportive, nomatter what, like what's the
(08:30):
right way to go about this?
Can you talk a little moreabout that?
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah.
So the key thing to bediscerning is the difference
between support and pressurePressure.
Some people will say pressuremakes diamonds.
I think that we all kind ofcome from a legacy of the Bobby
Knights of the world, bobbyKnight being still that sense
that, like old school coaching,where we're just hard as nails,
(09:07):
is the way that you get topperformance, and there's
infinite levels of evidence thatthat's not really true and all
you really do, in comparison toother models of coaching, is
increase the amount of traumathat comes from sport
participation.
It doesn't traumatize everybody, but it traumatizes a
significant minority and makesit so that they aren't doing it
(09:27):
because they love it.
And there's a key barrier tooptimal performance If we're
experiencing pressure, we're notletting ourselves go and get
into the moment and hit the flowstate that really takes us
through and that is therewarding physical and
psychological experience ofparticipation.
If kids are always sittingthere thinking my parents are
(09:50):
going to be upset if I don'tscore a goal, or my parents are
going to be upset if I let intoo many goals as a goalie, that
is going to be something that'sgoing to distract them from
just how do I actually put myfoot to the ball or how do I
keep my stick in the rightposition or how do I keep my eye
on the pocket?
(10:10):
So here's the thing that theyouth sports environment is
asking so much from parents atsuch a young age.
A $3,500 registration fee foreight-year-olds is starting to
become difficult Bananas.
I know that's crazy foreight-year-olds is starting to
become difficult Bananas.
I know that's crazy, right?
So I'm going to say thatthere's plenty of people out
(10:31):
there.
They may be putting more moneyinto their kids' participation
in the sport than theirretirement or their savings, and
what that starts to do is putpressure on the situation for
the sport participation toreturn on the investment, and it
takes it away from theinvestment is towards a return
of positive emotionaldevelopment and turns it into
some economic benefit.
(10:52):
Or I need my kids to succeedfinancially in order to support
me because I'm putting all of myretirement money into their
sports, and so that is kind of akey mechanic of how we see
people really running too hotand overpressuring the situation
.
This has a main component ofparents feeling like well, if
(11:12):
they don't do that, their kidsare going to miss out.
That is a fallacy.
That is a just straight up,bold, underlined italic fallacy
you can absolutely start sportslate and still grow into an
excellent athlete.
I could give you five examplesoff the top of my head.
For me, I didn't start playingon a team until I was 11.
(11:33):
And by the time I was 16, I wasplaying in national tournaments
, and this was a specializedposition I was playing.
Another key example here if welook at the Little League World
Series, baseball is one of thesehighly over-professionalized
youth sports I'll have to watchthat Right right.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
You're just like what these kids are like 10.
What is happening here?
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Right, they play in World 12.
And how many formerparticipants in the Little
League World Series do you thinkhave gone on to play in major
leagues?
Speaker 1 (12:05):
I mean, I think they, being someone who's not in
sports, I would say like all ofthem, like this is what they're
doing with their lives.
But the psychologist in me islike absolutely not.
Some of them must crumple underthat kind of pressure because
your identity isn't formed yet.
How do you pick a path in lifethat early, you know?
Tell me, tell me how many.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Even more concrete than that.
So the answer to the questionis it's.
There's fewer than one per yearthat ends up going into
professional sports and actuallyare going into professional
baseball, and it's somethinglike 250 to 300 have gone into
professional athlete careers.
So you're actually seeing thosekids become pros in other
(12:43):
sports at at least as high arate, but it's on the order of
like a millionth of a percent.
It is extremely small odds.
And so here's the thing thisisn't, this is biological,
because what happens is thosekids turn 13 and they go through
puberty and it etch-a-sketchesthe playing field, it drops them
(13:06):
down and those kids that are soused to being dominant
oftentimes have to go and seeother kids catch up and they
don't know how to play and grindand play a game where they're
not just easily pushing pastpeople.
There's some models that talkabout the importance of being
able to be dominant, but youknow, the point being that
puberty is the great equalizer.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Yes, it is.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
And this is even more so for girls, right, when that
happens, so many physicalchanges happen that the athlete
has to learn to reuse their bodyRight.
By that point, people willthink that the sports specific
skill is what they need to haveacquired.
And in reality and this goes tothe US Olympic and Paralympic
(13:53):
Committee's guidance on theAmerican development models they
are invested in they're nottalking about participation
trophies.
They want the best athletespossible available for global
competition, and what they aretalking about is that the early
phases for kids that are 12 andbelow is learning how to learn a
(14:13):
sport, building physicalliteracy.
What we see is this kind offinancial pressure, this
pressure to not lose out and, Ithink, a standard anxiety about
failing as a parent, generatingthat system.
That is kind of being preyedupon by people who are more than
willing to charge high fees andgo with the idea that if you
(14:36):
don't start young, you're goingto miss out and you're going to
fail your kids, which is a totalfallacy.
But the point is that thepressure in this situation
pushes people into a space offight or flight and it strains
their ability to be good parents, and so this is how I see it as
a risk factor for divorce inthe first place.
(14:56):
But then let's think about whatit's like to be co-parents,
where you may not be superfriendly and easy to negotiate
with your co-parent and you'vegot to deal with a $3,500 a year
fee for whatever sport it is,and maybe it's two or three
sports.
You've just gone through afinancially traumatic event,
(15:17):
which is divorce, and you'retrying to figure this out and
you know it.
All it does is add a layer ofstress to that scenario, not to
mention having to show up to thesideline and stand next to that
person.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Well, let's take a short break and when we come
back I want to hear a little bitmore about the risk factors
around divorce and how.
You know you and I share such asimilarity with working with
some high conflict, higherconflict I know everybody
doesn't love that term but justdifficult dynamics right in this
(16:53):
competitive sports world.
So we'll come back in just amoment.
Dr Baker, you were mentioningto me the risk factor of these
high competitive sports ondivorce.
Can you tell me a little bitmore about that?
Has it been studied?
Because I think intuitively itmakes sense to me that it could
be a risk factor.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
My doctoral research was kind of trying to flesh this
out.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
So, interesting.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
And so what we, what we kind of looked at, was as a
proportion of household incomeand a proportion of available
time, is there a relationshipbetween the amount of time and
money spent and maritalsatisfaction?
And for a variety of reasons,mostly scientific, we looked at
(17:40):
men and women separately andwhat we found was that for women
, but not men, there is anegative correlation.
So the higher percentage offamily income spent, the lower
satisfaction in the marriage was.
And that was for women but notmen.
The real take home there isthat, yes, financial
overinvestment can be a riskfactor.
(18:01):
I haven't seen anybody look atit in exactly that way, but
Travis Dortch out of Utah StateUniversity does a lot of
adjacent work and looking at theway that parents are
participating and the financesreally impact parent
participation in sport mostlylooking at the ways it motivates
parents to be bad actors, Ithink it stands to reason very
(18:24):
flatly that if we know thatstress over money and time
together are key factors indivorce in the first place, and
we know that sport participationstresses both of those factors,
it kind of goes without saying.
A hypothesis that I came up withwas either you have people who
are stuck in a bad relationshipand they're disengaged and
(18:45):
that's just kind of it was goingto happen anyway, or you see a
scenario where people use it toreally come together and they
are effective at approaching itand being deliberate.
You see people who either arestruggling in their marriage and
they're escaping to their kids'activities, or their marriage
was okay but they're gettingpulled apart by their kids'
(19:08):
participation.
They're sliding into thisscenario where, all of a sudden,
whatever disagreements overmoney were there, it gets
completely blown up by the factthat all of a sudden we have all
these bills to pay and maybe weweren't talking about it before
or, you know, we didn't have agreat routine or tradition
around how we do holidays or howwe do dates to maintain our
(19:29):
connection, and then we all of asudden don't have Friday and
Saturday nights anymore becausewe're on the road.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Yeah, and we don't have the finances for it either,
right?
It reminds me a lot of how wethink about a new baby being
introduced to a family unit.
The child itself doesn't causeI mean, children are stressful,
but if there's cracks already inthe marriage, they're going to
widen, or you're going tonavigate a way to figure it out
(19:54):
and come closer, like it's kindof goes one of two ways, right?
How do you see familiespost-divorce managing this?
Speaker 2 (20:03):
A lot of the moms I work with I just can't imagine
these conversations going verywell, not from their part, just
because it's so, so difficultand judges do not want to be
weighing in on whether or notyour kid plays competitive
baseball you know, like theydon't care, they don't you know,
(20:25):
I'm a major advocate fordecision makers and actually
where decision makers one oftheir primary role is to decide
which sports we're participatingin each season, because there's
disagreements over how muchwe're doing, what investment
should be there.
