It really is about how you play the game
Print Edition
Is an over-emphasis on winning preventing your child from making it in the world of sport?
If you had asked me to write this article 10 to 15 years ago, I would probably be giving you an entirely different perspective. However, there is a huge shift happening in sports culture in the way professionals, schools, sports clubs and indeed individual sports approach the introduction, development and retention of young and talented athletes around the world.
Although it seems perhaps alien to the older generation, it is backed up by comprehensive research and is driving a massive cultural shift around the world, making and forcing the world of sport for the young a far more attractive, fun and child-centered place to be.
In short, the world of sport is realizing that, unless we effectively introduce, develop and retain young people’s involvement in sport and activity at all levels, the importance of sport and activity is going to decline.
“Winning,” and it’s close brother “losing,” have always been an accepted, though divisive, reality. But it is all too often, even those elite athletes who have had millions of dollars spent on them, preparing their bodies and minds for the pressures of competition, struggle to cope emotionally and psychologically with winning and losing. Ask any athlete, PE teacher or coach: Unless you are extremely lucky, you will need to deal with losing far more on the dangerous path to the top than you ever will with winning and it is how we deal with and learn from our failures that ultimately decides our overall success.
We have now begun to realize that, in extreme cases, we have in the past been asking children as young as eight or nine (or younger), to process and deal with extreme circumstances and pressures in sporting competition that even a fully grown adult and highly trained professional struggles to cope with: emotional, volatile and pressurised situations.
As a father myself., I would not like to see my son face these pressures.
These are situations and pressures which if they were played out in other contexts at home would verge on child abuse!
After all, in order to create a winner you have to create a loser, and the damage to confidence and self-esteem, of those on the negative side, is simply no longer acceptable nor sustainable.
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