Whether you’re a single parent or working together with a partner, raising a child is easily one of the mos arduous tasks any person will ever face.

And, as the children grow older, you may find yourself wanting to participate more and more in their life, especially as their interests begin to mirror your own.

So what happens when your child starts playing sports, particularly those you enjoy? What level of participation is appropriate, indeed, even recommended in this area? After all, you don’t want to unnecessarily pressure your children to choose one sport or another because their parent enjoys it but still, deep down, you’re thrilled by the idea of sharing something in common with your child.

This is completely natural.

In fact, this article is about the benefits that can accrue to you and your child should you decide to coach your child’s sports team. In other words, your decision to move away from the basketball scorer’s table and onto the coaching bench itself has a myriad of health benefits for both you and your child and we’re going to outline them in this article.

The biggest thing you can help your child learn by coaching them in sports is emotional self-management and how to deal with the ups and downs associated with sport, talent, and hard work. Rather than favoring your child, make your child earn their stripes and show them that even in the real world often a more talented person is out there, waiting to take our spot on the team. Hard work and dedication to the sport are paramount for success and, rather than handing them participation on a platter, as a parent you can show them how it is your responsibility as a coach to choose the best player for the team and the situation at hand.

Along those lines, this exercise will also help your child to think rationally and strategically about situations and why that is more important than always getting what they want. The intimacy between a parent and a child can be co-opted in the coaching relationship so long as you keep coaching at the forefront of your perspective on this. You didn’t become coach to give your child a leg up in anything but understanding how life works, and how that sometimes means disappointment. After all, you can illustrate, if you were to choose your child for something over a more talented child, is that not even more unfair to the more talented child? Helping your son or daughter handle these kinds of situations rationally is not only key to succeeding in multiple areas of life but also sports and school.

The primary benefit of coaching your child is helping their emotional development. By spending time with your child outside of the doting and loving parent-child complex, you can introduce them to a myriad of other situations and emotions that are more akin to those they will encounter in school and their professional life. After all, you can emphasize that hardwork and dedication to a team is more important than personal glory. Further, you can show them the importance of talent and the critical role in plays in every decision we make as adults, from choosing a doctor to assembling a team of coworkers to tackle a project. It isn’t what we want as individuals but how we best achieve that given our context that defines us as adults.