But I also think there's genderdifferences in sport and I
looked at this in my researchtoo.
But there's a generationalcomponent going on where, you
(20:48):
know, 15 years ago when I wasdoing this research, women's
sports had not necessarilycaught up in a way where moms
had a lot of experience withsports growing up.
We were looking at a generationwhere Title IX hadn't really
had the effect of generatingyouth girl sports and so much
easier in a divorce setting tosay dad is trying to live
(21:09):
vicariously and bring up youknow the next Peyton Manning.
When it's not the kid's desire,that lack of benefit of the
doubt, that lack of seeing goodintention in your co-parent
creates this way, where itdistorts the conversation and
when we have to make yes and nodecisions and we have to think
(21:30):
about how much are we investing,it really muddies the water
about who this is for.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
There's so much perceptions around the other
person's intentions in thesedynamics that I think it would
be really easy to let your kidsget lost in it and really easy
to not know or to almost try topunish one another.
Right, he just really wants himin football and therefore I'm
(21:57):
going to say no about it, right?
Or he just is pushing our kidto do this sport and I don't
think our kid really wants to doit, and now we're in this
really stuck place.
Or the other thing I hear a lotis I'm fine with it, but I
can't afford it.
It's great, you know.
Or, to your earlier point, Ilove that she does gymnastics.
(22:18):
I don't know that she has to beon the $4,000 a year team.
We disagree on the level ofsupport.
How do you help families withthat?
Speaker 2 (22:28):
In our level one co-parenting class for the
co-parenting cooperative we havea role play about parents
disagreeing over participatingin football.
I never really put that together, but it's certainly fit and
that was written, you know, acouple of decades ago, right?
We've been doing that samebasic idea for a long time.
(22:48):
So what do we do about that?
I think this is wherealternative dispute resolution
is really important.
You know, we have to recognizethat there's a grief and loss
process going on.
Early on, when we're still inanger or depression or
bargaining, we may be prone tosome kind of cognitive fallacies
(23:09):
.
We may be thinking in adistorted way where we really
have a hard time giving ourco-parent the benefit of the
doubt.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Right, and so when that's in that space, you know
it's much easier and this isreally what I was trying to say
it's much easier to say oh, hejust is trying to live out his
dreams, and there's countlessInstagram memes about that sort
of thing, without divorce in thepicture.
I think you add the financialstress, you add the relational
stress and it's just.
(23:37):
You know it doesn't have to besports, it could be almost
anything else.
It happens the same way, butsports are pretty ubiquitous.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
And I think the piece that you had talked about
earlier too is really key hereof remembering that very likely
this parent who's pushing forthat high level is coming from a
place of wanting to do right bytheir kid, is not wanting them
to be left out, is thinking like, wow, they have some real
(24:05):
talent and I want to poureverything we can into it.
It's just that they may notknow some of the pieces you were
talking about, that that mightactually be counterproductive.
Or, truthfully, you don't needto do that high, high level to
have a great career in a sportlater.
I've experienced that myself asa mom, feeling you know they're
(24:26):
signed up for whatever sport itis and we go there and there's
the kids doing the team and thekids doing the travel team and
you're like wait, what are we?
Why aren't we doing that?
The truth is like the bankaccount and the schedule Right,
we really try.
You know my partner and Ireally try to prioritize free
time and down there a little.
(24:46):
Still Right, they have time tospecialize later.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
You know I have a seven and a four-year-old and
we're trying to really live itout where our focus really.
It follows the guidance of theUS Olympic and Paralympic
Committee, which is focused onphysical literacy and dabbling
in as many different sports aspossible.
We're doing intramural soccer,we're doing gymnastics, which is
the basis of physical literacy,knowing how to do things that
(25:15):
actually come out in othersports.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
When you reference physical literacy, can you tell
me what that is?
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Right, so that in case folks might not know.
Right, that's like being ableto tumble, that's being able to
fall down, get up.
That's being able to run, jump,kick, move your body, all those
essential things.
Those are the building blocksof any specific sport skill.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
When should people start?
Or consider, like gosh, theyreally love baseball.
Now I'm going to.
Now it's OK to kind of go moreinto baseball.
I think it's that middle highschool age.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
It's really on that cusp of like 12 to 14.
Yeah, Right when you yeah, and Iwant to be clear.
I'm not saying like, don't beon a team or don't be on a
travel team before then.
I'm saying you need to be amulti-sport athlete.
Until that point, you shouldnot be doing a team that's all
year round.
That doesn't give you theopportunity to do other sports
(26:11):
and focus on other things.
And there's a difficult part ofbeing a parent here, which is
that I know from being a kidthat if I'm really into
something I'm going to be like Iwant to do it all the time, and
as a parent sometimes we needto actually hold our kids back
from doing things that aren'thealthy.
Overspecialization can be kindof this strange collusion
(26:34):
between parent and child wherewe don't say our standard is you
really need to do at least twosports when you get to the end
of middle school and the startof high school is when you're
really training to compete andthat's where you should be
getting into the phase of likeall.
Right now we are going forcompetitive level participation
(26:55):
and this is where, like you're,doing a lot of travel has a
performance benefit.
Right, and getting into thosephases before then, a focus on
skill training and physicalliteracy is really where you
want to go.
What that would mean is, forthe younger kids, like eight and
below, you're really focusingon basic running, jumping, those
(27:16):
physical literacy things.
Eight to 12, you're lookingmore at your specific sports
skills.
I know how to actually kick asoccer ball in multiple
different ways and I know thedifference between a pass and a
shot.
I know basic positioning on thefield and those things.
And it's not that you can't gofurther than that.
It's that those should bebenchmarks where you're really
(27:37):
trying to go as a parent andreally knowing that the majority
of the blooming for a youthathlete is going to happen
between 14 and 18.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
And so you want to keep the soil rich.
You want to let that happen.
You're keeping your resourcesin your.
As a colleague of mine used tolove to say, keep your powder
dry until you really need it.
So I would say save your moneyand put it in when it's ready to
be actually useful, when thekids are, you know, 13, 14.
(28:11):
If you are overdoing it young,you're straining yourself and
your kids for no particularbenefit.
But I really want to connectwith the idea that as parents,
we struggle with this sense ofhow do we put our kids first
without sacrificing ourselves,and I see that as like a really
difficult judgment call, and wetalk about this in our
(28:34):
co-parenting classes.
It's just like on the airplaneyou have to put your mask on
first and you have to know whenyou are tapped, when you are
strained and you're notnecessarily feeling OK.
And showing kids that there's abenefit to being adult by
enjoying your life, yeah, likeour needs are important too.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Right.
And it's funny that airplane Iknow that metaphor, they teach
it all the time and literallyevery time I'm on an airplane
I'm like hell.
The first thing I would do isput it on my kid and, despite
them, like drilling it into youfor years and years.
(29:13):
And yet the intention behind itis something I talk about all
the time, right.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Right.
Bring in the divorce contextand all of a sudden you've got
competition over who's moreconcerned about the well-being.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Who's going to put the mask on first?
And you're fighting over it.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Yeah Right, and that's very unhealthy and it
makes it so the kids actuallyfeel their parents tapping each
other out in competition andthey're put in an even worse
situation because there's morepressure.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
The idea that kids are thriving or are in an
environment, in these highcompetition, high intensity
sports, that they are the pointof the triangle.
It parallels directly toco-parenting in some cases.
How do you help kids navigatethose very similar environments
(30:07):
the pressure that we weretalking about too?
Speaker 2 (30:09):
you know, one of the things that I focus on is if
kids are coming to me in adivorce or separation context, I
see them much more as a symptomof a system problem.
Mostly, I'm focusing onsupporting them and helping them
just take care of themselvesand focus on what's in front of
them, which is, you know, schooland sports and friends, and I'm
really trying to send themessage to parents of like, hey,
(30:31):
what's the general issue that'scausing stress in the system?
I, I had a, I had a family oncewhere it was a youth athlete
and you know, I was kind of likehey, like we need to get the
adults in the situation in orderbefore we're going to have any
effect on these clinicalsymptoms, right?
Like the clinical symptoms arean extension of the family
(30:55):
dysfunction, right?
I actually have a question Iwanted to ask you.
This came up I've taught familytherapy at University of Denver
for a number of years.
But how do you define family?
