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).