Hello Fitness Friends! I’ve got a bit of a departure from usual form today. But, as it’s still Mental Health Awareness Month, it’s on point. I think it is important to talk about the intersection of mental health and athletics in kids. And our role as adults.
Sports and athletics is an incredibly important part of a child’s growing process. The physical aspects aid in motor development, strength, agility, and hand eye coordination. And, of course there are the mental and emotional aspects: team building, fair play, and emotional support.
But at some point, at least in the US, we adults have forgotten the single most important thing that kids gain from playing a sport. Fun. Sports are supposed to be fun.
Focusing on competition, rather than skill development and team building in any league under twelve years old, takes the fun away. It assumes that kids are physically and physiologically able to function as adults. It pushes them to a level that they aren’t psychologically ready to deal with.
This focus creates a perfect storm where kids are getting physically hurt. I’ve heard several stories floating around about coaches not drafting teenage female soccer players unless they have already had their ACLs repaired. To say nothing of the number of young baseball pitchers having Tommy John surgery in their teens. Oh, and should I talk about the stats on reinjury after return to sports in teenagers?
By pushing young, growing, and developing bodies to their physical limits at such young ages, we are setting kids up to be in pain for a large part of their adult lives. Younger bodies also don’t physiologically function as little adults and the ramifications of that can be disastrous.
Competition at young ages also creates a psychological situation ripe for burnout. Often times kids don’t feel that they can pull back because mom and dad are invested. Mentally, emotionally, and more often than not financially. So the kiddos push through. Push through something they may not love. Push through pain (see above). Until they can’t anymore. And the recovery from burnout isn’t a walk in the park.
My background is exercise physiology, and while I was required to take several sport psychology courses, I do not profess expertise. Regardless, I want my kid to grow up and enjoy sports. Enjoying sports now will hopefully lead to him enjoying exercise and movement in lots of different forms as he gets older.
So, when my nine year old told his assistant basketball coach after the second game that he wasn’t sure if he really wanted to play, I didn’t freak out. I did encourage him to keep his promise to his teammates to finish the season. And I told him that if he didn’t want to sign up next year, then that would be okay.
Just as we should be teaching consent in sexual matters to young kids, as adults we should respect that kids are the boss of their bodies. If they don’t want to engage in a sport, then we should respect their choice for their body. Consent is just as much mental and emotional too. If a kid doesn’t want to play, pushing them into it creates more emotional tension that they have to manage. And kids have a tendency to lash out, push back, and turn away when they feel backed into a corner.
So with my kiddo, we tried to keep practice nights easy. We pulled back on the postmortems after games. And we let him lead the conversations.
He did keep his promise to his team. And he’s been out in our driveway shooting with his neighborhood friends more this spring than any other year. But if he decides next winter that he doesn’t want to play, that will be just fine with his mom and his coach.