Speaker 1 (31:07):
I would say close, reciprocal, healthy
relationships.
They're not always healthy, butI'd like them to be healthy.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
But I don't believe family is just blood either
Right, neither do I, and I thinkmy students educated me away
from the textbook for that, andthat's its own topic.
But what I evolved over time isvery much an extension of what
you were saying.
Is very much an extension ofwhat you were saying, but a
group of individuals withcaretaking relationships who are
(31:36):
working to meet the needs ofeach individual.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Yeah, very reciprocal .
Yeah, I think the reciprocalpiece is what was standing out
to me when you were asking methat it's like there's give and
take.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Right, right.
Parents don't get their needsmet ever.
It's not a healthy system.
I think this is where thejudgment piece comes in and it
says, like, parents need to findways to meet their own needs
and it's a part of a healthyfamily systems.
Any book that you pick up,whether it's you know Gottman or
Bill Doherty, they're going totalk about the ways that, like,
(32:11):
modern society is pulling at thestructures of the family that
allow parents and kids to gettheir needs met in a congruent
way.
Right?
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Or a reciprocal way.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
This is where the arms race of youth sports starts
pulling away at parents beingable to do something that they
enjoy, or it takes the resourcesof time and money where you
know they don't get to go for arun or they don't get to, you
know, do the basic things.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Or you're putting it on your kids to meet your needs
instead of your partner Right,or if you are in a co-parenting
situation, you can't have thatneed met.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Right, Right.
So the next time you look atYouTube and you see a parent
acting badly on the sidelines, Iwant you to ask yourself what's
going on in their life that'smaking them so stressed out
right now and to try and reframethat as a response to stress.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
I think we're probably both pretty big fans of
Bill Eddy's work on highconflict people and he talks a
lot about how you know that'snot a diagnosis, that's a
personality pattern and highconflict people are high
conflict wherever they go.
That's the pattern and you canfind them.
Yes, certain professions maybehave a slightly higher instance,
(33:31):
but I'm curious your thoughts.
I feel like if someone is highconflict in their marriage and
their divorce, the chances thatthey're high conflict with
someone like a coach would bepretty high.
Do you think there's a higherincidence of high conflict folks
in these elite youth sports?
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Does it track that I don't have any research evidence
.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Yeah, of course, of course.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
I also think look at rates of narcissism and high yes
, yeah, I hate to label peoplewith that.
But I also think it's importantto differentiate narcissism and
not just say that it's allmalignant, that there is a
compensatory narcissism.
There is a person who is sovulnerable underneath of it all
(34:16):
that they're trying tocompensate by pumping up and
looking good on the outside yeah, and that that can be damaging,
let's say.
But I think it's not all.
I disregard the rights of otherpeople and think that I am
strictly better.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
They're very wounded people Right.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
And so having my having my excellent athlete kid
is naturally going to be a glow,because it takes so much of
your time.
It starts to organize yourpersonality around it.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
It's ripe for conflict, right.
It's ripe for kids to have.
It's ripe for kids to have alot of issues from it, too,
right.
I think a lot about being thatkid on the field who's afraid
one of your parents is going tolose their shit on the sidelines
.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Right, absolutely.
And what does that do to you?
Speaker 1 (35:08):
And to your earlier point, it really takes the flow
state out of it.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Right and I want to come back to the compassionate
view is that that parent doesn'tunderstand what they need to be
doing or what they can be doingto support rather than pressure
.
They probably don't even knowthe difference, because sports
culture has often said that youneed to put pressure.
Otherwise you're just talkingabout participation trophies and
I think that's totally wrong.
(35:33):
But I understand where it'scoming from.
You know, my goal would be toprovide an alternative.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
What would you tell that parent?
That is, what do those skillslook like?
Speaker 2 (35:44):
I like to differentiate between process
and outcome goals.
An outcome goal would bebecoming a D1 athlete.
Outcome you have maybe 50%control because the other team
(36:20):
is bringing something to it.
Outcome goals are fine, butthey're not sufficient.
What I would say is that,focusing on the process, which
is the things you have maximumcontrol over how do I hold the
stick?
(36:41):
How do I hold the racket?
What is my technique for myfree throw those are the things
where we want to draw ourattention and our focus and our
effort.
If you say your goal is to winthe game, great, how do you do
that?
And so I really encouragepeople to think how do I do my
goal and break it down until youhave a task list and generally,
it would be make sure you'rearriving to practice on time.
(37:03):
You're focusing on the drills.
You've got your actualtechnique focus.
You're working on the drills.
You've got your actualtechnique focus.
You're working on each timeYou've got your homework squared
away.
There's a lot of those thingsthat if we just focus on those
and we're not concerned with theoutcome, as much pressure gets
taken out of the situation.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Would mindset also be a process goal that a parent
could encourage?
Speaker 2 (37:28):
I don't know if you're thinking of it this way,
so I'm curious.
But thinking of either fixed orgrowth mindsets?
Yes, yeah, I'm proud of you forshowing up.
(37:49):
I'm proud of you, even thoughyou were losing, for keeping a
good attitude and still tryingreally hard.
That's how I would beapproaching it with my children,
but that's because I'm apsychologist and that's how I
think about things.
Right, but it's crucial becausewhat kids need is to have a
mindset that they can get better.
A fixed mindset says that Ieither am talented or I'm not.
The growth mindset says I canget better and the best athletes
get better over time.
Yes, they're born withsomething special, but it's not
(38:11):
this.
Is that talent versus work,which one's more important?
And the answer is both.
When we have a growth mindsetthat's not focused on outcome
for kids, especially theyoungest kids, we give them the
opportunity to freely make themistakes they need to do to
learn.
Kids are going to need therepetitions in practice of doing
it the wrong way.
They're also going to need thelack of pressure to play so that
(38:35):
they figure out the fun partsof the game and learn new ways
and innovative ways to do it.
But if their parent is on thesideline watching practice and
counting the number of timesthey do the drill correctly,
we're applying pressure.
That parent may think, well,I'm tracking and helping them
track their goals, but reallyall you're doing is distracting
(38:56):
from what's going on on thefield.
That parent's doing thatbecause they're not sure what
else to do.
More likely than not, they'retrying to do something.
You're trying to be helpful.
I can't stress this enough.
What we need to be doing isthinking of ways for parents to
frame out their role in apositive, supportive way, where
you know what they can't getfrom their coach is attachment
(39:19):
Right.
You know what they can't get issomebody who, when they get in
the car, is just going to listento what they say.
How many times have you had aclient come in and the parents
are saying they get into the carafter school and I asked them
how it goes and they say fine.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
Yeah Right.
Or they cried about the game onthe way home and I'm like
that's great, they're processingwith you, Like that's what we
want, you know.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
And how many parents kick into problem solving mode
and say, well, this is what youshould have done, or this is
what you should do.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Want to hurt your feelings but you really did and
then proceed to hurt theirfeelings by giving critical
feedback.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
So it's interesting, Like I'm really translating
basic level family therapy to asports context and just trying
to put it much more specificallyinto when you get in the car,
what do you do?
Speaker 1 (40:11):
What should you say?
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Right right.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
And my experience is parents want to know.
They're literally saying,please tell me, because these
are people that want to do rightby their kids.
That's why we have the issue tostart with.
They're well-intentioned,thoughtful, insightful people
who really do want the best fortheir kids, which is how we
ended up here.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
You know, I think back when I was a I think I was
14 and I came home from a gameand my mom was a psychologist,
my dad was a psychiatrist andyou know, it's so funny like,
even with all the training andfamily therapy, I come home and
my mom asked how the game wasand I said we lost, and that's
part of knowing your kids.
But I think the thing is, inthese situations, kids get upset
(41:11):
about it and nobody likes tosee their kids in distress and
so they try and stamp out thedistress versus being the
emotional heat sink and addingthe emotional bandwidth of
saying I can tolerate you beingupset, so that you know that you
can tolerate it and it's okay.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
Well, and I think the parallels to high conflict or
to co-parenting sometimes is Ican hear my child and hear what
they're feeling and experiencingtowards the coach, towards my
co -parent.
I don't need to tell them mykid how I feel I may need to
correct something with the coach.
I may pull the coach aside andbe like don't do that to my kid
anymore or this style reallydoesn't work for them.
Same to my co-parent.
But I'm not necessarily goingto do that in front of my child
(41:59):
and I'm going to like reflectand really think on whether it's
something I need to addressbefore I do it.
But to my kid, with them in theroom, you're saying I'm happy,
you told me, that Makes sense,you feel that way.
