How To Motivate Your Daughter to Practice

      You pay money for lessons, you travel to all her practices and games, you pay for her to be on the team, but she won’t practice.  You put in all the time and effort you can, because she says she loves the game and wants to play, but won’t put in the work to get better.  So what do you do?  How do you get your daughter to WANT to practice without nagging her daily? 

          First things first. You can NEVER force a girl to do something they don’t want to do.  The more you push, nag, demand, force, etc, the more she will rebel.  She won’t want to practice if you make it an obligation.  The sport is fun, it’s a game to them, and when you make it a job, they won’t want to play anymore.  If you want your female athlete to practice, let them make the decision to practice.  If they really want to get better and really want to play at a high level, they will.

          Secondly, let your daughter decide when its time to practice.  If it’s your idea to practice, for some unknown reason in adolescent female complexity, they won’t want to practice.  Even if you aren’t nagging or yelling or demanding, they will take it that way.  They want control in their lives and feel they have earned that right to decide what they want to do with their time. 

          Third and final point.  If your daughter doesn’t want to do it, don’t let her do it.  If she isn’t willing to work for her goals, then you need to find another source of motivation.  Now I’m not saying that recreational sports require mass amounts of training and dedication, but if they are looking to pursue collegiate goals, they do need to find determination and work to earn glory.  Allowing your daughter to take lesson after lesson, play on the best team only to sit on the bench, and/or traveling all over the United States to play tournaments is just a waste of your time and money.

 Let your daughter earn lessons; let her earn playing time and traveling to big tournaments.  Not only will this better her dedication to the game, but her work ethic, drive, and discipline to work towards her overall goal.  If she just wants to play recreationally to socialize and be apart of a team, that’s fine; but if she really wants to earn the guts and glory, she has to practice. 

If the sport is your daughter’s dream, then she will practice.  She will be self-motivated to work towards her goal.  Even though she doesn’t need you to tell her when to practice, she may need your help.  Take your daughter to lessons, take her out to practice, watch her train, etc.  Even though you don’t need to be her coach, you can be her support system.  The more willing you are to go out to a field or workout with her, the more she will want to do so often.  Don’t let her use you as an excuse to why she can’t practice or go to lessons.  If you are able to help, be there for your daughter.

Key Points to Motivating your Daughter to Practice:

1.)   You can’t force a female athlete to practice.  The more you push, nag, and yell at them to practice, the less willing they are to do it.  Eventually, they will dislike the sport because it becomes a job rather than a game.

2.)   Let your daughter decide when it’s time to practice.  She wants it to be HER idea to practice, not yours.

3.)   If your daughter doesn’t want to do it, don’t let her.  If she wants to practice and play at the next level she will.  Be her support system when you can and be there to help her better herself.