My 11-year-old son and I preparing for a wrestling match.
I once looked my son in the eye and told him that getting good grades in school is far more important to me than his performance on the sports field. My children’s future success in life certainly will be dictated by their grade-point average not their batting average. Yet, I will more quickly work with them on perfecting their wrestling moves than I am to teach them at the kitchen table about long division. My hypocrisy has put me into a common Daddy dilemma: how hard do you push your children to excel in competitive sports at an early age, and at what cost?
My 10-year-old daughter competing in the 25 meter buttefly
My sons and daughter all have natural athletic talent and have tasted glory on the field early in their sports careers. But unlike me when I was their age, their performance does not always motivate them to greater heights. If I had let their free will dictate, they would have missed out on a lot. Three years ago when he was eight, my oldest son signed up for full pads tackle football, played quarterback, and won an MVP award in his rookie season. When football season ended, he told me he wanted to wrestle. He went 20-2 in his first year and took second at 52 lbs in the Northern Virginia Wrestling Federation. Then he said he was ready to quit. The next season, he reluctantly returned to the field after I emphasized to him that I did not want to see him laying around the house watching tv and playing video games. I also resorted to bribery. He went out and won two more MVP awards in his second-year of football and wrestling, respectively. As he accepted his awards, he again openly discussed quitting. He is now going into his fourth season of football and again he refused to play right up until the moment he changed his mind.
My second son, who is almost 8 and often follows the lead of his older brother, is showing similar signs of excellence-followed-by-early-retirement. Two weeks ago, he somewhat reluctantly participated in a free summer football camp run by the local youth football program. The coaches chose him as Player of the Week for his age bracket. He strutted around for a few days and talked trash about how good he was before reversing himself. He said, “I am not a football guy.” My daughter has no such problems. She swims and plays two season of soccer per year and takes the winter season off. My youngest is only 2 and I am fairly confident he is going to be excellent at whatever he plays.
I know that pushing my children to compete can easily backfire. They might learn to resent Daddy’s pressure. They may burn out before they reach high school. I don’t want to be the kind of dad that takes his kids sports career way too seriously. Afterall, I know they aren’t destined for a professional sports career. Yet I have convinced myself that at this stage of the game that I know better than they do how much enjoyment and personal growth they will get out of sports. So I feel justified in using a manipulative combination of incentives and persuasion to get them to do what I want.
My 7-year-old after a hot, full-pads August practice
I apply pressure in a number of ways, and always with the support of my wife who also values what competition has to teach developing children. I explain to them the specific reasons I want them to play a sport and what they will get out of it. I tell them how good they are. I list off their friends who are likely to be playing. I offer to buy them something they covet. I have even offered them outright bribes to play. I also use negative incentives. The most effective one is quite simple: I tell them that Daddy will be disappointed if they don’t at least give it a try. I also warn them that not playing sports will likely lead to limitations on playing video and computer games at home if they become too addicted. This combination of benefits and limitations has so far worked every time. Once registered and paid, they know that quitting is not an option (although I am prepared to pull them out of a sport if it is obviously not fun for them). I also know that if I talk them into something that doesn’t work out so well, I will have damaged my credibility, goodwill and trust down the road. And I wouldn’t blame them for that.
So why put so much on the line if sports is indeed not as important as, say, school? I value everything that competitive sports offers in the way of a character-building experience:
- How to win and lose gracefully
- How to perform under pressure
- Importance of teamwork
- Individual grit and toughness
- Opportunity to test your skills against your peers
- Fun
- Physical fitness (thanks, Peter, for the addition)
So far, I have gotten lucky and my kids have done everything I have asked of them.
My oldest son this winter easily won a championship in wrestling in Northern Virginia and I suggested for the first time that he wrestle in the annual post-season tournaments. I wanted him to test his skills against the elite. He hemmed and hawed and declined. I then offered to let him buy online a new wrestling singlet in his favorite colors. He immediately agreed and went from reluctant to very excited. That particular incentive package cost me a measly $30. He went on to take second in the districts, and qualify for the mid-Atlantic regional tournament. He ended up losing twice and was knocked out, but we were all very proud of him. On the way back home I asked him if he could have known ahead of time that he’d get his butt kicked twice, would he have still wrestled. He said, “Yes. It was a good experience for me.”
