Coaching Your Kids In The Game Of Life

A powerful parenting strategy based on parallels between coaching and raising children. This book inspires parents to build strong families.

The modern day youth sports environment has taken the enjoyment out of athletics for our children. Currently, 70% of kids drop out of organized sports by the age of 13, which has given rise to a generation of overweight, unhealthy young adults. There is a solution. John O’Sullivan shares the secrets of the coaches and parents who have not only raised elite athletes, but have done so by creating an environment that promotes positive core values and teaches life lessons instead of focusing on wins and losses, scholarships, and professional aspirations. Changing the Game gives adults a new paradigm and a game plan for raising happy, high performing children, and provides a national call to action to return youth sports to our kids.

Coach Ricky Byrdsong was often told, "Your coaching looks like parenting, " and he agreed that observation was absolutely correct. He saw his responsibilities as a coach to equip and inspire his players to achieve their dreams. The game of basketball was only a means for preparing them for a bigger and more important game -- the game of life. And the game of life, according to Byrdsong, is one that no one can afford to lose. Using basketball as his metaphor, Byrdsong presents a parenting strategy built around themes such as "Home Court Advantage, " "The Dream Team -- Your Kids, " "Halftime Adjustments, " "Scouting the Enemy's Court, " and "Rules of the Game -- Team Discipline." The message was one that he had lived with his own family, and will appeal to a broad audience of book buyers. Byrdsong had worked on the ideas for the book for three years before he was murdered by a white supremacist in a horrible twostate killing rampage. He and the Jacksons had all but three chapters finalized before his deat and material to complete it remained. "This book, " Dave Jackson says, "is his legacy."

St. Louis Cardinals manager Mike Matheny's New York Times bestselling manifesto about what parents, coaches, and athletes get wrong about sports; what we can do better; and how sports can teach eight keys to success in sports and life. Mike Matheny was just forty-one, without professional managerial experience and looking for a next step after a successful career as a Major League catcher, when he succeeded the legendary Tony La Russa as manager of the St. Louis Cardinals in 2012. While Matheny has enjoyed immediate success, leading the Cards to the postseason four times in his first four years−a Major League record−people have noticed something else about his life, something not measured in day-to-day results. Instead, it’s based on a frankly worded letter he wrote to the parents of a Little League team he coached, a cry for change that became an Internet sensation and eventually a “manifesto.” The tough-love philosophy Matheny expressed in the letter contained his throwback beliefs that authority should be respected, discipline and hard work rewarded, spiritual faith cultivated, family made a priority, and humility considered a virtue. In The Matheny Manifesto, he builds on his original letter by first diagnosing the problem at the heart of youth sports−it starts with parents and coaches−and then by offering a hopeful path forward. Along the way, he uses stories from his small-town childhood as well as his career as a player, coach, and manager to explore eight keys to success: leadership, confidence, teamwork, faith, class, character, toughness, and humility. From “The Coach Is Always Right, Even When He’s Wrong” to “Let Your Catcher Call the Game,” Matheny’s old-school advice might not always be popular or politically correct, but it works. His entertaining and deeply inspirational book will not only resonate with parents, coaches, and athletes, it will also be a powerful reminder, from one of the most successful new managers in the game, of what sports can teach us all about winning on the field and in life.

In Coaching Your Kids to be Leaders, Pat Williams takes the seven principles of leadership and applies them to the challenge of building young leaders. The essence of a leader is embodied in these seven important qualities: Vision, Communication, People Skills, Character, Competence, Boldness, Servanthood. Young people can be inspired and motivated to build them into their lives. This is an invaluable tool for those committed to building leadership skills in the children they care for.

Do you long to make a difference in the lives of others? Every day, companies, churches, families, and individuals turn to coaches for help in navigating life’s transitions. A widely used and respected resource for leaders, pastors, and counselors, Christian Coaching will equip you with the tools to help people overcome obstacles and turn their potential into reality. Now updated and expanded, this groundbreaking guide presents a unique biblically based coaching model, designed to help you: Develop and refine your active listening skills Connect with people on a meaningful level Clarify a vision and defining steps to put it into practice Guide someone through obstacles and life transitions Coach people in a variety of career, marriage, family, and church situations Empower people to establish healthy boundaries with friends, family, and work And much more Now with interactive forms and questionnaires for you and your clients, this comprehensive guide may be the most helpful and entertaining book on coaching you’ll read. “Dr. Gary Collins takes all the vital elements of coaching and brings them together into one valuable resource. This book is essential for anyone—not just Christians—who wants to make a difference in the lives of others.” —Ken Blanchard, coauthor of The One Minute Manager and Lead Like Jesus

From telemarketers to traffic jams to twenty-item shoppers in the ten-item line, our lives are full of interruptions. They're often aggravating, sometimes infuriating, and can make us want to tell people what we really think about them. But they also tell us something quite important about ourselves. The prophet Jonah's life was interrupted by a clear call of God that made him mad enough and scared enough to run in the completely opposite direction. Yet it wasn't really an interruption. It was an opportunity for Jonah to be involved in something the likes of which the Old Testament world had never seen: national revival in a Gentile country. What if Jonah had seen God's interruption for what it truly was—a divine intervention that held more adventure and possibility than any other thing he could have been doing at the time? What could have felt any better than being directly in the center of God's will? Yet we play it that same way—always running from major pains and minor problems that just don't seem to suit us at the time. Who knows what we're missing by being so interruption avoidant? In this very personal account of opportunities lost and lessons learned, popular conference speaker and author Priscilla Shirer shows how to embrace the amazing freedom and fulfillment that comes from going with God, even when He's going against your grain. .

A story with a big heart about a boy, a coach, the game of baseball, and the game of life. "There are teachers with a rare ability to enter a child's mind; it's as if their ability to get there at all gives them the right to stay forever." There was a turning point in Michael Lewis's life, in a baseball game when he was fourteen years old. The irascible and often terrifying Coach Fitz put the ball in his hand with the game on the line and managed to convey such confident trust in Lewis's ability that the boy had no choice but to live up to it. "I didn't have words for it then, but I do now: I am about to show the world, and myself, what I can do." The coach's message was not simply about winning but about self-respect, sacrifice, courage, and endurance. In some ways, and now thirty years later, Lewis still finds himself trying to measure up to what Coach Fitz expected of him.