High Expectations

Every weekend, the best place to people watch is a youth sports event.  You hear coaches yelling at players, parents yelling at players, parents yelling at coaches, coaches yelling at parents, parents yelling at parents, and everybody yelling at referees.

When done right, youth sports is a beautiful thing where kids come out and play, make friends, learn how to work with others, learn how to be active, and progressively get better over time with the right support and encouragement, with the right amount of practice, and the right amount of passion and commitment level.

When it's done wrong, it's a circus.

One thing that I think is dangerous is having unreal expectations for our athletes.  We can have unreal expectations for our athletes when we think that they are better than what they are.  We can also have unreal expectations for our athletes when we know that they can perform to a certain level, but we haven't given them certain skills yet or they are put in certain situations that they haven't been in before and we just expect them to excel in this new and different environment.

For example, there was a 6th-grade playing basketball for a pretty good team against good competition.  The coach put him at point guard for the first time; he usually plays a different position.  When the other team starting pressuring him, it was obvious that he hadn't seen this type of defense in this situation, so he panicked and turned it over a few times in a row, leading to his team's defeat.

The kid was obviously shaken, and his parents didn't make it any worse.  With every turnover, they would tell something at him, he would look nervously in the stands, and you could see his self-worth continue to drop.

What he needed were motivation and encouragement.  What he really need was reps and practice in this type of situation and someone giving him the tools he needed to be successful in this situation.  What he got was ridicule and un-constructive criticism in front of everybody.  The kid knew he was messing up; he didn't need to know that everybody knew he was messing up.

I always ask parents how could they be mad at their kids if they, or their coach, haven't taught their kids something that they feel like their kids should be doing.  It's one thing to be upset with a lack of effort - my kids know that I expect them to their all as a core value of who they are - it's another thing to be upset when they just don't know how.  We can't expect kids to go out and automatically know.  It takes practice and reps and more practice and more reps to be able to perform something in the game.

Start With Fun

Next time your kid is messing up, just think about that.  Identify the difference between lack of effort, lack of execution and lack of know-how.  And think about what you can do at home to help them improve and succeed.