t2i believes that the top two inches are the most important part of the body, not just as a young player, but as a young person.
t2i believes that every young player should have access to the same sports psychology tools and techniques that are available to elite athletes.
t2i believes that sports psychology will improve young players' sports development, and their personal, social, emotional, creative, cognitive and psychological development – please see below.
Child psychology describes and explains children’s development, including cognitively. There are multiple theories that aim to describe, explain and predict children’s development – Piaget believed that cognitive development is internally driven, while Vygotsky claimed that it is determined by external factors, while over three hundred years ago, Locke began the nature v nurture debate. Wisdom achieved through experience leads us to believe that the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
As child psychology is the development of how children think, feel and behave, it stands to reason that the use of sports psychology through sport to improve children’s mind and behaviour, will lead to significant impact in their overall psychological development.
Mental health can be thought of in terms of how a child feels about themselves; their ability to make and keep friendships and relationships; and their ability to develop psychologically and emotionally.
A child’s mental health will vary and change. It is often seen as a spectrum of continuum, where mental health is at one end of and mental ill-health at the other. In the middle, an individual may show some signs of mental vulnerability.
Sports psychology tools and techniques will reduce risk factors of mental health, e.g. poor social skills and low self-esteem and improve protective factors (characteristics that reduce the likelihood of poor mental health), these include: self-control, positive attitude, ability to reflect, sense of purpose, good coping style.
There is a lot of crossover between sports psychology and social-emotional learning. Social-emotional learning has five broad and interrelated areas of competence: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills – and Responsible Decision-Making.
From the social-emotional programme of study that we have also designed, similarities include demonstrating resilience to recover quickly from difficulties, understanding and practicing strategies to manage behaviours, identifying and using stress management strategies, and anticipating and evaluating the consequences of their actions.
Social, emotional, and psychological development are intertwined in the brain and in behaviour and influence school and life outcomes. Sports Psychology is an effective tool in supporting social and emotional awarenesses and skills.
Children all behave differently in different situations, but it is when the behaviours are seen as abnormal for the environment the person is in, or the severity of the behaviour puts the person or others at risk, that the behaviour is seen to be challenging. In schools, we often view challenging behaviour as anything that causes us concern: this can include interrupting in lessons, refusing to join in activities, regularly turning up late for school or pushing into the dinner queue.
The use of sports psychology tools and techniques by children and school staff will support challenging behaviour approaches, including unconditional positive regard – a concept from humanistic psychology that refers to accepting and supporting a child as they are without evaluating or judging them; and positive feedback model, namely the circle of positive feedback to improved self-esteem to high expectations to learning improving to reinforced positive self-image and back to positive feedback.
Disclaimer
In terms of managing expectations, it is important to understand that as a company we will not be conducting 1-1 behaviour change interventions as we are not HCPC registered Sport Psychologists. Using knowledge from a Master of Science in Sport Psychology degree (BPS accredited with Graduate Basis for Chartered Membership) the company will take an educational approach to educate individuals on appropriate techniques that can potentially cause behaviour changes (e.g., appropriate goal setting, building confidence, preparing for competitions etc). There are different ways in which we can educate, for example through workshops. We can also talk with individuals 1 on 1 educating them on a specific topic that is believed to be helpful to their performance.