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The time to call time-out is when your child doesn’t seem to be enjoying their sport. As their parent, you need to take a protective interest in their athletic passion and help them to understand what might be interfering. Sometimes young athletes lose interest in their sport when they feel their coach has lost interest in them. While many coaches preach commitment to their players, they might not reciprocate with this commitment in games when it comes to playing time.
Unfortunately, many parents encourage their children to try out for the most elite clubs in their area when they might be happier on teams where they feel like a more valued member. The superficial status that might be derived from wearing a warm-up jacket of an elite team or putting their decal on the back of a car doesn’t make up for the emptiness a young athlete feels when he is left on the bench game after game.
Parents of younger athletes can schedule a meeting with their child’s coach to share their concerns, but many coaches of high school age athletes believe that the goal of the team is to win, and that players need to sacrifice their individual goals for the goal of the team. While all athletes need to make sacrifices for the good of the team, it is not realistic for a player to continue making sacrifices without receiving some reward in return. In my high school locker room, there was a sign that read, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” When a friend of mine quit the football team, the only explanation he offered was, “When the going gets boring, the bored get going.”
ENCOURAGE OTHER INTERESTS
It puts too much pressure on young athletes to have their whole lives revolve around their sport. The athletes who get the most nervous in competition are often the ones who have put all of their psychic eggs in one basket and fear that they will be left empty if they fail. They have trouble seeing themselves as anything beyond a gifted athlete. They might even come to believe the reason people like them is because they’re good in the sport.
While I have always known the importance of raising well-rounded children, my wife sometimes still needs to remind me to turn off the TV during basketball season. She is determined to make sure that we don’t become a family that can only be together when playing or watching sports. Good for her. I think every family needs someone to remind the group that there is an active and compelling life beyond athletic competition.
Lately, when our kids complain and ask why they have to go to religious school, I tell them, “So you’ll know that there is something else in the world besides sports.” What they don’t know is that when I was their age, sports truly was my religion. It was the one place I felt most alive. But I want them to have different experiences than I did as a child. I want them to feel a security that runs deeper than wins and losses.
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