Taylor, Jim 1958-

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TAYLOR, Jim 1958-

PERSONAL: Born 1958. Education: Middlebury College, B.A., 1981; University of Colorado, M.A., 1984, Ph.D., 1985. Hobbies and other interests: Alpine skiing, tennis, karate, and running marathons.

ADDRESSES: Home—San Francisco, CA. Office—Alpine/Taylor Consulting, P.O. Box 475313, San Francisco, CA 94147; fax: 415-345-9830. E-mail—jtphd@alpinetaylor.com.

CAREER: Alpine/Taylor Consulting, president. Former professional alpine ski racer; former associate professor in the School of Psychology at Nova University in Fort Lauderdale, FL. Consultant to the United States and Japanese Ski Teams, and to the United Tennis Association; consultant to individual athletes in tennis, skiing, cycling, triathlon, track and field, swimming, football, golf, baseball, and other sports; lecturer to the Olympic Committees of Spain, France, Poland, and the United States. Consultant to the Miami City Ballet, Hartford Ballet Company, and the DanceAspen summer school; consultant with health and medical facilities, including the Mayo Clinic, the Stone Clinic in San Francisco, the Aspen Fitness and Sports Medicine Institute, the San Francisco Bay Club, the J.P. Parsien Human Performance Laboratory, United States Department of Defense, and to individuals, groups, and businesses throughout the United States; has given more than 400 workshops and presentations throughout North America and Europe. Former columnist for the Denver Post.

MEMBER: International Society of Sport Psychology, American Psychological Association, Association for the Advancement of Applied Sport Psychology, United States Professional Tennis Association.

WRITINGS:

Psychology of Dance, Human Kinetics (Champaign, IL), 1995.

Psychological Approaches to Sports Injury Rehabilitation, Aspen Publishers (Gaithersburg, MD), 1997.

Positive Pushing: How to Raise a Successful and Happy Child, Hyperion (New York, NY), 2002.

Comprehensive Sports Injury Management: From Examination of Injury to Return to Sport, Pro-Ed (Austin, TX), 2003.

Author of approximately ten other books. Has published more than 300 articles in scholarly and popular publications.

SIDELIGHTS: Jim Taylor is a psychologist and consultant to athletes and athletic organizations extending to the level of the United States Olympic Committee. As a marathon runner, a second-degree black belt and teaching instructor in karate, a certified tennis coach, and a former professional alpine ski racer, Taylor has a wealth of personal experience in the realm of sports and personal achievement upon which to draw for his books. Indeed, reviewers recommended his book, Positive Pushing: How to Raise a Successful and Happy Child, to coaches and teachers, as well as to the parents of athletic children. In this book, Taylor outlines a simple model by which children can become more successful in competitive circumstances, to enjoy that success more fully, and to gain more from that success in terms of self-esteem and personal growth. The way to do this, according to Taylor, is for parents to get their children involved in not more than two extracurricular activities (in order to leave time for family, friends, and schoolwork), to focus on the process of achieving mastery of the skills involved rather than on winning and losing, and to encourage the child to "own" the experience, warning parents and other concerned adults not to live vicariously through the child. While Taylor asserts that positive pushing from parents is an "absolute moral imperative," each chapter includes "red flags," which give examples of the kind of behavior seen in children when parents and other adults are pushing too hard. "Taylor's thoughtful, clear-eyed approach to a controversial subject will be appreciated by parents raising kids in a competitive world," wrote a contributor to Publishers Weekly.