SoCal Cheer Youth Cheerleading Program

We are all familiar with the competitive bug. Parents of children enrolled in youth activities and sports, including cheerleading, somehow seem more prone to it than their kids! While the enthusiasm and parental involvement is a good thing, consider the children who give it 100% but come up short. For every team that "wins" there are more respective "losers".

At SoCal Cheer Youth Cheerleading we encourage parents to support the team of "Stars" as a whole along their own children. Our performances are not competitions.

We feel that parents will be surprised at the benefits of positive reinforcement in children.

Here are some helpful tips for doing just that at our Cheer Classes and performances as well as at home:

• Try to provide your child with plenty of opportunities to interact with peers and to get involved in team experiences. Teamwork skills come from practice, and your child will benefit from experience using these skills. Cheerleading Classes at our locations in Murrieta and San Jacinto are just a small part of the opportunities that they should have. One way of reinforcing these skills is to discuss television, sporting events, or movies as well as daily life. Talk about how working together in your particular example helped achieved mutual goals. This can build a working mental model for children.

• Prior to cheerleading class or our end-of-session performance, have a discussion with your child and ask them what the goals and expectations of the day's task are. Ask them how their cheerleading team can reach the desired result. Ask them what they can do as an individual to contribute to that goal.

• When at a cheer performance or cheerleading class, don't feel obligated to shout out any words of advice to your child. There are already more than enough parents doing just that and you are more likely to be ignored, misinterpreted, and furthermore distract your child than offer them any useful tidbits. Do watch the cheer class or performance. Your support is vital, even if it is silent.

•  After a cheerleading class or performance discuss it with your child. This is the part where you get to show your support and show that you were indeed, paying attention to their jumps, high v's, and other maneuvers. Try to emphasize team actions as a whole as well as their individual contributions to the spirit.