Posted on behalf of Will Cavallo:
Everybody has heard “practice makes perfect,” but everybody also knows the practice does not make perfect. There are no perfect people out there including professional athletes. Practice does help with the development of certain skills. Now more than ever parents are introducing their children to sports earlier and earlier. This places a massive amount of pressure on the young kids. Some parents expect their kids to be able master these skills quickly when it is almost impossible to master the skills.
In the article, “Sports Skill Development in Kids,” the author, Stricker says, “Having a clearer picture of this process hopefully will allow adults to reduce the pressure perform skills for which they placed upon youngsters to may not be developmentally ready” (109).He was referring to the topic of maturation rates of children. All children develop at different rates and not many people can predict when they are mature enough to learn certain skills. He is saying that if we do know when the right time to develop the children they will be able to learn these skills in a stress free environment.
Stricker also mentions that parents reinforce the habit of winning to young children. He says we need to not just appreciate the top place finisher. I feel that we don’t need to just praise the gold trophy, because this might discourage children to play that sport again. If we reinforce winning and they don’t win than who would want to do that again. Being a soccer player since the age of five, winning was always stressed on my teams and I. I think that this helped shaped me into the very competitive person that I am. It doesn’t have to be a sport that gets me going it could be anything that I can turn into a competition. That is the positive of stressing winning early, but I still don’t think that it should be stressed on young children.
In the article, “ Pushing too hard too young,” http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4556235 by Jacqueline Stenson she says, “Given all these factors, it’s not surprising that some athletes simply burn out on their sport. Like I was saying the children may just give up or “burn out” in the sport. Kids who are enrolled in sports at the age of 9 or 10 still may feel the burn out effect. Parents need to realize when too much is too much.
Like I said before I have been a soccer player since I was five and still learning skills today. In the article, “The Effect of 45 Minutes of Soccer- Specific Exercise on the Performance of Soccer Skills,” the authors, Stone and Oliver discuss the idea of skills in soccer. They said, “Ultimately, skill to execute a successful pass, dribble with pace and control, or shoot at goal with accuracy, will determine the outcome of a game” (Stone and Oliver 164). Skill is what wins games. I think that more skilled teams have a better chance to win, but there are no guarantees in sports.
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There's no question that in our society there are immense pressures put on many young children to perform at a high level athletically, even at very early ages. Rec sports have turned from just simply fun into screaming matches between parents, and breeding grounds for the next big star in some people's minds. Stricker states this quite clearly, making the argument that, "many parents and coaches try to push their youngsters to achieve that extraordinary ability at an even younger age. This approach can be unhealthy and can lead kids to specialize too early in a particular activity, have recurrent overuse injuries, or succumb to the effects of pressure and prematurely quit their sport," (Stricker 109).
ReplyDeleteThis is why parents and coaches drive kids to practice so much. If a child wants to practice on his own then that's a great sign and the enthusiasm and commitment shouldn't be ignored, but to force kids into this is one thing. In the Stone and Oliver article we saw that skills significantly decreased after the 45 minutes of play, so the emphasis on practice in this case is even greater.
Is drive and pressure a good thing? To a point, I would say yes. Going off of the previous comment I agree that parents pushing their children to be successful is necessary to a degree. But in the stories we hear now, whether it's kids being forced to practice hours upon hours a day, or parents getting way too involved at the actual sporting events, I think our society is teetering on the edge of losing the fun of the sport for some children. As long as the happy medium is found, there will obviously be no problem. But with the impact and importance that professional sports carries in this culture, if anything I only see overbearing parents and the burn out effect increasing.