😬Parents MUST READ: Your kid checks your face before they check the clock

⭐

Quick story.

A few years ago I'm at a meet watching a girl swim the 200 free. She touches the wall, rips her goggles off, looks up at the board. New best time. Half a second faster.

And then - before she even reacts to her own swim - she does the thing every single swimmer on earth does.

She looks up into the stands. Straight at her mum.

She read her mum's face before she read her own race.

I've thought about that moment a hundred times since, because it explains something nobody warns swim parents about: your kid is racing two clocks. The one on the wall, and the one on your face.

Now here's where it gets a little uncomfortable.

Stay with me, it ends well.

I was watching this neuroscientist, Dr Joe Dispenza, and he drops this stat: we think around 60'000-70'000 thoughts a day. Fine. But then.. 90% of them are the exact same thoughts we had yesterday.

90%!!!!!

Which, as a parent and former swimmer made me laugh out loud, because I know exactly what those thoughts are. I've heard them in the car park at 5:40am. They go something like:

"Is she actually improving, or are we just.. paying for this?"
"He's been on that phone for three hours."
"Aiden's mum said Aiden dropped two seconds. TWO."
"Is the coach even watching him down in lane 6?"
"What if she burns out, quits, and somehow it's my fault for pushing?"

Same thoughts. Same drive. Same knot in the stomach. Every. Single. Day.

And Dispenza's whole point is this: the same thoughts create the same feelings, which drive the same behaviour, which make the same day, which produce the same thoughts. It's a loop. And by the time you're a grown adult, about 95% of it runs on autopilot.. like a program you didn't choose and can't remember installing.

(He calls it "becoming a set of memorised programs." I prefer "swim-parent brain on 5:40am autopilot." Same thing.)

Here's the part that actually got me.

Your kid is standing on the side of the pool. Dripping. Gutted. A race that didn't go their way. And the very first input they get - before the coach, before the clock even fully lands - is your face.

And if your face is running yesterday's program - "here we go again, he always does this" - they feel it. They don't hear the words. They catch the frequency.

There's a line in neuroscience: neurons that fire together, wire together. Usually that's about one brain. But I swear it happens across the front seats of a car too. Your worry and their shame.. firing together, wiring together.. one silent Volvo on the ride home at a time.

But here's the good news. The whole reason I'm writing this.

Dispenza says something so simple it's almost annoying: "Just because you have a thought doesn't mean it's true."

"He's not trying hard enough." That's not a fact about your kid. That's a program in you.

"She's falling behind." Not a fact either. It's a thought you've had 400 times that feels like a fact, because you've repeated it 400 times.

And here's the freeing bit: you are the one variable in this entire thing you can actually change. You can't make the coach sharper. You can't make the other kid slower. You can't control the 0.3 seconds. But you can be the parent who - for the ten seconds it takes your kid to walk over after a bad swim - is not on autopilot.

That's it. That's the whole skill. Catch the program before it reaches your face.

It's the difference between the kid who climbs out thinking "I let them down" and the kid who climbs out thinking "okay, that one stung.. let's go." Same race. Same time on the board. Different clock on your face.

One tiny thing to try this week (the swim-parent version of his homework):

Next rough swim, before you say a single word, just notice the first thought that fires. Don't act on it. Just go: "ah.. there's the program." Then ask one question out loud instead of the usual one. Not "what happened." Ask: "What did that one feel like?"

Then watch what it does to their shoulders.

I went a lot deeper on this.. the actual "how do I stay calm and genuinely useful in the 30 seconds that matter" version.. in the short Confidence Course for parents I tucked into the classroom in here (it lives in the Premium section for $9, next to the nutrition and mobility stuff). I'm not pitching it. It's just there if this hit a nerve and you want the practical version you can check it out here:

www.skool.com/mindgympro/plans

Mostly I just wanted to say this: if you've been worrying in the same loop for two seasons straight, you're not a bad swim parent. You've just got a very well-trained brain running a very old program. And the day you notice it is the day it stops running you.

Your kid's going to check your face anyway. Might as well make it a good one. 🏊

That's all from me for tonight. Wishing you a GREAT start into the new week!! 🚀

David

P.S. The girl in the 200 free? The second her eyes found her mum, the mum just grinned and threw both arms up like a total goofball. Kid laughed, mid-pool. That right there.. that's the whole game.

3 comments

😬Parents MUST READ: Your kid checks your face before they check the clock