Let's talk about it.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
Well, I wonder in your practice if you ever find
it where kids are complainingabout a problem and they're kind
of actually trying to drawtheir parents in to solve the
problem, but it's actually notwhat they need.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
Yeah, I think this is kind of a generational thing a
little bit of you know.
You hear a lot about likeover-parenting and parents
solving kids' problems and thatsnowplow parenting of just I'm
just going to remove theobstacles and fix them for you
and a lot of that, and I thinkthis comes this is a real
positive from something likesports is and unstructured play
(42:54):
and unsupervised play and all ofthat kind of stuff is
encouraging kids.
You actually can say something.
Did you say this to the coach?
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Right.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
How did you give the coach the feedback that you
didn't love that practice or youdidn't love that drill or the
way he talked to you or the wayshe said that to you?
And I think that comes out inmultiple areas.
It's also something I see a lotwith peer relationships where
I'll say like, but did you tellyour friend how it made you feel
before we involved the moms orthe dads or the teacher or
(43:27):
whoever it might be, just kindof encouraging more autonomy
maybe and some resilience.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Absolutely the way I encourage people to go.
I'm trying to think too aboutlike the high conflict or like
the.
I agree with you that the termstruggles, but I don't have a
better one, so just I'm goingwith high conflict.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
I hate it, but it's like what people know yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
Right, and the Bill, the Bill Eddy perspective.
I think one thing that I reallysee in those cases is that
there's a narrative at play foreach parent where their
co-parent needs to be a villainin order for them to be not a
villain, and I think that's aninternal conflict of, like you
know, I need to not beresponsible for this or for
(44:12):
whatever reason, and I thinkthat can play itself out in the
sports context, where the parentis looking for villains and
anybody who gets in the way orcauses discomfort for a child
can feel like a villain.
But here's the thing If you'rea coach, even for
eight-year-olds, you're going toneed to give feedback that
(44:33):
doesn't feel great in order forthe child to go forward.
Get better If you are reactingas the parent to protect them
from anybody who makes themuncomfortable.
That's the definition of thesnowplow parent.
But that's where your injury,your upset over what's going on
in your life can translatereally dysfunctionally into the
(44:54):
lives of your kids.
So you may be thinking thatyou're putting your kids first
by protecting them or makingsure that they don't get hurt.
But you know, as a wise manonce said, show me a person
without scars and I'll show youa person that hasn't lived a day
in their lives.
They need to be impacted, butwe don't want it to be scarring
(45:15):
in that way where they function.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
It's such a fine line of I'm protecting them slip so
easily into preventing them frombeing resiliency and to hear
feedback and to handle criticismand it's I mean, that's a whole
other.
We should have a whole otherepisode on that.
I am so happy to have thisconversation with you.
(45:40):
How can folks find you?
How can people connect with youif they want to learn more
about sports and youth sportsand kids and youth sports and
the co-parenting cooperative,all the things?
What's the best way to get intouch?
Speaker 2 (45:54):
The best way to get in touch is probably through my
website.
It's alecbakersideecom.
I've also got a new offering inthe works.
It's called Excellence inProcess and
excellenceinprocesscom is goingto be our website.
We're going to be offeringwebinars and workshops about,
you know, positive sportsparenting, so stay tuned for
(46:17):
that.
That's in the works, that'sbeing developed.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
So teaching some of those skills that we were
talking about and really helpingparents know how to show up on
the sidelines in a way thatfeels wonderful.
And, of course, I refer a lotof folks to the Co-Parenting
Cooperative for classes andteaching.
You have a great staff thatsupport families with
co-parenting.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
Our blog is where I'm putting out content and trying
to do the things that are kindof go beyond what's really
required by the court for thatclass.
So those will keep.
They'll keep coming and theneventually we're going to turn
them into recorded content forpeople to access.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
Wonderful If folks are looking for a talented
therapist interested in workingin the youth sports realm as
parents or kids.
Dr Baker is available for thatas well in the youth sports
realm as parents or kids.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
Dr Baker is available for that as well.
Licensed in Pennsylvania andColorado, available for virtual
in both and in-person inPennsylvania.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Amazing, amazing.
Well, I could talk to youforever.
That's the Midwesterner in us.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
Right.
Speaker 1 (47:21):
But I will let you go for now.
But thank you so much for beingon the podcast and we'll have
to have you back.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Yeah, thank you so much for being on the podcast
and we'll have to have you back.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
Yeah, thank you very much All right, my friend, take
good care you too.
Bye-bye, Bye-bye.
Thanks so much for listening tothis episode of Kids First
Co-Parenting.
The best way you can supportthe show is by following, rating
and reviewing wherever youlisten to podcasts, and by
sharing it with another mom whocould use the support.
You can also connect with me onInstagram and Facebook at Learn
(47:50):
With Little House, where Ishare daily tips and
encouragement for moms raisingkids through high conflict
divorce.
And if you're ready to go deepand get more tools, scripts,
personalized support andcoaching, come join us inside
the Kids First co-parentingcommunity.
You'll find the details atLearnwithlittlehousecom.
Until next time, remember yourkids don't need you to be
(48:12):
perfect.
They just need you to be steadyand grounded and, as always, to
put them first.
Thanks for being here.
Welcome to the Kids First Co-Parenting Podcast, the
podcast for smart, intentional,millennial moms raising
resilient kids after separationand divorce.
I'm Dr Carolyn Royster, a childpsychologist coach and a mom.
After thousands of therapyhours with kids caught in the
middle of high conflicthouseholds, I'm here to help
(00:28):
moms like you do it differentlyFrom peaceful co-parenting to
total chaos.
I've got you here.
We talk boundaries, regulationand how to raise a great kid,
even if your ex is beyonddifficult.
We blend science with real lifeand, as always, keep the focus
where it matters on raisinggreat kids.
This is Kids First Co-Parenting.
(00:50):
Welcome to the Kids FirstCo-Parenting podcast.
I'm very excited because onthis episode, I have my friend
and colleague, dr Alec Baker.
Dr Alec Baker is a psychologistwho brings deep expertise in
sports and family issues.
He works extensively with youthathletes, helping them
(01:13):
strengthen focus, manageperformance, anxiety and build
resilience both on and off thefield.
He also specializes in divorceand co-parenting support,
offering therapy for adults andadolescents navigating
separations and divorce, as wellas specialized co-parenting
coaching to help parents developcooperative, business-like
(01:34):
relationships that put kidsfirst.
In addition to his clinicalwork, dr Baker is the executive
director of the Co-ParentingCooperative of Colorado,
colorado's first provider ofco-parent education, serving
more than 100,000 parents since1993.
Their mission is to equipparents living apart with the
tools they need to reduceconflict and support children in
(01:57):
adjusting and thriving.
I'm so excited to have you, drBaker.
We have a lot of overlap in ourwork.
So excited to have you, drBaker.
We have a lot of overlap in ourwork.
We're really hoping today totalk and blend your specialty of
youth in sports and the divorceco-parenting world so welcome.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Hello, thank you very much for having me.
I'm excited to talk today.
This is the topic that'sclosest to my heart.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
I'd love to hear about how you became interested
in this area, because I thinkall of your specialties are such
unique specialties.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
I grew up playing sports and particularly ice
hockey and lacrosse were my mainsports, but I played everything
that there was out there, sosoccer to tennis, you know
multi-sport, summer camp kindsof things, and by the time I was
in high school I was playingnational level ice hockey and on
varsity lacrosse team for myhigh school and really fully
(02:56):
devoted and involved as anathlete, that was very much who
I was and sports were one of thegreatest things that ever
happened to me.
But I lost my sports career tooveruse injuries in my hips from
playing ice hockey as a goalie.
When you watch the abs or in mycase the Flyers now being in
Philadelphia and you see thegoalie on the ice with his feet
(03:17):
out to the side, that does a lotto your hips, I could see.
Unfortunately, that led to someinjuries which there was no
real surgical correction foruntil after I was already in
college and so I missed mywindow.
But you know I played with guysthat made it to the AHL, the
minor league hockey, and youknow, played Division One and
was very much on that track.
(03:38):
And so, you know, after collegeI was kind of like, what do I
do with this lifetime ofexperience and it brought me to
coaching and so I started doinga lot of coaching and this was
following along the track ofwanting to become a psychologist
.
And when I went to theUniversity of Denver where I
earned my PsyD, they werestarting a sports psychology
master's program and in thatprogram my goal was to blend in
(04:00):
sport and performance, tohopefully become a coach with
mental performance, mentalskills background and for a
variety of different reasons itdidn't really play out that way.
