I prided myself on being rational and easy-going. Then I started coaching competitive kids’ sports | Myke Bartlett

Coaching competitive kids sport often feels like a pure and highly concentrated form of parenting.

Many of the parenting decisions you make under pressure will be wrong, but rarely can they be so well quantified.

As with parenting, coaching has brought me into close and uncomfortable contact with aspects of my own character that had been hitherto concealed.

When we invest in our children, whether as coaches or parents, we often expect a dividend.

We can see our children as a means to correct the mistakes we have made or the wrongs we have suffered.

But it’s not about us. While we can enable, our children's victories should always belong to them alone.