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10 Things Parents Can Ask To Help Kids Learn Life Lessons From Sports

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Alexi Lalas (@AlexiLalas) was a defender on the US Men's World Cup team in 1994. He is also the first modern-era American soccer player to play in the Italian Serie A. After a career as a Major League Soccer player, Lalas has served as an executive for the San Jose Earthquakes, New York Red Bulls, and Los Angeles Galaxy. In 2006 he was elected into the National Soccer Hall of Fame. He currently works in sports mediaand first started as an analyst for ESPN and ABC Sports before transitioning to FOX Sports.

In this video, Lalas shares that his role as a parent is to give his kids the tools to succeed and move through life so that when he's not around, his kids can still make the right decisions. In order to help give them those tools, he asks the following guiding questions on a daily basis, depending on the situation his kids are experiencing:

1) What did you do in your day?

2) What are you thinking about?

3) What do you want to do?

4) What went right in your day today?

5) What didn't go right in your day today?

6) Why didn't things go right today?

7) What could you do differently next time?

8) What are the good things you learned from negative experiences?

9) What are you proud of today?

10) How did it make you feel?

These questions, in the right moments and situations involving sports, can help your kid draw the parallels between lessons learned in sports so they can apply them to life and the bigger overall picture. Kids may not readily understand that connection, but by communicating with them using these conversation starters, kids will start to draw the parallels themselves.