juniors and negative emotions

[backhand]

How do you all deal with working with juniors who, e.g., express very loud, angry frustration at their unforced errors? Not anything like racquet throwing or anything directed at their opponent...just a head-turning, very loud "AAAAAHHHHH" or a head-turning, negative, exasperated "COOOME ON"...

Explaining the obvious (sending the wrong message to your opponent, working on improving mental/emotional toughness, not reflective of a balanced "inner game," energy drain, etc.) hasn't made an impact. Thinking of one 16-yr old in particular who is wired for intensity and passion for the game: he plays better when he is fully "into it" (that is what he calls "focus"). Poor appearances aside, the anger at himself is usually expressed as a very loud vent, but he is usually ready to play the next point. Only occasionally will it feed into overhitting...something that he is predisposed/wired to do anyway...so he doesn't think it's a big deal.

I haven't been able to make much progress in channeling his emotions. Thanks in advance for any comments.

[airforce1]

How do you all deal with working with juniors who, e.g., express very loud, angry frustration at their unforced errors? Not anything like racquet throwing or anything directed at their opponent...just a head-turning, very loud "AAAAAHHHHH" or a head-turning, negative, exasperated "COOOME ON"...

Explaining the obvious (sending the wrong message to your opponent, working on improving mental/emotional toughness, not reflective of a balanced "inner game," energy drain, etc.) hasn't made an impact. Thinking of one 16-yr old in particular who is wired for intensity and passion for the game: he plays better when he is fully "into it" (that is what he calls "focus"). Poor appearances aside, the anger at himself is usually expressed as a very loud vent, but he is usually ready to play the next point. Only occasionally will it feed into overhitting...something that he is predisposed/wired to do anyway...so he doesn't think it's a big deal.

I haven't been able to make much progress in channeling his emotions. Thanks in advance for any comments.

Since no one else had time to speak up on this, I'll share my experience with this.
I had a son very much like this and it caught me way off guard. Mainly because his play dropped off so much when he got caught up in this mentality. Back then I was also like this to some extent, but it seemed to help me get into the match more. I had been a poor example and it was hurting his game, each time throwing him into a downward spiral for his play level.

I resolved to be a better example for him and low and behold, my game and enjoyment of the game improved quite unexpectedly! It took time, but my son came around as well. What we did was talk and focus on how this would give us a chance to improve in matches where we were not playing our best. We would each cite matches and situations we had saved due to thinking in productive ways. We talked about how rarely that happened with our current outlook. If we started poorly, there usually was not much upside in the old way.

We learned that during a match, we needed to focus on the things that would give us a chance to do better. We learned that the best way to get rid of a neg thought was to replace it with a useful thought. No, not some "I am great mantra", but more of a thought about action we could take to improve our performance, such as working real hard to get great position on the ball for as many shots as we could. (yes, I loved that new piece on "position on the ball" and it was cool seeing that phrase of ours used)
Another example was when getting bad calls from a real cheater. Instead of getting mad about something that is hard to deal with, we would focus on hitting our shots 2 feet inside all the lines to make the calls easier for him to make. Our attitude was Heck, we should be doing that anyway!

If you can get him on board with the benefits of taking charge of his thoughts, along with helpful ideas on what kinds of thoughts are more productive, he can begin to find out what kind of player he really can be.