Your Responsibilities as a Parent
A supportive, informed, and balanced parent plays a key role in a skater's experience and long-term success on the ice and off. Like any activity or sport, it does take some commitment on the part of the parents.
- Emotional Support - encourage effort, not results. Celebrate progress, hard work, and resilience because those are things your skater can control. Promote a growth mindset, teach your child that falling down and making mistakes are important parts of learning and improvement.
- Time Commitment - unless your skater has their own driver's license, the commitment falls on you to get them to practices and lessons on time and prepared. It's also important to manage all the moving pieces of the schedule. Utilize the calendar here on the website, as well as the app, to keep track of scheduling more easily.
- Financial Investment - skates and guards, ice time & coaching fees. If your skater has an interest in testing or competition then costumes/dresses, tights, comp fees, travel, and accommodations, etc.
- Communication - with coaches, as a volunteer when needed, and staying informed with club updates and announcements. Always do your best to communicate with the club/coach if a skater will miss their lesson for any reason.
- Equipment & Maintenance - helmet if in Snowplow Sam or Basic Skills, properly fitting skates and sharpened blades. Updating when necessary. Often this might be a group of parents getting skates together and one person taking them to a pro shop to be sharpened.
- Understanding - learning basic terminology, levels, and rules, being aware of your skater's goals and skill development.
What NOT to do:
- Please do not coach from the sidelines during a lesson, test, or competition.
- Don't compare your skater to others, everyone progresses at their own pace.
- Avoid too much pressure. Let your child lead in terms of passion and drive. Competitive figure skating is a subjective and artistic sport - which means that the skater can only control so much and at the end of the day the ribbons and medals are given based on another human's preference/opinion. That artistry is one of the reasons competitive skating is so captivating, and also a reason to not let a judge's placings get your skater too discouraged when the results don't come out like they hoped.
