As Ego, We Go

As an Upper Elementary Guide, working with students from 9 to 12 years old, I am often confronted with, and confront my students with, the oncoming doom of puberty and adolescence. My job is to present the final gauntlet of human experience before they either forget it all or don’t want to hear anything resembling advice from anyone ever! UGH! (Capturing such angst in writing is the sign of true genius, or madness, both of which I am lacking). What I have seen trending in my years as a teacher is that students…children…are often hitting puberty before they have had a chance to fully secure confidence in themselves that should alleviate some of the confusion and chaos that follows. Adding to the physiological mess of it all are the increased social demands, real or perceived, that make a scuffle a brawl.

How then does this affect our young athletes and their ability to manage school, social life, and a competitive field? How do we recognize the signs of psychological burnout and misdirection and its impact on the fragile emotional component in regards to sport? How do we resist our urge to (metaphorically) strangle the living daylights out of them and attempt to contact that scared, confused, and eager young adult that got lost in the big scary world?

It is going to take an investigation into Ego (of which I will provide a brief glimpse) and an attempt to highlight the urgency of supporting these creatures at an early age, especially ones who plan to participate in any competitive field.

The Freudian Slip-pery Slope

Sigmund Freud often gets a bad rap. (Or does he? Do people still talk about him? Has the public’s opinion changed?) We aren’t here to discuss anything more than his theory of the Three Stooges of personality: the id, the ego, and the super-ego. In short, the id represents basic instincts and impulses and is impulsive and irrational. (Study trick: use all words that start with “i” to remember what the id is). The super-ego strives for perfection and achievement of morals; one’s conscience. The ego attempts to operate between these two forces, balancing impulses (id) and inhibitions (super-ego) while maintaining rationality and testing reality.

At this point, you may be confused, asleep, both, or worse…left wanting more. (For those of you who feel this final way I will include some resource links at the end). To narrow the focus of our purpose, the Ego is driven by the id, but attempts to find was to express these desires in a socially acceptable way. Now, let’s superimpose that on the generic definition of “ego”: a person’s sense of self-esteem or self-importance.

Obviously, mixing a splash of Freud with anything will take it up a notch, so I want to caution against a full marriage of these two ideas. However, if we identify the ego of a young athlete as a mix of both of these thought-camps, we are left with an explosive combination that explains the dramatic swings they are capable of experiencing and expressing.

The New Student-Athlete

Especially true for middle and high school student-athletes, life can be demanding, confusing, exhausting, confusing, and demanding. (Exactly). Not only do they face adolescence, but now navigation of a new, expanded social network, an array of external pressures and expectations, and increased exposure to their peers’ performances. The headline match-up becomes:

Ego Development vs Ego Protection

For a teenage athlete, this is the epitome of a zero sum game. Already in a constant, delicate state, there are still many external factors to consider. Has previous performance garnered high-praise such as local or national ranking? Has a depth-chart reflected an appropriate and realistic fish-to-pond ratio? Has a social group constructed a pedestal? Have parents and family members provided a support system that reflects an actual potential? Some of these external factors are also internally sparked. Has the athlete created a social media presence that accurately depicts their skill level? Does the athlete remain humble and driven or do they seek acknowledgement and notoriety? Where does the balance tip between looks and performance?

Does anyone envy this new breed? Would anyone choose to enter into this melting pot of passion, personality, and profile?

What Does It Mean For Coaches?

How many interactions can you remember with your athletes that made you cringe? Those “non-traditional” young athlete responses that look and feel more like a multi-million dollar athlete disagreeing with him multi-million dollar coach about how the game should be played? Those tantrums and emotionally (I’m really running out of synonyms for “fragile” at this point) disparate instances demonstrating Pride and Shame within a moment’s time?

Of course, we are encountering these student-athletes at their most vulnerable, in an arena that they may have created as a haven! If they struggle to keep pace with the image they have promoted of themselves within their sport, then they will undoubtedly react to protect that image. As a result, our best athletes are frequently the least coach-able, and dangerously, the least reachable.

