What Watching Avantika Feed Leela Taught Me About Great Coaching

Our now nearly nine-month-old daughter, Leela, is well into her solid-food journey.

She is discovering all sorts of tastes, textures, smells and colours, and watching her experience all of this has been one of the great joys of becoming a father.

But there is something else I have been watching.

My wife, Avantika.

She has taken on the lion's share of the responsibility for feeding Leela, or at least attempting to feed her, three times a day. And honestly, it is quite a sight.

Picture the scene.

Leela is sitting in her ridiculously expensive high chair, wearing her standard feeding uniform: no shirt, no shorts, just a diaper and a pink bib. She has a huge smile on her face because she knows that a game—or battle, depending on your perspective—is about to begin.

Avantika puts some food on the tray and, with the enthusiasm of someone presenting the winning dish on MasterChef, clearly announces what it is.

"Sweet potato!"

She then waits.

The idea, as recommended by several progressive mothers who clearly know much more about this than I do, is to give the baby some agency. Let her pick up the food. Explore it. Decide what to do with it. Eventually, hopefully, put it in her mouth.

Leela's interpretation of this empowerment philosophy is slightly different.

She picks up the food.

She squishes it.

She smears it around the tray.

She picks up some of the resulting mush and puts it in her mouth.

Then she drops the rest on the floor.

Repeat.

Other than being extremely messy and not particularly efficient at getting food into the child, it is actually quite an impressive skill.

And through all of this, Avantika sits there smiling.

She encourages her.

She talks to her.

She waits.

She doesn't flinch when the beautifully prepared food ends up on the floor.

She simply picks it up, washes it, puts it back on the tray and starts again.

The whole thing can take an hour.

Sixty minutes of watching your child squish, smear, drop, taste, reject, reconsider and occasionally actually eat something.

And somehow, Avantika never seems rushed.

Which amazes me.

Because I know what I would do.

I would probably last about four minutes before the choo-choo train arrived at Platform Leela.

"Here comes the train!"

Open mouth.

Insert food.

Success.

Nutrition delivered.

Next task.

I have a feeling this is one of the many reasons why I am not the primary feeder in our household.

Because Avantika is doing something much more profound than simply getting food into our daughter.

She is teaching her how to eat.

And there is a difference.

She understands that the objective isn't simply the immediate outcome. It is to help Leela develop the confidence, independence and skills to eventually do this herself.

So she stays the course.

She allows Leela to take her time.

She doesn't rush the process.

She doesn't force the outcome.

She creates an environment in which Leela can explore, experiment, fail spectacularly and try again.

And she does this three times a day.

Every day.

Often while sleep-deprived, surrounded by an endless list of things that need to get done.

That, to me, is remarkable.

What is even more remarkable is that despite this daily masterclass in motherhood, Avantika still sometimes doubts herself because another mother knows more about baby nutrition, has introduced more foods or seems to have a more elaborate menu.

I keep reminding her that there is something far more powerful than the number of items on the menu.

Presence.

Love.

Care.

Patience.

And the ability to create an environment in which your child feels safe enough to learn.

And, as I usually do, this got me thinking about sport.

I started thinking about the coaches I had growing up in California.

Some of the best coaches I had were not necessarily the most technically or tactically sophisticated coaches.

But they were incredibly emotionally intelligent.

One of the most important was my childhood friend's father, Mike Moore.

Kevin Moore lived down the street from me, and somehow his dad, Mike, became my unofficial "American Dad." He was also my soccer and baseball coach from around the age of four to eight.

Mike didn't have US Soccer coaching licenses. He didn't have Major League Baseball qualifications. At least none that I knew about.

What he did have was something that, looking back now, feels much more important.

He cared about us.

He was present.

He made training fun.

He created a safe environment for us to play, learn and make mistakes.

And he understood that his job wasn't simply to teach us how to kick a ball or catch a baseball.

It was to help us become better players, learners and, ultimately, better people.

I remember those sessions incredibly fondly.

And that's saying something because, as a kid, I had approximately one million reasons to skip practice.

Video games.

Television.

Friends playing outside.

The general appeal of doing absolutely anything other than structured activity.

Yet I rarely wanted to miss practice.

I wanted to be there.

I wanted to play.

I wanted to learn.

And it wasn't just Mike.

Many of my youth coaches in America seemed to understand this instinctively.

They created environments that made us want to come back.

And it wasn't because we were particularly talented.

Quite the opposite.

We were little kids.

We missed the ball.

We dropped easy catches.

We forgot how to throw.

We forgot how to kick.

We didn't listen.

We fought with each other.

Sometimes we cried for reasons that made absolutely no sense.

And, of course, there were parents on the sidelines offering their expert opinions on how the coach should be coaching.