I thought to myself, “What a great, mature thing to say. But, boy, it was a long road to get to that point.”
It is now January 2012… any update on your kids ?
The Manning brothers said their father (Archie) NEVER once pushed them to do any activity. Do you believe that ?
It is now January 2012… any update on your kids ?
The Manning brothers said their father (Archie) NEVER ONCE made them do an activity they did not want to do. Do you believe that ?
Rain Racer,
I have a grandson who was a superstar in soccer at the age of 5. He is now 7 and everyone has caught up and many have passed him. He seems to have lost any aggression in the sport that he once had. His parents are very busy people, so practicing with him in the backyard happens very rarely. They get very frustrated on the sidelines when he passes the ball to someone else when he could have made a play on goal himself. Personally, I think he’s thinking of the team….his shot on goal is not as good as others, so he passes the ball to someone he thinks will score…but this does not help him improve his own game. So, as a grandparent, this is a tough position to be in. He loves the sport and seems to have some natural talent but I’m afraid his parents’ frustration is going to take his desire away, if they can’t back it up with lots of extra help in the backyard.
Any suggestions?
Hi Cheryl, that’s a great question. I went through a very similiar thing with my second son. My experience is that encouraging children to put in the work necessary to succeed on the sports field is very tricky business. Sometimes you might have to push your kids to practice, other times you have to back off and let them enjoy being a kid. If you put too much pressure on, they will resent you. If you don’t apply enough pressure, they perhaps won’t improve. So I try to do something in the middle, which often involves rewarding my kids for the work they put in. For example, I might say let’s go to the soccer field for 45 minutes of practice and we’ll stop for ice cream on the way home. My kids consider that a fair trade.
Unfortunately, the easiest solution to this problem is increasingly rare. If this was 20 years ago and in Wisconsin where I grew up, I’d suggest that your grandson to get on his bike and ride through the neighborhood looking for a pickup game of soccer with his friends. But in this day and age, I think you are right that developing sports skills relies more heavily on practiciing in the backyard with Mom and/or Dad (and if Mom and Dad are easily frustrated then the backyard sessions might become a burden). Hopefully Mom and Dad can back off enough for it to be fun for all parties involved.
On the whole pass v shoot thing, I tend to agree with you. Passing skills in a 7 year old is a rare thing, and I applaud the kid’s selflessness. His friends will no doubt enjoy playing with him because they know he not only won’t hog the ball but set them up to score. … I’d say that your grandson seems to have an advanced concept of how to play. He seems to instinctively know that good teamwork will often win out over individual one-on-one type of play. Afterall, scoring ain’t everything, but loving the sport is.
I hope that helps a bit. Let me know how it goes.
cheers,
Rain Racer
what sports should i play at the age of 16 i havent played sports yet and i am late for ice hockey , soccer and basketball ..
any suggestions ?
You can play anything you want. If you are worried about being too far behind other kids who have maybe played soccer, baseball or basketball since age 6, i understand that but I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Go out there and see what you can do, work on your game, and have fun and things will fall into place. I would say, however, that there are some sports you play primarily as a kid or a young adult and then don’t play again later in life (tackle football, hockey perhaps, fast pitch baseball) and other sports that you never outgrow as an adult (tennis, golf, basketball). So maybe you might want to opt for those sports that you’ll have a lifetime to play.
Remember Michael Jordan was cut from his high school JV team at your age so it is never too late. Good luck and let me know what you decide to do.
[...] 3) How hard should you to push your child into competitive sports [...]
We watched our nieghbor dad raise 2 sons. They are both accomplished athletes and play for college teams. He didn’t push them as much as play with them. They were always out in front with their dad playing basketball and throwing a baseball, playing a wiffle ball game or kicking a soccer ball. He didn’t let them watch much TV or play video games during nice days and told them if they ever didn’t have someone to play with, to get him and he’d stop whatever he was doing and play. He did just that. He put activities with them at the top of his to do list. It worked.
i am all for that.
