Parents wanting to discuss their child’s performance after their surf could use a proven strategy that has long term benefit for their child’s development. As the surfer comes up the beach between waves or when changing after their surf, parents should ask:

How did you go?

What did you do well?

Asking the child to reflect on their performance without input from a parent encourages the surfer to define the good and poor aspects of their performance in a non-threatening way.  It is often the case that a surfer will only recall the poor aspects of that performance and struggle to define what they did well. If this is the case, parents can help by “mining” the positive aspects of the performance and tell their child what they saw them do that was great.

A third question that could also be used is:

How could you improve next time?

Asking this question encourages young surfers to consider or focus-in on specific areas of their performance that they know could produce better surfing performances in the future.

As good surfing is all about making good decisions and being confident when in the water, helping young surfers learn to think for themselves by asking question that encourage that process, is a big step forward in the development of any surfer moving forward.

**** after posting this blog post, I received a comment from one parent suggesting I add one more question: “Did you have fun?”

Of course this should always be the ultimate aim of every surf – having fun. But I would stress, that surfers who go on to surf at high levels of performance get their fun from working on and surfing to their potential everyday. They think differently to the majority, and that is a key ingredient in their success.