Mostly, a doctorate in clinicalpsychology doesn't really allow
you to do those extra thingsthat the sport would require.
But I was involved in sportsthroughout and I had some really
(04:22):
difficult coaching experienceswhere the communities that I was
working in really showed somedysfunction and didn't mesh well
with the 27 year old version ofme, and man's were just
impossible to live up to and Ireally found myself wondering,
like what makes parents act theway that they do in the youth
(04:45):
sports environment?
So go on to YouTube and, justyou know, search youth sports
parent and you're going to getcountless videos of people
behaving poorly, and I wasdirectly targeted in some of
those sorts of scenarios.
I don't mean to cast aspersions.
Actually I wanted to take acompassionate view to understand
what is it that's making peopledo this, and what I came down
(05:08):
to was really looking at, listen.
The participation in youthsports is insanely investment
heavy when it comes to time andmoney.
Youth sports is asking so muchand I noticed it just
anecdotally that we were seeingsome really toxic interactions
between parents and kids and itmade me think that, while you
(05:30):
sports has this really prosocial benefit, the way the
system is structured could bereally creating
counterproductive end results.
Right, so we may be gettingsome social emotional benefit,
but if we're tearing familiesapart, we're adding in the risks
social emotional risks ofdivorce which are well known.
We've got to figure somethingout there.
(05:51):
That was the basis of it, and Istarted working with a youth
lacrosse organization and gotback into coaching and doing
some community-basedintervention to talk about
creating a unified team conceptwhere parents were actually a
part of it, and what I startedto really come to is like, as
much as nobody tells us how tobe parents when the kids are
born, nobody's really telling ushow to be a sports parent and
(06:14):
how to be involved in a part ofa team concept.
I've developed programming wherewe really spell that out and
talk about the ways that youthsports performance and mental
fitness actually go hand in hand, and when we focus on them
together, they lift each otherup.
But if we consider them asseparate things, they start to
pull each other down.
(06:35):
The basic idea being this goesinto my clinical practice that
when we focus on mental skillsfor just general mental fitness
these are the same sorts ofskills that we talk about in
sports psychology for focus,management and high performance
we reduce the stress coming outof sport.
We improve mental fitness.
When we improve mental fitness,we make it easier for athletes
(06:59):
to remove the roadblocks betweenthem and peak performance.
That's the way I would kind ofdescribe that.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Yeah, wow, I mean there's so much.
I have so many questions andthere's so much there.
It's interesting because whereI grew up there really it was
like you played rec sports.
You played for the school, andwhen I started my clinical
practice out here in Denver andstarted hearing about club
(07:27):
sports and travel teams and theinvestment, just the sheer
amount of money and then timeand travel and the intensity of
that, and then having kids in myoffice where I'm like, do you
even like this anymore?
Like, is it bringing you joy?
And many of them it is.
(07:49):
And I see a lot of parentstrying to support that joy and
that spark because they love thesport and so why not go all in?
And then, of course, youmentioned this briefly and I'm
sure we'll get into it, but mymind goes to how do two parent
families navigate this?
How do you both support yourkid when you're traveling and
(08:10):
paying all this money?
And what if someone can'tafford it?
And there's so many layers toit.
What I wanted to ask was thisidea that you have around how to
be a good sports parent, andhow do you teach that?
Because as a parent myself, Icould really see how should I
push.
Should I be supportive, nomatter what, like what's the
(08:30):
right way to go about this?
Can you talk a little moreabout that?
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah.
So the key thing to bediscerning is the difference
between support and pressurePressure.
Some people will say pressuremakes diamonds.
I think that we all kind ofcome from a legacy of the Bobby
Knights of the world, bobbyKnight being still that sense
that, like old school coaching,where we're just hard as nails,
(09:07):
is the way that you get topperformance, and there's
infinite levels of evidence thatthat's not really true and all
you really do, in comparison toother models of coaching, is
increase the amount of traumathat comes from sport
participation.
It doesn't traumatize everybody, but it traumatizes a
significant minority and makesit so that they aren't doing it
(09:27):
because they love it.
And there's a key barrier tooptimal performance If we're
experiencing pressure, we're notletting ourselves go and get
into the moment and hit the flowstate that really takes us
through and that is therewarding physical and
psychological experience ofparticipation.
If kids are always sittingthere thinking my parents are
(09:50):
going to be upset if I don'tscore a goal, or my parents are
going to be upset if I let intoo many goals as a goalie, that
is going to be something that'sgoing to distract them from
just how do I actually put myfoot to the ball or how do I
keep my stick in the rightposition or how do I keep my eye
on the pocket?
(10:10):
So here's the thing that theyouth sports environment is
asking so much from parents atsuch a young age.
A $3,500 registration fee foreight-year-olds is starting to
become difficult Bananas.
I know that's crazy foreight-year-olds is starting to
become difficult Bananas.
I know that's crazy, right?
So I'm going to say thatthere's plenty of people out
(10:31):
there.
They may be putting more moneyinto their kids' participation
in the sport than theirretirement or their savings, and
what that starts to do is putpressure on the situation for
the sport participation toreturn on the investment, and it
takes it away from theinvestment is towards a return
of positive emotionaldevelopment and turns it into
some economic benefit.
(10:52):
Or I need my kids to succeedfinancially in order to support
me because I'm putting all of myretirement money into their
sports, and so that is kind of akey mechanic of how we see
people really running too hotand overpressuring the situation
.
This has a main component ofparents feeling like well, if
(11:12):
they don't do that, their kidsare going to miss out.
That is a fallacy.
That is a just straight up,bold, underlined italic fallacy
you can absolutely start sportslate and still grow into an
excellent athlete.
I could give you five examplesoff the top of my head.
For me, I didn't start playingon a team until I was 11.
(11:33):
And by the time I was 16, I wasplaying in national tournaments
, and this was a specializedposition I was playing.
Another key example here if welook at the Little League World
Series, baseball is one of thesehighly over-professionalized
youth sports I'll have to watchthat Right right.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
You're just like what these kids are like 10.
What is happening here?
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Right, they play in World 12.
And how many formerparticipants in the Little
League World Series do you thinkhave gone on to play in major
leagues?
Speaker 1 (12:05):
I mean, I think they, being someone who's not in
sports, I would say like all ofthem, like this is what they're
doing with their lives.
But the psychologist in me islike absolutely not.
Some of them must crumple underthat kind of pressure because
your identity isn't formed yet.
How do you pick a path in lifethat early, you know?
Tell me, tell me how many.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Even more concrete than that.
So the answer to the questionis it's.
There's fewer than one per yearthat ends up going into
professional sports and actuallyare going into professional
baseball, and it's somethinglike 250 to 300 have gone into
professional athlete careers.
So you're actually seeing thosekids become pros in other
(12:43):
sports at at least as high arate, but it's on the order of
like a millionth of a percent.
It is extremely small odds.
And so here's the thing thisisn't, this is biological,
because what happens is thosekids turn 13 and they go through
puberty and it etch-a-sketchesthe playing field, it drops them
(13:06):
down and those kids that are soused to being dominant
oftentimes have to go and seeother kids catch up and they
don't know how to play and grindand play a game where they're
not just easily pushing pastpeople.
There's some models that talkabout the importance of being
able to be dominant, but youknow, the point being that
puberty is the great equalizer.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Yes, it is.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
And this is even more so for girls, right, when that
happens, so many physicalchanges happen that the athlete
has to learn to reuse their bodyRight.
By that point, people willthink that the sports specific
skill is what they need to haveacquired.
And in reality and this goes tothe US Olympic and Paralympic
(13:53):
Committee's guidance on theAmerican development models they
are invested in they're nottalking about participation
trophies.
They want the best athletespossible available for global
competition, and what they aretalking about is that the early
phases for kids that are 12 andbelow is learning how to learn a
(14:13):
sport, building physicalliteracy.
What we see is this kind offinancial pressure, this
pressure to not lose out and, Ithink, a standard anxiety about
failing as a parent, generatingthat system.
That is kind of being preyedupon by people who are more than
willing to charge high fees andgo with the idea that if you
(14:36):
don't start young, you're goingto miss out and you're going to
fail your kids, which is a totalfallacy.
But the point is that thepressure in this situation
pushes people into a space offight or flight and it strains
their ability to be good parents, and so this is how I see it as
a risk factor for divorce inthe first place.
(14:56):
But then let's think about whatit's like to be co-parents,
where you may not be superfriendly and easy to negotiate
with your co-parent and you'vegot to deal with a $3,500 a year
fee for whatever sport it is,and maybe it's two or three
sports.
