Bethanie Mattek-Sands Quotes

We're taking sports too far and starting kids too early.

I'm really troubled by the prevalence of single-sport specializations. I want my kids to do as many things for as long as they can. Specialization is a natural thing that should come later - it shouldn't come for 8-year-olds.

You don't want to push your young players too much.

I think no matter what you do you go through stages when you play. There was a number of times when I didn't do very well or was tired. It was too much to combine school and tennis altogether. Parents need to step in and say, take a little time off, do something fun.

I am not a supporter of juniors increasingly going to top clubs.

At six years old, our son had friends who played soccer from 4 P.M. to 7 P.M., Monday through Friday. A six-year-old practicing as much as a Division I athlete.

Well of course, when you have kids, you become more protective and you think about how to give them the healthiest upbringing and the best future.

I was a social worker most of my life while raising my two boys.

It's important that you don't lie to yourself. If you lie to yourself, you end up with burnout.

I did 100 concerts in 2010 and I had a bit of a burn out at the end of the year. I was absolutely exhausted and didn't want to do it any more.

At times, you get going and you think you need to work, work, work, and your body is going to get fatigued at some point.

If you look at top players - Steffi Graf, Andre Agassi - so many had a parent who was domineering to the point where you really had to question his sanity. It was nuts.

For eight years, I taught special-needs preschool for 18 months to 3-year-olds. It's what I was gonna do with my career for a while, and then I got a little burnt out.

I had a general burnout: I got extremely tired; I couldn't do anything anymore. I canceled tours; I cancelled everything in my life. For a year and a half, I was completely sick; I couldn't do anything. So yeah, I wanted to write about it in my lyrics. 'Anatomy Of A Nervous Breakdown' is really about that, the inspiration behind it.

Vince McMahon is a workaholic; he sleeps 4 hours a night. The last thing that you want to tell the old man is that you are burned out - you need a break.

I think some of the best pieces of advice for me was when I talked to some of the great players who have had success in this league how much they emphasized the importance of rest, that you can't just go 100 miles an hour all 12 months of the year every day and just keep going. That is a recipe for burnout.

I put way too much pressure on myself and put too much into CrossFit. It had become who I was. That's really when I figured out I don't want my identity to be CrossFit.

I'm doing my best to mindfully raise my son to feel safe and encouraged to express himself.

The meaning of self-esteem is to feel lovable and capable. As parents, we must love our children unconditionally and give them a sense of being nurtured. That's the lovable part. Then, we must provide structure - rules, boundaries, daily or weekly household tasks that give them a sense they are making a contribution. That's what helps kids grow up feeling capable.

If I cannot rest and relax, all the work I do is for naught.

I work seven days a week and I work about 12 hours a day, from the beginning of September to about the end of May; the school year. I take two days off, Christmas and New Year's, Thanksgiving sometimes - two and a half. And the result is that I bonded myself to my desk.

By trying to make things easier for their children, parents can make things much harder for them.

~I don't always have a lot of energy, but my kids almost always revitalize me. Of course like any working mom, sometimes I'm guilt-ridden. I think I should be sitting down doing an educational computer game with Carrie or taking Ellie to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. These kids are such sponges, and I should be taking advantage of that.~

If getting our kids out into nature is a search for perfection, or is one more chore, then the belief in perfection and the chore defeats the joy. It's a good thing to learn more about nature in order to share this knowledge with children; it's even better if the adult and child learn about nature together. And it's a lot more fun.

We have this cultural obsession with work and productivity as if we're better people if we don't stop and take some time for ourselves.