1.	Thou shall be sure that your child knows that – win or lose, scared or heroic – you love them, appreciate their efforts and that you are not disappointed in them
2.	Thou shall try your best to be completely honest about your child’s athletic capability, their competitive attitude, their sportsmanship and their actual skill level.
3.	Thou shall be helpful – but don’t coach them on their way to the rink, track, court, field or pool – or on the way back home
4.	Thou shall teach your child to enjoy competition for competition’s sake, remembering that there are lesions to be learned in winning as well as in losing.
5.	Thou shall not try to relive one’s own athletic life through their child – or to create an athletic career to replace the one that you never had.
6.	Thou shall not compete with the coach – remember, in many cases, the coach becomes a hero to the athletes, a person who can do no wrong.
7.	Thou shall not compare skill, courage or attitudes of your child with that of other members of the squad or team – at least not in their hearing range.
8.	Thou shall get to know the coach so that you can be sure that their philosophy, attitudes, ethics and knowledge are such that you are happy to expose your child to them
9.	Thou shall always remember that children tend to exaggerate, both when praised and when criticized. Temper your reactions when they bring home tales of woe – or tales of heroics.
10.	Thou shall make a point of understanding courage and the fact that it is relative. Some of us climb mountains but fear flight – some of us will want to fight but turn to jelly if a spider crawls nearby. A child must learn: courage is not absence of fear, but rather doing something is spite of fear.

“The more I talk to athletes, the more convinced I become that the method of training is relatively unimportant. There are many ways to the top, and the training method you choose is just the one that suits you best. No, the important thing is the attitude of the athlete, the desire to get to the top”
Herb Elliot

By Daniel Coyle

This story could begin in many places — it's about beginnings, after all — but I'd like to start with the recent evening when my 4-year-old daughter, Zoe, appeared before me wielding a yellow baseball bat and an important announcement: batting tees were for babies. From now on, she would hit real pitches, like the big kids... Read more.

Find out if more than just push-ups are required in this article from MSNBC.com