It doesn’t help that their professional counterparts, also more exposed and publicized than ever before, are experiencing and demonstrating the shift to a “gotta look out for me” mindset even within team sports. (I don’t envy the history and mismanagement that has led to the business side of sports creating such animosity). But we need to improve our ability to not just coach, but teach and mentor as well, even when, especially when, we are closest to losing our tempers with our athletes.

How Do We Help Foster Personal Success?

Empathy is the first step in not kicking these athletes off the team. Minor joke, major point. We may not have all gone through that time of life with the same variables in play, but we have all gone through it. We have the hindsight to look back and understand its value, and recognize the coaches and teachers that meant the most to us during that struggle. We now have the opportunity to be those mentors.

Demonstrating the abandonment of Ego Protection in favor of Ego Development can benefit all parties involved. To show our palms to our athletes can help them see us as champions of their growth, not obstacles to it.

Open communication is valuable, but we need to remember that we may just be more static to all the noise they are attempting to manage. Listening may be something that few of those other influences are offering. Remember, all of their peers are probably going through the same issues at the same time. It is rare for those young adults to have the maturity to sit down and give each other the opportunity to speak with someone genuinely listening to what they have going on.

Finally, remember that regardless of your psychoanalytical leanings, they are going through some internal battles. They may reveal a lot of their challenges and struggles through the opportunity of sport. As always, we must observe, adjust, and coach, in all of our unique deliveries and approaches. On any given day, the biggest competition they are facing may not be the game on the schedule, and our jobs are about much more than wins on the court.

Own Your I

Additional Resources:

Google search: Id, ego, super-ego; Freud; Psychoanalysis; Ego

Turning "My Bad" into Good

The Problem

Coaches and Parents, I beg of you to stick with me at the beginning of this article. Believe me, I have been in the situation we are all envisioning:

A student, an athlete, a child fails to some degree at a task and responds to criticism, or redirection, or questioning with, “My bad.”

We all know the range of this failure has at least two scales. One is the actuality of the failure in terms of expected tangible outcomes and the other is how intangibly irritating their failure is to those of us in charge of the situation.

The normal, natural, and totally acceptable response, (ideally controlled enough to remain in our heads), is, “You’re [expletive] [combo expletive option] right it’s ‘YOUR BAD’! Whose else would it be?!”

Often, “My bad” is just as progressive as "I’m sorry” can be for children and young adults. They have no real desire to address, acknowledge, or investigate the ins-and-outs of their mistakes, so they offer a transition phrase with the intention of moving things along. Sometimes it may be meant to convey “I understand”, sometimes it may be meant to convey “get off my back”. Either way, it can be infuriating to those of use attempting to teach them an appropriate way of doing things or give them advice on how to improve their own standing and performance.

But what if? What if we were able to turn the tables on their attempt to sidestep a situation? What if we were able to use their moment of weakness to empower them? What if we could take “My bad” and help turn it into their good?

The Task

When do young, growing humans need more empowerment than in their most embarrassing, vulnerable moments? More, how do we help empower the ones who are passing on those failures as insignificant and meaningless? Entering into the task should be perceived as a contract, and a contract which comes with a failure clause: you may not succeed and that is just part of the deal. Understanding this before attempting anything is paramount to the “growth success” of the task.

With that understanding, (or those teachings after we have worked with individuals to embrace that reality), why not take “my bad” and agree with them? Not in the sense we all love to mentioned above, but in a way that acknowledges their part in the result as powerful and purposeful.

In the midst of a culture with a “victim mindset”, at least these individuals are expressing their own role in the story-line of their lives. Let’s take “My bad” and encourage our young subjects to take that same control and apply it to making amends or turning the tides. It is a simple concept, but one that will trap them in their own influence upon their life and their circumstance. Even if just for that one “ah-ha” moment while they are trying to process or deflect a moment of missing the mark, we can not only support them but help to train the instinct of immediately seeing the first step to recovery.

Simple but effective.

Own your “My bad”.

