Talk to the coach before it becomes a problem

Looking back, the conversations that helped most were the ones that happened early — coaches and club staff knowing about a diagnosis before there was ever an issue in a session, rather than finding out reactively. If you're a parent, that conversation is worth having as soon as you're ready, even if it feels early.

Independence matters more than it might feel like it should

It's a natural instinct to want to manage everything on your child's behalf, especially soon after diagnosis. But one of the most valuable things in my own experience was being trusted, gradually, to manage more of it myself — because that's ultimately what has to happen as training and matches get more demanding and less supervised.

That doesn't mean stepping back all at once. It means building it up deliberately, alongside your child's medical team, so that independence grows at the same pace as their sport does.

What actually helped, from where I was standing

Being asked how I was doing, rather than being told what I should be doing, made a real difference to how comfortable I felt being honest about the harder days. So did having someone who didn't panic when something didn't go to plan mid-session — because it happens, and it doesn't mean something has gone badly wrong.

You know your child better than any article can. What I'd offer, from the other side of this, is that a diagnosis doesn't have to be the reason a sporting dream gets smaller. It just means the path to it looks a little different.