I am actually a competitive swimmer in missouri, my dad has pushed me non- stop in karate, and swimming. I’ve had two major burn-out stages, one of one year, and another of six months. I burn out for one right right before highschool, but got the drive back up once i made it to state, and realized that it’s what is going to pay for my college. To ease the temptation of kids to quit you have to let them have friend time. That is the one thing my dad never gave me. My schedule was swim practice at 4:30 am, school, swim practice at 4pm, and come home eat dinner and do homework. Sophomore year my grades started to fall because i never took the time to care about them, i’m now a junior with straight A’s and doing college visits, i have a state trip coming up at the end of February and i am pumped. I might of hated my dad back then, but he’s helped me like no other. Without sports and being an elite athlete i wouldn’t of brkoen records at school, in track and swim, i wouldn’t of made all the friends i have now, and gotten my name out there for colleges to find. Pushing your child is a great idea, you just have to be there to comfort them when they do get upset and want to quit. Don’t do what my dad did and threaten to take me out of everything i love. I would tell my dad how tired i was of swimming and he would just threaten to take me out of Hapkido (a form of martial arts) & swimming, and he’d make me feel terrible like i was the one doing something wrong…
thanks for leaving such a thoughtful comment. as a dad, i think the tension comes when a dad recognizes natural talent in their child and wants to bring it out while the child wants to make friends, compete, and have fun. dads can rationalize it and think, “if I push him to win, then it will be even more fun for him.” dads want to be proud of their children and maybe can’t help their disappointment should they back off and let their child play too much, letting potential go untapped. and it is so hard to strike a balance between guidance and pushing too hard, and maximizing talent and burning out. it is great that you fought through your spells of burn out and got your passion back. good luck in your future endeavors.
I think it is perfectly reasonable to tell them they must participate in one physical activity/sport each school year. Football, wrestling, karate- to encourage their physical well-being and social well-being.
I wish my parents had done that, but they did not encourage any extra-curricular participation. I was a shy kid and remain a shy adult, and to some extent I attribute this to a lack of hobbies and team activity.
Rain Racer,
One thing that might also help is assisting in mental engagement with sports. Sometimes when a child has success in sports early they often have trouble not with focus, but staying with the game as a whole in situations where they aren’t involved in the action.
As kids get older, the details of what makes all the work make sense starts to occur to them, like the nasty kick out block on a 3rd and short play, or hitting a single the other way to move a runner up.
This only applies though if the child doesn’t mind putting the physical part of the work in, if they aren’t complaining about that, it’s really a boredom problem.
thanks Joshua, you might be right.
Couple of good points in your article. My kids are a little older but had a similar range of reactions early on, but now love sports. Two additional benefits. I found that it was another areaof interest we had in common, so that bringing up sports is always an easy way to lead into a difficult conversation (sex, social life…etc). I also notice that when I was an adult and came back to visit my parents it was nice to go out and do something active with my parents and brothers like play tennis or basketball rather than have the visit relate around food and meals.
I am 50 now and my kids still see me playing competitive basktball and enjoying it. Hope they will be able to do the same.
Provide as many opportunities as you can afford in time and money. Left to many children’s choice . . . they wouldn’t choose to participate because of all of the non-sports factors (e.g. who will be there? who is the coach? how will I get there? will mom/dad be there?). Natural questions but not related to the goals of sports – development, realtionships, challenge . . .
I believe it is almost neglect to allow your child to grow to the teens with no opportunity to develop the fine motor and gross motor skills of sports – dribbing, throwing, catching. Or to experience competing, winning, losing, and practicing.
After I read this, I thought about when baby Thao was little and me & Ky forced her to play basketball through the city parks & rec department. I don’t remember how old she was…10? She HATED it and was terribly lazy about it. She showed up to the first 2 games in jeans!
Just last weekend, I asked her if she had liked it and just didn’t want to admit it, or if she really did hate it, and she said she actually kind of liked it! That kid. I wanted to strangle her many times that year.
that’s hilarious about Thao not wanting to admit she kinda liked something. My kids are whacky and unpredictable too.
I’d add physical fitness to the list of benefits. Your kids will grow up feeling sports is a natural part of life and will never be the fat out of shape kid huffing and puffing their way through life.
yes, how could i forget physical fitness?