Own Your I

Extended Research

There are some sources that say former NBA Player Manute Bol may have actually lead the popular use of the phrase.

https://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/the-manute-bol-theory-of-my-bad/

Competitive Wellness Series - Raising Athletes from Day One

Youth Sports have become big business. The fact that I exist in the form of a training business specializing in training children and young adults is a testament to that. Parents are “recognizing” the potential benefit that comes with raising a young superstar, often without a firm grasp on the reality of the world of competitive sports. (Let’s be serious, if you want to raise a top-tier athlete, find an obscure sport for him/her to specialize in from an early age. But better keep your fingers crossed that it actual aligns with his/her passion or you’re going to spend a lot of money on a neat childhood hobby). The reality, however, is that the push toward early specialization and over-training leads to burnout and over-use injuries later in life.

There is a way to progressively prepare your child for the demands of a childhood athletic “profession” while simultaneously teaching him/her how to live well, and it starts at birth.

I will always be a proponent of youth sports. Yes I have some reservation about the “trophy for everyone” trend, but that really starts to exist a little bit later in childhood. If a plastic, mass-produced trophy inspires, motivates, and captures a child’s interest to continue to play a sport, stay healthy, and make life-long friends, then by all means lets keep filling parents’ attics and basements with them. But even before this “don’t you want to try soccer?!” pitch to your five or six year old, you could have already prepared your child to maximize the experience.

From birth to about 6 years old, your child is navigating the world learning how to survive. The early years, obviously, are reliant upon the parents until - roughly - ideally - the age of 3 or so. (Now before you think I’m saying that a 3 year-old is an independent human, I’m simply saying that by this point in his/her life, there is a capability to begin a continuous practice of independence). Within these years, you will always find (hopefully) numerous suggested resources about the benefit of allowing your child to explore, struggle, fall, etc. in order to gain a better feel for the world and build a healthy relationship with life’s obstacles and create the foundation of Confidence. The child is finding his/her strengths, weaknesses, powers, and powerlessnesses. All of this weaves a netting upon which to fall back on once the child hits 6 and starts exploring his/her place in the bigger world.

Failure is a part of sports. It is the nature of the beast. I’m not sure of any study that actually investigates all of the different forms of failure, but I’m sure it would be an area of study unto itself. (Consider me a candidate for my Master’s in Failure). The relationship that is formed between a child and “failure” (and its many different forms) is one of the true pillars of success in life. This is letting your child make a mistake and not over-reacting to a skinned knee. This is supporting your child’s teacher when the child is reprimanded instead of looking for an excuse and a reason it is someone else’s fault. This is, “Man, that must be frustrating, I wonder if there are ways you can avoid that happening next time?”.

The young athletes with poor attitudes often show a lack of resilience in their everyday lives. The young athletes that quit mid-season are often the ones who have been allowed to quit at things throughout their lives. The young athletes that give an excuse for performance are often the ones whose excuses have been accepted by their major influencers previously.

Building an athlete out of a child takes, first, the passion and commitment of the child - the true love of the game and understanding of competition. He/she should be the primary voice in what activities he/she does or does not participate in (after a certain age; again, making the decision for a young child to “try” a sport, even if for the experience of sticking out a full season of something, is still ok. They are children, after all, what do they know.).

But after that, it isn’t x-hours per week with a specialist trainer. It isn’t house league, plus traveling team, plus AAU. It isn’t “choose which sport you want to focus on or you won’t make it” or “Honey I know you love that but you don’t have time for that in your schedule”.

It IS the simple, wonderful, continuously-challenging act of raising a child, a person, who understands hard work, disappointment, success and celebration, camaraderie, selflessness, and grit, that is learned through (passively supervised for the sake of safety and being a parent) independence and own-life experience.

Remember early-humans didn’t become great hunters because matriarch said to stay home because it’s dangerous and you might get hurt…or took an already-dead prey and puppeteered it so the new-hunter thought he had been successful.

(I know that’s a stretch, but for real, “raising athletes” is simply “raising good people”, so start there).