Teaching Kids to Think (22 page)

Parents can be an integral part of supporting teamwork in athletics by partnering with the coach. Sports teams are wrought with social demands. There is the competition between players, social cliques develop, and appropriate and inappropriate joking occurs. While these same issues occur in other environments, on a sports team a coach is present most of the time. If a parent hears about a social challenge with their child, one option is to jump to conclusions, call the other player's parent, and complain to the coach. This might be tempting because it is an immediate reaction to a problem, but it would not teach the child how to deal with it himself and might lead to even more problems for him. The second option is to meet quietly with the coach and gather more information. Then, based on the information supplied by the coach, encourage the child to talk with the coach and figure out some ways to deal with it. Rather than reinforcing an immediate, less effective solution, this alternative reaction would teach the child to take a more thoughtful approach.

Work Ethic

Work ethic is a strong lesson emphasized in youth sports. Just as teachers have young children read every day in the classroom and ask that they read at home, coaches ask the same thing from kids on their teams. A baseball coach will ask kids to practice throwing and catching a ball and swinging a bat. The children who do these things every day, not just at a scheduled practice, build the skill much faster than the ones who don't practice at home. When children see their reading level get better with practice and then they see their throwing, catching, shooting, or kicking getting better with practice, it sends a powerful message: hard work pays off. Because practice is part of the playing on the team it is something they do without questioning it. Very few kids would ask their coach, “Why do we have to have practice? Why can't we just play the games?” because they know the answer. They don't have to be told; they get to experience their team getting better with practice. Kids need to hear that “hard work pays off” over and over again because that knowledge and experience will help them face daunting challenges head on later in life.

This is an extremely valuable lesson to teach children in this Instant Gratification Generation. There is very little instant gratification in athletics. We'll expand on this later in the chapter.

Communication

Another big part of athletics is communication. The more settings in which kids get to practice communication, the better. Playing a sport opens up many new opportunities. To start with, following instructions from a coach can be a new experience for young children. Parents and teachers are the adults they are used to listening to, but they see them daily and don't really see it as a choice. On the other hand, listening to a coach—a brand-new authority figure—can take some getting used to. Coaches often have very strict rules, usually centered on safety, and they enforce them a little differently than teachers and parents.

Most youth coaches who work with very young children understand that the purpose of participation at five or six years old is to foster a love of exercise and organized sports, but as the kids get older, the pampering disappears.

Coaches have a specific goal: to improve the skills of their players while fostering a love of the game and commitment to the team. They constantly communicate with their players throughout practice and games. They may be more or less strict with their players than any individual parent, but our favorite part of the unique communication between coaches and players is the lack of electronics. It is basic verbal communication paired with nonverbal cues. Coaches don't text, email, or instant message their players during practice. They talk to them and model for them what they expect.

When Should Kids Start Playing Organized Sports?

You might be surprised to learn that about thirty-five million children as young as five years old play organized sports each year.
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It seems as if kids are starting to play younger and more frequently than we might ever have imagined. Youth sports can be broken into four major phases of entry. For the sake of this chapter, we will call them pee wee, youth, juniors, and high school athletics.

Pee Wee

This level of athletics is usually thought of as starting at about five years old or kindergarten. The huge team sports at this age are soccer and T-ball and softball. At this level, the leagues and coaches will often try to keep friends on the same team because they know the goal is to get kids to try a sport and want to play it again in the future. Most of the games or matches at this level are designed to be fun, and it is rare to find a league that actually keeps score. In fact, the kids on both teams typically go home thinking they won, which is great. The idea here is to learn fundamentals and have fun. It is even common to see coaches help kids from the other team.

The skills learned through playing sports at such a young age have the potential to impact these kids for the rest of their lives, and we are not talking about kicking and throwing balls. When a young child gets to learn that practicing something results in better abilities in that skill, there is the opportunity for them to think it could happen outside of sports too. With kids just beginning to develop their work habits for school, the timing couldn't be better. In a generation of young people who don't always learn the value of hard work, practice, and discipline, starting to play athletics at such a young age can introduce those values.