You've just gone through afinancially traumatic event,
(15:17):
which is divorce, and you'retrying to figure this out and
you know it.
All it does is add a layer ofstress to that scenario, not to
mention having to show up to thesideline and stand next to that
person.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Well, let's take a short break and when we come
back I want to hear a little bitmore about the risk factors
around divorce and how.
You know you and I share such asimilarity with working with
some high conflict, higherconflict I know everybody
doesn't love that term but justdifficult dynamics right in this
(16:53):
competitive sports world.
So we'll come back in just amoment.
Dr Baker, you were mentioningto me the risk factor of these
high competitive sports ondivorce.
Can you tell me a little bitmore about that?
Has it been studied?
Because I think intuitively itmakes sense to me that it could
be a risk factor.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
My doctoral research was kind of trying to flesh this
out.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
So, interesting.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
And so what we, what we kind of looked at, was as a
proportion of household incomeand a proportion of available
time, is there a relationshipbetween the amount of time and
money spent and maritalsatisfaction?
And for a variety of reasons,mostly scientific, we looked at
(17:40):
men and women separately andwhat we found was that for women
, but not men, there is anegative correlation.
So the higher percentage offamily income spent, the lower
satisfaction in the marriage was.
And that was for women but notmen.
The real take home there isthat, yes, financial
overinvestment can be a riskfactor.
(18:01):
I haven't seen anybody look atit in exactly that way, but
Travis Dortch out of Utah StateUniversity does a lot of
adjacent work and looking at theway that parents are
participating and the financesreally impact parent
participation in sport mostlylooking at the ways it motivates
parents to be bad actors, Ithink it stands to reason very
(18:24):
flatly that if we know thatstress over money and time
together are key factors indivorce in the first place, and
we know that sport participationstresses both of those factors,
it kind of goes without saying.
A hypothesis that I came up withwas either you have people who
are stuck in a bad relationshipand they're disengaged and
(18:45):
that's just kind of it was goingto happen anyway, or you see a
scenario where people use it toreally come together and they
are effective at approaching itand being deliberate.
You see people who either arestruggling in their marriage and
they're escaping to their kids'activities, or their marriage
was okay but they're gettingpulled apart by their kids'
(19:08):
participation.
They're sliding into thisscenario where, all of a sudden,
whatever disagreements overmoney were there, it gets
completely blown up by the factthat all of a sudden we have all
these bills to pay and maybe weweren't talking about it before
or, you know, we didn't have agreat routine or tradition
around how we do holidays or howwe do dates to maintain our
(19:29):
connection, and then we all of asudden don't have Friday and
Saturday nights anymore becausewe're on the road.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Yeah, and we don't have the finances for it either,
right?
It reminds me a lot of how wethink about a new baby being
introduced to a family unit.
The child itself doesn't causeI mean, children are stressful,
but if there's cracks already inthe marriage, they're going to
widen, or you're going tonavigate a way to figure it out
(19:54):
and come closer, like it's kindof goes one of two ways, right?
How do you see familiespost-divorce managing this?
Speaker 2 (20:03):
A lot of the moms I work with I just can't imagine
these conversations going verywell, not from their part, just
because it's so, so difficultand judges do not want to be
weighing in on whether or notyour kid plays competitive
baseball you know, like theydon't care, they don't you know,
(20:25):
I'm a major advocate fordecision makers and actually
where decision makers one oftheir primary role is to decide
which sports we're participatingin each season, because there's
disagreements over how muchwe're doing, what investment
should be there.
But I also think there's genderdifferences in sport and I
looked at this in my researchtoo.
But there's a generationalcomponent going on where, you
(20:48):
know, 15 years ago when I wasdoing this research, women's
sports had not necessarilycaught up in a way where moms
had a lot of experience withsports growing up.
We were looking at a generationwhere Title IX hadn't really
had the effect of generatingyouth girl sports and so much
easier in a divorce setting tosay dad is trying to live
(21:09):
vicariously and bring up youknow the next Peyton Manning.
When it's not the kid's desire,that lack of benefit of the
doubt, that lack of seeing goodintention in your co-parent
creates this way, where itdistorts the conversation and
when we have to make yes and nodecisions and we have to think
(21:30):
about how much are we investing,it really muddies the water
about who this is for.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
There's so much perceptions around the other
person's intentions in thesedynamics that I think it would
be really easy to let your kidsget lost in it and really easy
to not know or to almost try topunish one another.
Right, he just really wants himin football and therefore I'm
(21:57):
going to say no about it, right?
Or he just is pushing our kidto do this sport and I don't
think our kid really wants to doit, and now we're in this
really stuck place.
Or the other thing I hear a lotis I'm fine with it, but I
can't afford it.
It's great, you know.
Or, to your earlier point, Ilove that she does gymnastics.
(22:18):
I don't know that she has to beon the $4,000 a year team.
We disagree on the level ofsupport.
How do you help families withthat?
Speaker 2 (22:28):
In our level one co-parenting class for the
co-parenting cooperative we havea role play about parents
disagreeing over participatingin football.
I never really put that together, but it's certainly fit and
that was written, you know, acouple of decades ago, right?
We've been doing that samebasic idea for a long time.
(22:48):
So what do we do about that?
I think this is wherealternative dispute resolution
is really important.
You know, we have to recognizethat there's a grief and loss
process going on.
Early on, when we're still inanger or depression or
bargaining, we may be prone tosome kind of cognitive fallacies
(23:09):
.
We may be thinking in adistorted way where we really
have a hard time giving ourco-parent the benefit of the
doubt.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Right, and so when that's in that space, you know
it's much easier and this isreally what I was trying to say
it's much easier to say oh, hejust is trying to live out his
dreams, and there's countlessInstagram memes about that sort
of thing, without divorce in thepicture.
I think you add the financialstress, you add the relational
stress and it's just.
(23:37):
You know it doesn't have to besports, it could be almost
anything else.
It happens the same way, butsports are pretty ubiquitous.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
And I think the piece that you had talked about
earlier too is really key hereof remembering that very likely
this parent who's pushing forthat high level is coming from a
place of wanting to do right bytheir kid, is not wanting them
to be left out, is thinking like, wow, they have some real
(24:05):
talent and I want to poureverything we can into it.
It's just that they may notknow some of the pieces you were
talking about, that that mightactually be counterproductive.
Or, truthfully, you don't needto do that high, high level to
have a great career in a sportlater.
I've experienced that myself asa mom, feeling you know they're
(24:26):
signed up for whatever sport itis and we go there and there's
the kids doing the team and thekids doing the travel team and
you're like wait, what are we?
Why aren't we doing that?
The truth is like the bankaccount and the schedule Right,
we really try.
You know my partner and Ireally try to prioritize free
time and down there a little.
(24:46):
Still Right, they have time tospecialize later.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
You know I have a seven and a four-year-old and
we're trying to really live itout where our focus really.
It follows the guidance of theUS Olympic and Paralympic
Committee, which is focused onphysical literacy and dabbling
in as many different sports aspossible.
We're doing intramural soccer,we're doing gymnastics, which is
the basis of physical literacy,knowing how to do things that
(25:15):
actually come out in othersports.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
When you reference physical literacy, can you tell
me what that is?
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Right, so that in case folks might not know.
Right, that's like being ableto tumble, that's being able to
fall down, get up.
That's being able to run, jump,kick, move your body, all those
essential things.
Those are the building blocksof any specific sport skill.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
When should people start?
Or consider, like gosh, theyreally love baseball.
Now I'm going to.
Now it's OK to kind of go moreinto baseball.
I think it's that middle highschool age.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
It's really on that cusp of like 12 to 14.
Yeah, Right when you yeah, and Iwant to be clear.
I'm not saying like, don't beon a team or don't be on a
travel team before then.
I'm saying you need to be amulti-sport athlete.
Until that point, you shouldnot be doing a team that's all
year round.
That doesn't give you theopportunity to do other sports
(26:11):
and focus on other things.
And there's a difficult part ofbeing a parent here, which is
that I know from being a kidthat if I'm really into
something I'm going to be like Iwant to do it all the time, and
as a parent sometimes we needto actually hold our kids back
from doing things that aren'thealthy.
Overspecialization can be kindof this strange collusion
(26:34):
between parent and child wherewe don't say our standard is you
really need to do at least twosports when you get to the end
of middle school and the startof high school is when you're
really training to compete andthat's where you should be
getting into the phase of likeall.
