When A Young Wrestler Isn’t Motivated by Watching the Olympic Trials
The wrestling Olympic team trials is the top story in all of wrestling right now. Over the last few days, dreams were made, and dreams were destroyed. Fans of wrestling, both young and old, got a bird’s eye view of both emotions. Some fans couldn’t wait to train to make their future Olympic dreams come true after watching the events of the weekend. Other fans were indifferent.
If you are a parent of a young wrestler who is indifferent, here is a bit of advice. No matter how bad you want your child to be an Olympian in the future, unfortunately some children will remain indifferent. Some young wrestlers just seem to resist showing self-motivation to train outside of normal practice hours no matter what you do.
As a parent who wants what’s best for their child, it’s tempting to use bribery and other carrot and stick tactics to push your child to greatness rather than let them naturally figure things out on their own. But the fact is, you can only push a child to be good. You can’t push a child to be great.
Pushing a child to do better, be better, and achieve more has limits and may even do harm. These limits and the potential harm may not appear until it’s too late to self-correct. This is the cautionary tale that I’m warning you about today.
When a child is first starting to develop their independence around 5th or 6th grade, pushing a child to be the best wrestler still works. At these younger ages you can push your child to do better, be better, and achieve more than any other wrestler in their age group. This early success in wrestling is very gratifying for parents. Unfortunately, early success in wrestling that’s a result of heavy-handed parental influence backfires.
Don’t Risk Sacrificing Great for Good
As your wrestler matures into the adolescent years, the playing field changes. It’s in this stage of development that true elite talent starts to emerge. This is because some adolescent children start to develop their true passions in life. Passion that fuels self-motivation, that in turn fuels determination. Moreover, this self-motivation and determination goes into hyper-drive after watching someone else’s Olympic dreams come true like they did this weekend.
When you compare an adolescent that had early success because of heavy handed parental influence against a self-motivated child that is a “late bloomer” there is a stark difference. More often than not, the early achiever will plateau at good, and the late bloomer will accelerate to great.
The common reason for this is that the early achiever will want success to please their parents, while the late bloomer will want success for themselves. Those who are self-motivated will always have an advantage over those who are pushed by external motivation.
The best thing a parent can do when they can’t help themselves when it comes to pushing a young wrestler, is to push them to find self-motivation. This means helping the wrestler learn about their innate strengths and use those strengths. This also means helping the wrestler understand their personality and what uniquely makes them tick. History has proven that self-awareness cures many problems when you invest in it.
Once a child develops the skills to motivate themselves, the sky’s the limit. I have an assessment specifically for parents of youth, middle, and high school wrestlers that can accelerate this process.
The fact is, when you push your child too much you sacrifice finding their great just to push them to good. Pushing a child to good can get them into a great college, but this may sacrifice their ability to graduate. Pushing a child to good can make them look successful on paper, but this may sacrifice their success in life.
These are the risk of pushing a child to good. Simply stated, sacrificing great for good is just not worth those risks.