Load Management and Mind Management - Don't Wear Out Your Kid Too Early

Load management is important so that we don't wear our kids' bodies down before high school.

Mind Management is important so that we don't wear our kids down mentally before they are in high school.

About 70% of kids quit playing sports by the time they get in high school, and a lot of it has to do with the wear and tear that we put on our kids' minds and bodies before they are even teenagers.  Another major part of why so many kids are quitting is because they just aren't having fun anymore.

Select sports and the time and pressure that it puts on kids can wear them down and out before it even starts to matter.  Very rarely will a kid get a scholarship for what they do as a pre-teen.  It doesn't really matter how good you are at 14; it matters how good you are at 16,17 and 18.

Us parents have to be mindful of this. We have to manage how many hours of work they are putting in each week. We also have to be mindful of how hard we push them mentally. Yelling at them, driving them, pushing them to go harder and be better multiple times a week is not good for them. We all have our breaking points, and at some point, they will just have had enough.

Don't be the reason a kid who loves sports and has potential quits, just because you want to have the best 10-year-old or play on the best youth team. When your kid is a senior in high school, nobody will remember nor will anybody care who was the best 8th grader.

Have a long-term view and plan for how you raise your youth athlete. If you want to see them play as high school seniors and beyond, they have to value the right things: hard work, accountability, mental toughness, grit, etc. But they also have to enjoy the game and survive the mental and physical grind. Don't push so hard that they fall out of love with the game.

“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.”

– Kobe Bryant, NBA Legend