Sound familiar?

But the coaches largely kept the main thing the main thing.

Create an environment where kids could play, learn and grow.

Just like Avantika with Leela, they didn't rush the process.

They didn't lose patience because we hadn't mastered something yet.

They made us feel like we were doing a good job.

They helped us believe that mastery was possible through practice.

And, perhaps most importantly, they made us want to practice.

That last part is easy to underestimate.

A child who enjoys the process wants to come back.

A child who feels safe enough to fail will keep trying.

A child who respects the person coaching them is more likely to listen.

And a child who enjoys learning is far more likely to keep learning.

There is no rocket science here.

But actually becoming the kind of person who can consistently create that environment is incredibly difficult.

At least for me.

I am not naturally gifted at waiting for someone to figure something out. I want to help. I want to fix things. I want to move things along.

And when I don't see progress quickly, I can get impatient.

Which is probably why watching Avantika feed Leela has been such a useful lesson for me.

She is comfortable with the process.

She trusts it.

And she understands that the goal is not to get Leela to the finish line as quickly as possible.

The goal is to help Leela learn how to get there herself.

That, I think, is one of the biggest opportunities we have in Indian youth sport.

To be clear, this isn't an indictment of Indian coaches.

There are many excellent coaches in India who are deeply committed to their athletes, constantly learning and doing incredible work with limited resources.

I have worked with many of them.

But across my experience in the Indian youth sports landscape, particularly in school sport, I have also seen a recurring gap.

We have plenty of coaches who understand the technical and tactical side of their sport. Many have strong knowledge of physical literacy, training methodologies and the fundamentals required to develop young athletes.

Where I believe we need to invest much more is in the human side of coaching.

Emotional intelligence.

Growth mindset.

Communication.

Listening.

Patience.

The ability to create an environment in which a young athlete actually wants to keep coming back.

Because I have experienced coaches who expect respect before earning it.

Coaches who use yelling as their primary communication tool.

Coaches who don't listen.

Coaches who leave little room for feedback or questions.

Coaches who unintentionally remove the fun and play from sport because the focus becomes almost entirely about skills, competition and results.

Coaches who tell but don't explain.

Punish but don't encourage.

Focus on the outcome but not the process.

And coaches who don't always have the opportunity, or perhaps the incentive, to keep learning and evolving their methods as coaching continues to change around the world.

None of this makes them bad people.

And much of it isn't necessarily their fault.

Coaches are products of the environments in which they learned to coach. If yelling was how they were taught, it isn't surprising that yelling becomes their default. If winning was the only thing that mattered when they were coming through the system, it isn't surprising that they place enormous emphasis on results.

But we can still do better.

Because the consequences are real.

When a young athlete stops enjoying sport, they eventually stop showing up.

And when they stop showing up, all the talent in the world doesn't matter.

I have seen young players with genuine potential drift away from sport because the experience stopped being enjoyable.

I've seen parents lose enthusiasm for supporting their child's sporting journey because they no longer feel that the environment their child is spending time in is healthy, positive or worth the family's investment of time and energy.

And perhaps most frustratingly, some of those children may have had a very different sporting journey if the adult standing in front of them had simply approached them with a little more patience, curiosity and encouragement.

This is where I keep coming back to Avantika.

She isn't trying to make Leela the world's greatest eater.

She's not comparing her to the baby next door.

She isn’t letting the opinions of her own parents, or anyone else, dictate how she feeds Leela.

She's not worried that another child has already eaten fifteen different vegetables while Leela is still fascinated by what happens when you smear banana across a high-chair tray.

She is simply creating the conditions for our daughter to learn.

And perhaps that is what great youth coaches do too.

They create the conditions.

They don't manufacture the athlete.

They don't force development.

They don't rush the process.

They create an environment where a young person can experiment, fail, learn, try again and eventually discover what they are capable of.

I dream of a day when every child in India has access to coaches who bring that kind of presence, patience, care and resilience to the field.

Coaches who understand that the child in front of them is not just an athlete.

They are a human being who is learning how to deal with failure, confidence, pressure, relationships, discipline, disappointment and joy.

The sport is simply the classroom.

And the coach is one of the teachers.

Maybe then we will not only produce better athletes.

Maybe we'll produce more children who love sport enough to stay in it.

More young people who learn to enjoy the process rather than obsess over the result.

More athletes who are resilient enough to keep going when things get hard.

And, eventually, perhaps more Olympians, more world-class athletes and more Indian footballers capable of taking us to places we've spent decades dreaming about.

Because maybe the road to Olympic gold medals and a FIFA World Cup qualification doesn't begin with better facilities, better tactics or even better talent.

Maybe it begins with something much simpler.

A child.

A ball.

A coach who cares.

And the patience to let them learn.