Right now we are going forcompetitive level participation
(26:55):
and this is where, like you're,doing a lot of travel has a
performance benefit.
Right, and getting into thosephases before then, a focus on
skill training and physicalliteracy is really where you
want to go.
What that would mean is, forthe younger kids, like eight and
below, you're really focusingon basic running, jumping, those
(27:16):
physical literacy things.
Eight to 12, you're lookingmore at your specific sports
skills.
I know how to actually kick asoccer ball in multiple
different ways and I know thedifference between a pass and a
shot.
I know basic positioning on thefield and those things.
And it's not that you can't gofurther than that.
It's that those should bebenchmarks where you're really
(27:37):
trying to go as a parent andreally knowing that the majority
of the blooming for a youthathlete is going to happen
between 14 and 18.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
And so you want to keep the soil rich.
You want to let that happen.
You're keeping your resourcesin your.
As a colleague of mine used tolove to say, keep your powder
dry until you really need it.
So I would say save your moneyand put it in when it's ready to
be actually useful, when thekids are, you know, 13, 14.
(28:11):
If you are overdoing it young,you're straining yourself and
your kids for no particularbenefit.
But I really want to connectwith the idea that as parents,
we struggle with this sense ofhow do we put our kids first
without sacrificing ourselves,and I see that as like a really
difficult judgment call, and wetalk about this in our
(28:34):
co-parenting classes.
It's just like on the airplaneyou have to put your mask on
first and you have to know whenyou are tapped, when you are
strained and you're notnecessarily feeling OK.
And showing kids that there's abenefit to being adult by
enjoying your life, yeah, likeour needs are important too.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Right.
And it's funny that airplane Iknow that metaphor, they teach
it all the time and literallyevery time I'm on an airplane
I'm like hell.
The first thing I would do isput it on my kid and, despite
them, like drilling it into youfor years and years.
(29:13):
And yet the intention behind itis something I talk about all
the time, right.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Right.
Bring in the divorce contextand all of a sudden you've got
competition over who's moreconcerned about the well-being.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Who's going to put the mask on first?
And you're fighting over it.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Yeah Right, and that's very unhealthy and it
makes it so the kids actuallyfeel their parents tapping each
other out in competition andthey're put in an even worse
situation because there's morepressure.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
The idea that kids are thriving or are in an
environment, in these highcompetition, high intensity
sports, that they are the pointof the triangle.
It parallels directly toco-parenting in some cases.
How do you help kids navigatethose very similar environments
(30:07):
the pressure that we weretalking about too?
Speaker 2 (30:09):
you know, one of the things that I focus on is if
kids are coming to me in adivorce or separation context, I
see them much more as a symptomof a system problem.
Mostly, I'm focusing onsupporting them and helping them
just take care of themselvesand focus on what's in front of
them, which is, you know, schooland sports and friends, and I'm
really trying to send themessage to parents of like, hey,
(30:31):
what's the general issue that'scausing stress in the system?
I, I had a, I had a family oncewhere it was a youth athlete
and you know, I was kind of likehey, like we need to get the
adults in the situation in orderbefore we're going to have any
effect on these clinicalsymptoms, right?
Like the clinical symptoms arean extension of the family
(30:55):
dysfunction, right?
I actually have a question Iwanted to ask you.
This came up I've taught familytherapy at University of Denver
for a number of years.
But how do you define family?
Speaker 1 (31:07):
I would say close, reciprocal, healthy
relationships.
They're not always healthy, butI'd like them to be healthy.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
But I don't believe family is just blood either
Right, neither do I, and I thinkmy students educated me away
from the textbook for that, andthat's its own topic.
But what I evolved over time isvery much an extension of what
you were saying.
Is very much an extension ofwhat you were saying, but a
group of individuals withcaretaking relationships who are
(31:36):
working to meet the needs ofeach individual.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Yeah, very reciprocal .
Yeah, I think the reciprocalpiece is what was standing out
to me when you were asking methat it's like there's give and
take.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Right, right.
Parents don't get their needsmet ever.
It's not a healthy system.
I think this is where thejudgment piece comes in and it
says, like, parents need to findways to meet their own needs
and it's a part of a healthyfamily systems.
Any book that you pick up,whether it's you know Gottman or
Bill Doherty, they're going totalk about the ways that, like,
(32:11):
modern society is pulling at thestructures of the family that
allow parents and kids to gettheir needs met in a congruent
way.
Right?
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Or a reciprocal way.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
This is where the arms race of youth sports starts
pulling away at parents beingable to do something that they
enjoy, or it takes the resourcesof time and money where you
know they don't get to go for arun or they don't get to, you
know, do the basic things.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Or you're putting it on your kids to meet your needs
instead of your partner Right,or if you are in a co-parenting
situation, you can't have thatneed met.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Right, Right.
So the next time you look atYouTube and you see a parent
acting badly on the sidelines, Iwant you to ask yourself what's
going on in their life that'smaking them so stressed out
right now and to try and reframethat as a response to stress.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
I think we're probably both pretty big fans of
Bill Eddy's work on highconflict people and he talks a
lot about how you know that'snot a diagnosis, that's a
personality pattern and highconflict people are high
conflict wherever they go.
That's the pattern and you canfind them.
Yes, certain professions maybehave a slightly higher instance,
(33:31):
but I'm curious your thoughts.
I feel like if someone is highconflict in their marriage and
their divorce, the chances thatthey're high conflict with
someone like a coach would bepretty high.
Do you think there's a higherincidence of high conflict folks
in these elite youth sports?
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Does it track that I don't have any research evidence
.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Yeah, of course, of course.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
I also think look at rates of narcissism and high yes
, yeah, I hate to label peoplewith that.
But I also think it's importantto differentiate narcissism and
not just say that it's allmalignant, that there is a
compensatory narcissism.
There is a person who is sovulnerable underneath of it all
(34:16):
that they're trying tocompensate by pumping up and
looking good on the outside yeah, and that that can be damaging,
let's say.
But I think it's not all.
I disregard the rights of otherpeople and think that I am
strictly better.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
They're very wounded people Right.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
And so having my having my excellent athlete kid
is naturally going to be a glow,because it takes so much of
your time.
It starts to organize yourpersonality around it.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
It's ripe for conflict, right.
It's ripe for kids to have.
It's ripe for kids to have alot of issues from it, too,
right.
I think a lot about being thatkid on the field who's afraid
one of your parents is going tolose their shit on the sidelines
.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Right, absolutely.
And what does that do to you?
Speaker 1 (35:08):
And to your earlier point, it really takes the flow
state out of it.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Right and I want to come back to the compassionate
view is that that parent doesn'tunderstand what they need to be
doing or what they can be doingto support rather than pressure
.
They probably don't even knowthe difference, because sports
culture has often said that youneed to put pressure.
Otherwise you're just talkingabout participation trophies and
I think that's totally wrong.
(35:33):
But I understand where it'scoming from.
You know, my goal would be toprovide an alternative.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
What would you tell that parent?
That is, what do those skillslook like?
Speaker 2 (35:44):
I like to differentiate between process
and outcome goals.
An outcome goal would bebecoming a D1 athlete.
Outcome you have maybe 50%control because the other team
(36:20):
is bringing something to it.
Outcome goals are fine, butthey're not sufficient.
What I would say is that,focusing on the process, which
is the things you have maximumcontrol over how do I hold the
stick?
(36:41):
How do I hold the racket?
What is my technique for myfree throw those are the things
where we want to draw ourattention and our focus and our
effort.
If you say your goal is to winthe game, great, how do you do
that?
And so I really encouragepeople to think how do I do my
goal and break it down until youhave a task list and generally,
it would be make sure you'rearriving to practice on time.
(37:03):
You're focusing on the drills.
You've got your actualtechnique focus.
You're working on the drills.
You've got your actualtechnique focus.
You're working on each timeYou've got your homework squared
away.
There's a lot of those thingsthat if we just focus on those
and we're not concerned with theoutcome, as much pressure gets
taken out of the situation.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Would mindset also be a process goal that a parent
could encourage?
Speaker 2 (37:28):
I don't know if you're thinking of it this way,
so I'm curious.
But thinking of either fixed orgrowth mindsets?
Yes, yeah, I'm proud of you forshowing up.
(37:49):
I'm proud of you, even thoughyou were losing, for keeping a
good attitude and still tryingreally hard.
That's how I would beapproaching it with my children,
but that's because I'm apsychologist and that's how I
think about things.
Right, but it's crucial becausewhat kids need is to have a
mindset that they can get better.
