Question: Did you ever coach your own child? If so, what advice would you have for me coaching my own child?
Yes. I have coached my own children. I never coached my sons at the varsity level but I have some great friends who have so I reached out to then and got some great feedback.
1. Treat them like everyone else at practice and at meets. However we know that you have to coach every kid a bit differently so find out how to coach your kid. Like any other athlete on your team they might take advice or coaching from your assistant better, so do your coaching through them if you need to.
2. Avoid talking about swimming outside of the pool unless they initiate the conversation.
3. A great bit of advice my colleagues gave me was the 5 minute rule. After practice or meets they had 5 minutes to discuss then they switched out of coach mode into parent mode.
4. This is the most important. Enjoy it. It is something most of us never get to do and it goes by very very fast.
Dan