Parent Question

What should parents do after a tough practice or competition?

Short answer

Start with the person, not the performance. Ask how they're feeling, feed them, and let the silence be okay. Save any analysis of the routine or the score for later — often days later — and let your athlete raise it first. Your job in that moment is to be the safe place, not the second coach.

The CDU explanation

What that means in practice

The car ride home is the highest-leverage conversation in youth sports. Your athlete has already been evaluated by coaches and judges all day; adding a third review turns the person they trust most into another critic.

A simple pattern that works: acknowledge the effort, name one specific thing you enjoyed watching, then stop talking. If they want to process the routine, they will — and by then they're asking, which makes it a conversation instead of a correction.

Season 1 came back to this repeatedly, from the coaches in Episode 7 to Cody in Episode 20. Episode 13 is the dads' own version of a hard day: the routine was clean and the placement still stung.

Coach Bryce Kirkley (Episode 40) put it in tumbling terms: acknowledge the wins, even small ones, and let athletes learn through setbacks without layering extra pressure on top. When a skill suddenly will not come — a mental block — his approach is to listen to the athlete and watch their body language rather than push harder; parents can help by staying calm and letting the coach lead.

Expert context

Season 1 sources

Last reviewed 2026-08-10

Season 1 evidence

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Full hub: Cheer Parenting

Where the parent role ends and the coaching role begins — how to support hard days, how much to push, and how to stay the safe place.

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