A fixed mindset says that Ieither am talented or I'm not.
The growth mindset says I canget better and the best athletes
get better over time.
Yes, they're born withsomething special, but it's not
(38:11):
this.
Is that talent versus work,which one's more important?
And the answer is both.
When we have a growth mindsetthat's not focused on outcome
for kids, especially theyoungest kids, we give them the
opportunity to freely make themistakes they need to do to
learn.
Kids are going to need therepetitions in practice of doing
it the wrong way.
They're also going to need thelack of pressure to play so that
(38:35):
they figure out the fun partsof the game and learn new ways
and innovative ways to do it.
But if their parent is on thesideline watching practice and
counting the number of timesthey do the drill correctly,
we're applying pressure.
That parent may think, well,I'm tracking and helping them
track their goals, but reallyall you're doing is distracting
(38:56):
from what's going on on thefield.
That parent's doing thatbecause they're not sure what
else to do.
More likely than not, they'retrying to do something.
You're trying to be helpful.
I can't stress this enough.
What we need to be doing isthinking of ways for parents to
frame out their role in apositive, supportive way, where
you know what they can't getfrom their coach is attachment
(39:19):
Right.
You know what they can't get issomebody who, when they get in
the car, is just going to listento what they say.
How many times have you had aclient come in and the parents
are saying they get into the carafter school and I asked them
how it goes and they say fine.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
Yeah Right.
Or they cried about the game onthe way home and I'm like
that's great, they're processingwith you, Like that's what we
want, you know.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
And how many parents kick into problem solving mode
and say, well, this is what youshould have done, or this is
what you should do.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Want to hurt your feelings but you really did and
then proceed to hurt theirfeelings by giving critical
feedback.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
So it's interesting, Like I'm really translating
basic level family therapy to asports context and just trying
to put it much more specificallyinto when you get in the car,
what do you do?
Speaker 1 (40:11):
What should you say?
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Right right.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
And my experience is parents want to know.
They're literally saying,please tell me, because these
are people that want to do rightby their kids.
That's why we have the issue tostart with.
They're well-intentioned,thoughtful, insightful people
who really do want the best fortheir kids, which is how we
ended up here.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
You know, I think back when I was a I think I was
14 and I came home from a gameand my mom was a psychologist,
my dad was a psychiatrist andyou know, it's so funny like,
even with all the training andfamily therapy, I come home and
my mom asked how the game wasand I said we lost, and that's
part of knowing your kids.
But I think the thing is, inthese situations, kids get upset
(41:11):
about it and nobody likes tosee their kids in distress and
so they try and stamp out thedistress versus being the
emotional heat sink and addingthe emotional bandwidth of
saying I can tolerate you beingupset, so that you know that you
can tolerate it and it's okay.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
Well, and I think the parallels to high conflict or
to co-parenting sometimes is Ican hear my child and hear what
they're feeling and experiencingtowards the coach, towards my
co -parent.
I don't need to tell them mykid how I feel I may need to
correct something with the coach.
I may pull the coach aside andbe like don't do that to my kid
anymore or this style reallydoesn't work for them.
Same to my co-parent.
But I'm not necessarily goingto do that in front of my child
(41:59):
and I'm going to like reflectand really think on whether it's
something I need to addressbefore I do it.
But to my kid, with them in theroom, you're saying I'm happy,
you told me, that Makes sense,you feel that way.
Let's talk about it.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
Well, I wonder in your practice if you ever find
it where kids are complainingabout a problem and they're kind
of actually trying to drawtheir parents in to solve the
problem, but it's actually notwhat they need.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
Yeah, I think this is kind of a generational thing a
little bit of you know.
You hear a lot about likeover-parenting and parents
solving kids' problems and thatsnowplow parenting of just I'm
just going to remove theobstacles and fix them for you
and a lot of that, and I thinkthis comes this is a real
positive from something likesports is and unstructured play
(42:54):
and unsupervised play and all ofthat kind of stuff is
encouraging kids.
You actually can say something.
Did you say this to the coach?
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Right.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
How did you give the coach the feedback that you
didn't love that practice or youdidn't love that drill or the
way he talked to you or the wayshe said that to you?
And I think that comes out inmultiple areas.
It's also something I see a lotwith peer relationships where
I'll say like, but did you tellyour friend how it made you feel
before we involved the moms orthe dads or the teacher or
(43:27):
whoever it might be, just kindof encouraging more autonomy
maybe and some resilience.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Absolutely the way I encourage people to go.
I'm trying to think too aboutlike the high conflict or like
the.
I agree with you that the termstruggles, but I don't have a
better one, so just I'm goingwith high conflict.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
I hate it, but it's like what people know yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
Right, and the Bill, the Bill Eddy perspective.
I think one thing that I reallysee in those cases is that
there's a narrative at play foreach parent where their
co-parent needs to be a villainin order for them to be not a
villain, and I think that's aninternal conflict of, like you
know, I need to not beresponsible for this or for
(44:12):
whatever reason, and I thinkthat can play itself out in the
sports context, where the parentis looking for villains and
anybody who gets in the way orcauses discomfort for a child
can feel like a villain.
But here's the thing If you'rea coach, even for
eight-year-olds, you're going toneed to give feedback that
(44:33):
doesn't feel great in order forthe child to go forward.
Get better If you are reactingas the parent to protect them
from anybody who makes themuncomfortable.
That's the definition of thesnowplow parent.
But that's where your injury,your upset over what's going on
in your life can translatereally dysfunctionally into the
(44:54):
lives of your kids.
So you may be thinking thatyou're putting your kids first
by protecting them or makingsure that they don't get hurt.
But you know, as a wise manonce said, show me a person
without scars and I'll show youa person that hasn't lived a day
in their lives.
They need to be impacted, butwe don't want it to be scarring
(45:15):
in that way where they function.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
It's such a fine line of I'm protecting them slip so
easily into preventing them frombeing resiliency and to hear
feedback and to handle criticismand it's I mean, that's a whole
other.
We should have a whole otherepisode on that.
I am so happy to have thisconversation with you.
(45:40):
How can folks find you?
How can people connect with youif they want to learn more
about sports and youth sportsand kids and youth sports and
the co-parenting cooperative,all the things?
What's the best way to get intouch?
Speaker 2 (45:54):
The best way to get in touch is probably through my
website.
It's alecbakersideecom.
I've also got a new offering inthe works.
It's called Excellence inProcess and
excellenceinprocesscom is goingto be our website.
We're going to be offeringwebinars and workshops about,
you know, positive sportsparenting, so stay tuned for
(46:17):
that.
That's in the works, that'sbeing developed.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
So teaching some of those skills that we were
talking about and really helpingparents know how to show up on
the sidelines in a way thatfeels wonderful.
And, of course, I refer a lotof folks to the Co-Parenting
Cooperative for classes andteaching.
You have a great staff thatsupport families with
co-parenting.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
Our blog is where I'm putting out content and trying
to do the things that are kindof go beyond what's really
required by the court for thatclass.
So those will keep.
They'll keep coming and theneventually we're going to turn
them into recorded content forpeople to access.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
Wonderful If folks are looking for a talented
therapist interested in workingin the youth sports realm as
parents or kids.
Dr Baker is available for thatas well in the youth sports
realm as parents or kids.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
Dr Baker is available for that as well.
Licensed in Pennsylvania andColorado, available for virtual
in both and in-person inPennsylvania.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Amazing, amazing.
Well, I could talk to youforever.
That's the Midwesterner in us.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
Right.
Speaker 1 (47:21):
But I will let you go for now.
But thank you so much for beingon the podcast and we'll have
to have you back.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Yeah, thank you so much for being on the podcast
and we'll have to have you back.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
Yeah, thank you very much All right, my friend, take
good care you too.
Bye-bye, Bye-bye.
Thanks so much for listening tothis episode of Kids First
Co-Parenting.
The best way you can supportthe show is by following, rating
and reviewing wherever youlisten to podcasts, and by
sharing it with another mom whocould use the support.
You can also connect with me onInstagram and Facebook at Learn
(47:50):
With Little House, where Ishare daily tips and
encouragement for moms raisingkids through high conflict
divorce.
And if you're ready to go deepand get more tools, scripts,
personalized support andcoaching, come join us inside
the Kids First co-parentingcommunity.
You'll find the details atLearnwithlittlehousecom.
Until next time, remember yourkids don't need you to be
(48:12):
perfect.
They just need you to be steadyand grounded and, as always, to
put them first.
Thanks for being here.
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