Youth

This period is probably best thought of as starting with kids about eight years old (third grade) to twelve years old (sixth grade). A couple of things happen at this level that are different from the pee-wee leagues. The most important change is that a lot more sports are open to this age group. The major sports like football, lacrosse, volleyball, hockey, water polo, and basketball begin around this age and they attract huge numbers of kids and a heightened level of competitiveness.

A notable difference in athletics at this level is that coaches put together teams to win. Leagues begin to do away with participation trophies, and teams are comprised through a draft to balance skill level, instead of based on friendships. Practice will be a bit more physical, and the coaches will start to expect more from the children.

This is also a wonderful time for kids to be learning something new about themselves. Athletics at this level begin to require some patience and planning, which are great skills for a generation of kids that are generally impulsive and distractible. If you want to be good in any particular sport, you need to understand it and put yourself in position to be successful. In sports, that means being aware of what is about to happen and plan for it. To do this, one must pay attention to a lot of details, consider others, and be proactive. Because natural opportunities to practice this are rare in this generation, sports offer an alternate chance for similar practice.

Juniors

The next phase in the progression of youth athletics occurs when kids are twelve or thirteen years old, which loosely coincides with middle school. Most children interested in trying a sport either will have already started their leagues or will enter a league at this time. Even if it is a sport that doesn't have younger age divisions, many of the kids playing will have been practicing the fundamentals at home or with friends.

In juniors sports, many advanced players will have moved to competitive leagues, and it is understood that recreational leagues are for all levels. Around this age kids move from elementary school to middle school, and being a part of a team is another way to expand a child's social connections. It is also a good time for children to begin to learn how to manage multiple responsibilities such as homework, social time, and commitment to a team.

High School

Being a part of a high school athletic team can be a really rewarding experience. The level of competition is often very high by this point. Some of the sports teams can have kids who may have been playing the sport for as long as ten years before trying out for the high school team. For the kids who haven't been very involved in athletics or never found a sport they were passionate about, there are still opportunities available. Some teams take everyone who goes out for the team regardless of skill level or number of years of experience. For instance, it is not uncommon for the freshman football team to take all the boys who go out for the team. In addition, other sports like track and cross-country and swimming and diving welcome everyone because they can field large teams.

Recreational Leagues vs. Competitive Club Teams

I met with a family who wanted some advice about how to balance sports and school. Their son had just entered high school and was playing a sport on one of the school's teams. The parents checked their son's grades online and discovered that he had several Cs and Ds. They were rightfully conflicted about their commitment to their son's education and the commitment he made to the team. One of the obvious choices was to pull him from the team. I asked the parents if they had made the coach aware of their son's situation and what his thoughts were, and they had not. The family met with the coach the very next day, and the son told his coach how bad his grades had gotten. When they asked for the coach's thoughts, he suggested that instead of attending practice with the rest of the team, the boy should do extra conditioning before school and meet with tutors after school until he had all Cs or better. The coach didn't let him practice with the team until his grades improved, but he didn't kick him off the team either. The parents avoided having to pull their son from the team and angering his teammates and coaches while trying to keep his poor grades secret. I hear that he never worked harder at school or his sport.

—Dr. Ron

When making the choice to play competitive or recreational sports, the child's home and school responsibilities need to be part of the equation. In order to teach children and teens how to balance multiple responsibilities, everything must be considered, not just their preferred activities. Just because a child is an excellent athlete doesn't mean he should take on the commitment of an advanced league, especially if his schedule doesn't allow for it.

Parents also need to do some self-evaluation and determine whether the drive to play athletics is coming from their child or whether it stems from the parents' interest in the sport or desire for their child to be on an advanced team. It is not uncommon for parents to be highly invested in having their children play the same sports they played as a youth. We sometimes encounter parents who, from a very early age, have made their child play the same sport that they excelled at, almost as a continuation of the parents' success in their own childhood. This leaves the child with little choice but to follow his parent's wishes or risk disappointing his mom or dad. We encourage parents to let their children find the sports that suit the child's interests and passions.