Are We Pressuring Athletes to Perform Too Fast, Too Much, Too Soon

I was reading an article last night from WeAreTeachers.com that made the claim that we are pressuring our kids to read to much, too fast, and too soon, and it made me think about the youth sports world, my own family, and whether or not we put too much pressure on our kids athletically too fast and too soon.

The article claims that reading has long been a privilege and a way to pass time and share culture, but it has recently become a forced method of information acquisition.  This made me think of a quote by Kobe Bryant where he said that

"Sports used to be something that kids go out and do for fun. But now it’s become so regimented where parents start to inject their own experiences or past failures onto their children, and it just takes the fun out of it.”

I have three young daughters who I am trying to teach to love sports, but it is a struggle for me to let go and let them own their experience.  I specifically struggle with how much should I teach and push them vs how much should I let them have fun, explore, and just be kids.

The easy answer is to just let them choose, but what is best is not often easy.  Us parents can choose all we want to just show up at games and just cheer our babies on, but when the competitive juices start flowing, and they start pushing, and their parents start yelling, we often want nothing more than our babies to show up and show out and outplay their babies.

I also think that the youth sports culture has been tainted with the influx of money and attention.  I long for the days where kids didn't specialize until high school and where academy and select sports were unheard of for 4 and 5-year-olds.  

The article states that when it comes to reading, we move so fast that kids have little opportunity to become comfortable and find joy in reading. Instead, they are moved to start to analyze what they are reading, and they are being asked questions about the main idea and inference in early elementary school.

I see similar aspects in sports.  Instead of letting kids learn and explore naturally, we pay for specialized skill coaches, tactic coaches, strength and conditioning coaches, mental health and performance coaches, and any other kind of coach who might give our kids an edge. This level of instruction and focused training is reportedly causing burn-out in our athletes minds and bodies. 

The article also claims that our expectations are sometimes unreasonable. Our students suffer failure after failure because we are in the wrong, and many develop anxiety about reading from their first experiences with it.  It is documented that mental health and anxiety is on the rise, and the level of expectations we place too early can't be good for all of our kids.

I'm still trying to figure this thing out for myself and my own family, so while I love information like this, I don't have the blueprint.  What I do have is a sense of purpose and a vision for what kind of people I want my kids to be as they grow.  I want to share my love for sports and my knowledge for sports with my kids, and I want my kids to be the best people that they can be.  If that means that they are nothing more than recreation level athletes, that is just as great for me as if they went onto be professional athletes.  As long as my kids are happy and growing as people, I am happy, and articles like this help me keep things in perspective: don't give them more than they are ready for too fast and too early.