Last Updated6 June 2023

Understanding Children covers some of the more specialised areas of understanding children. Delve into the CAP Model, and how and why different age groups learn and behave. Dive deep into what motivates children and how to deal with behaviours, creating experiences that will develop a lifelong passion for the mountain environment.

Motivation

Finding out the individual motivations for being in the lesson is important for all students, but particularly useful when teaching children. It will give insight into what they want or do not want from the experience. Motivations in a children’s lesson can be broken into two basic areas:

Internal Motivation

These motivations will be many and varied. They may want to try a new trick, stop falling over or simply have fun. Whatever their motivation it will come with an emotional element that could be positive or negative. The motivation will usually stem from an external source or influence.

External Motivation

Most motivations do not initially come from within. They are created by external influences like media, friends and family, education, competition, fear, excitement and so on. Parents may also have their own motivations for their child to take a lesson. These need to be taken into consideration as they can often be very different from the child’s motivation.

Discovering a student’s motivations is best done through good questioning. This will start when profiling the student and will continue throughout the lesson. Use questions like: “What would you like to achieve on your skis today?”; “Is there something you’ve seen that made you want to try that or someone that gave you the idea?”

It is important that the instructor is attentive and listens to the child’s replies throughout this process. It is beneficial to take note of how the child is emotionally responding, i.e. are they happy, anxious or excited. Once the instructor understands their motivations and how they feel about them, they will be able to incorporate them into the lesson more easily.

Motivation in Sport

Everyone wants to feel good about themselves and respected. When children have good self-esteem they will be more confident and ready to attempt new and challenging tasks. It is very important to understand the abilities and confidence levels of individual children. If we over challenge them there is a higher chance they will not be successful and continued failure to achieve can lead to poor self-esteem and affect our performance. Giving positive feedback to our students is especially important in helping them to feel good about what they are doing and, in turn, build their self-esteem. Knowing when to adjust what you are asking of your students is equally important in maintaining good self-esteem.

Talk

Talk to your kids throughout the lesson or season about what they want to accomplish. Your goals might be a bit far-reaching as a coach/instructor, and the potential you see in them might take longer to reach than your predictions. Your children know a little better about what they can do now and what might be possible. Their goals could be as simple as skiing with and at the level of their parents (age dependent).

Watch

Watch for them to be too hard on themselves. If this happens, help your kids work through what they did wrong without being critical. Also point out some things they did right, so that they see it wasn’t all negative.

Be positive

Be positive. Do not show that you are upset with them for the way they performed a particular task during the lesson. Everyone can have an off day. If it keeps occurring, break the movement down into a simple progression, without being condemning or critical.

Be proud

Be proud. Make sure they understand that you’re proud of them when they do their best. Winning, of course, is always good, but if they did all that they could do and tried their best, that is enough. All athletes/students are unsuccessful on occasion, even really talented ones.

Get involved

Get involved. Whatever skills they need to practise, work with them in a fun manner. Set up some achievable games based on their skill deficiencies. Show your children that you care about what they do. Congratulate them when they do something right and point out what they do wrong in a noncritical way. Point out what you do wrong as well, so they see that everyone makes errors.