kids

Youth Sports from the Rear View Mirror

/ kevingdrendel / 3 Comments

Young Nicholas WinI read a short, but very insightful, article on youth sports that strikes me as very good advice after six children of my own and 22 years of coaching them and other kids. You can read the article here: The Only Six Words Parents Need to Say to their Kids about Sports.

It is very simple, but many people “get it wrong”. I include myself in that statement. It took me much of those 22 years for me to learn what is important with kids and sports. I might finally understand.

Like the article says, team and individual sports can be tremendous character builders, instilling lifelong lessons like team work, dealing with winning and losing, overcoming fears and anxieties, leadership, sacrifice, discipline, hard work, goal setting and many, many more things. The problem is that parents, and coaches, sometimes do more damage than good and sometimes negate the lessons that are there to be learned.

I feel like I need to let parents in on a little, nasty secret. Not every kid is going to be a superstar. The six year old “stars” are not necessarily the twelve year old stars or the high school varsity stars. In fact, there really are not that many stars. Even the stars are not always going to shine. The star little leaguer or varsity player in Everytown, USA is probably not going to be a scholarship athlete, let alone a professional athlete. (Do not tell them though! They will figure it out soon enough.)

The percentages are infinitesimally small the number athletes who get athletic scholarships for college and infinitesimally smaller yet the number of athletes who will make a living at any professional athletic level.

Let your kids be kids and be satisfied that they have fun, work hard and develop some life lessons along the way. In fact, if they do not have fun, do not work hard and do not pick up any character from youth sports, they are missing the best part!

Winning and losing are their own proving grounds without much help from you. Not everyone gets a medal. There are clear winners and losers. Kids know that. Emphasize the fun, the benefits of working hard and the nuggets of character building lessons, and the rest will take care of itself.

One of my favorite stories, one of the times I think I got it right, was when my 20 year old was about 10 or 11. He wrestled and was pretty good, but one opponent “had his number”. They met up at the kids regional qualifier for state for a place match. It was a battle. The other kid led most of the match, but my son fought hard and tied it up in the last seconds of the third period. In overtime, it was scoreless until the very end, when the other kid managed a takedown to win it.

Both kids literally fell over from exhaustion, completely spent! They both lay there, unable to get up, even after the referee, impatiently wanting to move on after a long day, told them to “Get up!” They had both used every last ounce of strength and stamina and could not move.

I told my son how proud I was when the impact of another loss showed on his face afterwards. I pointed out that he “left it all on the mat”, and the other kid did too, and that is all anyone could ask. I reminded him of that match often, and I still do, and he always smiles.

Kids These Days

/ kevingdrendel / Leave a comment

Millenials Still Living with ParentsI met with an estate planning client today to review and finalize their estate planning documents. We made small talk as copies of the signed documents were being made about the differences between kids growing up now and when we were young.

We have all read the summaries of “the way it used to be” that are floating around social media on the Internet. They are usually nostalgic looks back with some unspoken angst about the different way kids grow up today.  The topic of discussion with my clients today focused on the way we used to organize our own when we were kids, compared to the organized sports and other activities that kids experience now.

Most everything is organized for kids today by adults. There were some organized activities in years gone by, like little league and scouts, but most of the time that we spent as children involved finding ways to organize and entertain ourselves. We would wear the treads off of our bike tires seeking out friends to play with and things to do. Boys would organize impromptu baseball and football games, playing games of 500 and “smear the queer” (we were not very politically correct, and we played hard). We would build towns in sandboxes and play army on dirt mounds and find a million different adventures and things to keep ourselves busy. Girls would play hopscotch, and house and so on. We would organize neighborhood games like kick the can, and red rover, and flashlight tag. We played games that had no names that we made up, sometimes on the spot.

Kids today do not know what to do with themselves. They expect to be entertained. They expect for someone to organize them. They fill their time up with cable TV, Xbox, YouTube and other forms of entertainment.

I suggested to one of my sons one day when he said he was bored that he organize a neighborhood football game. He looked blankly at me, not knowing the first place to start. I told him how we would do that when I was young and left him to his own devices.  An hour or two later, I saw him and a few of his friends standing in the front yard with their football gear on from the organized youth football league, staring just as blankly, looking awkward, not knowing what to do. They never did play a game of football that day. The attempt fizzled.

Our kids are used to having their lives organized by others and, perhaps, have less initiative to do things themselves as a result. My mother did not know where I was much of my youth, and that would have been true for most parents then. Now, we keep close tabs on our children.

I recently read that “millennials” (as I am told the current generation is called) are less likely to have a driver’s license by the time that they are 18 than past generations. The statistical image in this blog article states that over 30% of millennials still live at home. The Pew Research Center reports the percentage at 36% and a whopping 56% for 18-24 year olds! I did not know anyone who lived at home after the age of 18 when I was age 18, unless they were returning home for the summer from college. (Of course, my memory may be just a little old.)

Can we really blame though? After all, we raised them!