What Happens to Young Athletes When Perfection is the Only Option
It’s normal for sports parents to have high expectations of their children. Low expectations are a recipe for low performance and sports parents know this. Moreover, when parents spend more than $1,000 per month on youth sports, they don’t want to see their money go to waste.
However, it’s important for parents to remember that having high expectations can backfire. When expectations are too high it can turn into expecting perfection. Correspondingly, once the threshold crosses from high expectations to expecting perfection, bad things happen.
A parent can crush a child’s joy of sports by expecting perfection from them. Once a child feels that it’s impossible to live up to impossible standards, this leads to emotional burnout.
A research study done at the University of Alberta by sport psychologist John Dunn found the following:
Athletes who think failure is not an option will eventually experience some form of emotional burnout, or put incredible levels of pressure on themselves by creating an unattainable standard of perfection and are emotionally exhausted all the time because nothing they do is ever good enough.
Parents must be vigilant not to encourage this behavior when raising athletes. This is challenging because it’s instinctive for parents to want to raise a child who is a winner. However, there is a threshold of expectations that parents must not cross.
Yes, it’s important to hold young athletes accountable to goals, but it must be ok when an athlete falls short of those goals. Progress in sports is not a straight line. Young athletes must have room to make mistakes, take breaks, and regress. If they don’t, the pressure of perfection will eventually become too much.