Learning From Our Mistakes.
The youth sport experience has lessons at every turn. Parents: are we picking up on them?
In business and entrepreneurship, a statement often heard is that the most successful are the ones that learn from their mistakes. Not about committing the fewest mistakes, but rather learning from them.
The mistakes we make teach us how to proceed in a more efficient way. Some will preach that those who can make mistakes quickest, allows us to figure a better way to do things.
We must be open to learning from our experiences.
In the world of youth sport, this concept also holds true. As coaches and parents we make mistakes everyday. What we learn from them determines what value we can pull from the mistakes.
In edition 178 of The Physical Movement, we address learning from our mistakes as it pertains to youth sport. Let’s dig in.
Very few parents understand what is happening in the youth sport experience.
Friend from The Physical Movement Matt Young shared feedback from parents addressing the question on what would they do different if had to do it again?
· Speak up when something does not seem right and step in to protect best interests of our kid.
Not feel intimidated to ask coaches more questions
So often, as parents we figure that coaches know what is best for our kids, and all means are ok in the development process.
We know for sure that is not the case, and while the majority of coaches mean well, tactics that demean or breakdown a kid are not justifiable.
Questioning the why things are done the way they are, stepping in when behavior is not acceptable should be encouraged in all parents.
It should also be encouraged by coaches, to provide the proper outlet on when and how questions can be asked in an open forum
Coaches often can feel the interference from parents is extreme on issues like tactics and playing time, but shutting that down is not the answer.
· Adhere to a calendar around participation and not a particular team’s agenda on specialization. Too much focus on one sport at expense of benefits that come from participating in others.
One of our most read editions was around sport specialization. (see it below). A big thank you for subscriber Mike Boyle for re-tweeting this recently.
Please share this with anyone who thinks sport specialization is the best way to develop a young athlete.
· Education on the training process and the impact of the hours and hours of training on a young body.
Yes, often the outcome of this is overuse injury.
For so many reasons, building the body up in our young athletes becomes the #1 transferrable physical skill we can encourage and shepherd.
There are so many ways to do this, as we have documented (some resources below), however it starts with empowering ourselves on the process.
· Focus on the process that kids want rather than the outcomes. More about fun, and social and less about wins/losses.
If you ask kids, they will list a whole list of reasons they want to play and very few will say winning. Winning is a parental goal. The psychology of why this is so important to us as parents is a good topic for a another day.
Suffice it to say, ask the kids why they want to play and focus on helping make that happen. As parents we sometimes have a hard differentiating between what is best for our kids and what we want for our kids. We want them to enjoy playing, and it is more enjoyable to win that lose, right? Logical, yet this is not at the root of why kids want to play.
