Learning Life Lessons through Sports
Bill really wanted his son to experience the fun of baseball the way he did as a kid. He was worried about the serious competitiveness that happened even in early grade school.
Discussion:
I want to share my friend John Child’s story as a coach of his 2 children to help us all remember the main point of sports for kids- to have fun.
John Child’s coaching style started with his management role at work. When he started a review with “you are doing ‘this’ wrong”, people would shut down and get defensive. So he started asking, “Tell me what you’re proud of.” and then asked, “What’s sub-par?” He found people to be surprisingly honest. It was easy for John to just “coach” them along to figure out solutions for improvement.
When John started coaching his child’s team—same thing happened. Kids shut down when told what they were doing wrong, not unlike the adults. Over time he developed a routine. Early in the season, after the first game, he starts the practice with what he thinks the team did well, then poorly as a team. Then he asks the kids to share something they were proud of and something they want to work on. He picks the kids with naturally out-going personalities first. Without fail, they pick something accurate in their self-critique. There are always 3-4 shy, non-athletic kids who find this process very painful, but John helps them through it. Every 2-3 games he repeats this, and gradually the shy ones have their hands up in the air as fast as the others. In addition, they start to critique themselves as a team and to see what the other team didn’t do as a team. This leads them to think for themselves on the field.
Team sports are a great place to learn life lessons.
- We belong. In addition to their team name, the team develops a song and a banner. Each game the kid who tried especially hard takes the banner home (John starts this at age 9. Every kid gets picked by the end of the season).
- Empowerment–everyone counts: If you show up to practice you get equal playing time.
- Everyone does something well and even the “best” have their weak points. We want the kids to be proud of themselves and to be proud to be on the team. We want them to learn to critique themselves
- Life is not fair. There will always be bad referees, people make mistakes. It is no big deal. (John deliberately makes bad calls in practice so they get used to it. “Bad calls” occur many times in life too.)
- Winning is just a by-product, success is something more. John likes to start with his soccer teams early at the kindergarten coed level and stay with them until they enter classics or high school. His “average” caliber kids have a lot of fun and also win most of their games.
ATTENTION ADULTS
50% of kids drop out of youth sports by age 13.
Number one reason: “It’s not fun anymore.”
LIFE LESSON HAVE FUN!
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If I knew then what I know now, I would have stepped up to being a coach of my kids sports teams.
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What was your biggest take-away?
What action step do you plan to take?
What additional questions do you have about this topic?
Hi! I’m Dr. Kathy. Welcome to my website! Although Family Empowerment Network is formally closed, we want to keep these resources available to you. Our belief is that parents are the most wise and intuitive about what is best for their children. However, parents sometimes need the support of effective, timeless, compassionate parenting information and strategies. On this website you will find our three parenting books on boys, girls, and kids’ social lives and ten years of monthly newsletter articles. In addition, a powerful, under-recognized resource is the support of other parents. Here you will find how to use our books as discussion guides for monthly self-led parenting groups. One last resource: I am still available to give talks and workshops.
