When Youth Sports Parents Compare their Child to Another Young Athlete
One of my favorite mental reminders for sports parents is that comparison is the thief of joy. The reason why is because in youth sports, parents just can’t help themselves when it comes to comparisons.
- Some parents see their child’s teammates as their competitors. These parents won’t find joy until they’re confident their child is the best on the team.
- Other parents are constantly searching for a better team. These parents won’t find joy until they think they have their kid on the #1 team in the nation.
- Finally, we have the parents who don’t see their child as being the best, or even close to it. These parents are constantly comparing their child’s height, weight, and athletic ability trying to figure out why their child is not as good as the others.
Youth sports parents just can’t help but to use the old “eyeball” test to compare their child to their peers. It’s practically human nature for a parent to think their child should be at the same level of athletic ability or better than all the other children in their age group.
The fact is the old “eyeball” test doesn’t work. Every child is different, and every child matures athletically at a different time. It’s a mistake to view performance in youth sports as a tell-tale sign of whether a child is athletic. If a child comes out of the womb with the ability to throw, kick, or run you can’t assume the child is a future star athlete. On the other hand, if a child struggles with coordination and competition, you also can’t assume the opposite.
The Growth Mindset in Youth Sports
Carol Dweck, the recognized thought leader on the growth mindset, has a fantastic quote from her research that makes this point perfectly.
Just because some people can do something with little or no training, it doesn’t mean that others can’t do it (and sometimes do it even better) with training. This is so important, because many, many people with the fixed mindset think that someone’s early performance tells you all you need to know about their talent and their future.
Furthermore, Dweck’s research on the growth mindset destroys the misconception that youth sports stars are the only pool of young athletes who have the potential for future athletic success. The truth is, future success in athletics, as well as most other endeavors, depend more on coaching, passion, and purpose than it does on innate talent.
Youth sport’s parents often get caught up in the fixed mindset because they don’t understand the concept of relative age. This causes them to often mistake early biological maturity for high potential and talent. Therefore, parents view young athletes who have matured biologically faster than chronologically as future stars. While those young athletes who mature later as lifetime scrubs.
The truth is it’s impossible to know if a young athlete will be a future star or a lifetime scrub. It doesn’t matter how good or bad they are in youth sports. This is why the #1 job of parents and coaches in youth sports is to foster the same love of the game for both high and low performing youth athletes.