I watched the “Shawn Gets the Yips” (Season 4, Episode 5) from Psych this week. Psych centers on Shawn, a psychic detective with the Santa Barbara police department, and each episode starts with a flashback to his childhood. In this episode, Henry, Shawn’s father, teaches Shawn to play second base by hitting ground balls on a patch of grass in front of the ocean. Henry sets up a glove chest high on a target from a shooting range. He hits the first ball to Shawn who fields it and throws perfectly to the glove.
Shawn’s instant success excites Henry who praises him and his throw. Shawn shows enthusiasm and asks for another ground ball. Henry is ready and willing, but decides to add a bunch of technical instructions, telling Shawn exactly where to position his feet and changing his target. Shawn looks confused as Henry hits the ball and throws the ball well over the target, smashing a window.
The cold open encapsulates youth sports. Everything starts positively with a father and son playing in their front yard. The father is interested in the son’s improvement, so the activity is not truly play, which is done for its own sake, but it is close. Parent/child (or older siblings) informal play should be the beginning of every child’s foray into sports, not an organized, adult-led activity. Play is the best environment for early skill acquisition.
The initial success and positive reinforcement also is good, as Shawn shows real desire to continue. Developing competence is a big driver of continuing with an activity. Shawn performed well and received praise from his cantankerous father. Parents primary role with children should be positive, reinforcing the child’s effort and embracing his enthusiasm.
The activity would have been great if this had continued with Henry hitting balls and offering small bits of praise (“That was perfect”) and hustles (“Get ready. Get low.”), to use the terminology from Ronald Tharp and Ronald Gallimore’s study (1976) of John Wooden. They could have had a nice day near the beach and gone for ice cream afterward: A perfect day of childhood play.
Unfortunately, in his enthusiasm, Henry instructed Shawn, despite referring to his initial attempt as perfect. Too often, coaches and parents cannot help themselves. They see a child perform a skill successfully without their intervention, and they feel compelled to involve themselves. They fear a dip on the next repetition, I suppose, and want to avoid any regression. They want the child to be successful, but they do not trust the child on his own, as he lacks experience and mastery. They insert themselves, attempting to compensate for the lack of experience and rush the process of mastery.
I made nine of ten free throws in our opening tournament in my first season of organized basketball. The next week at practice, our assistant coach (the father of a fourth grader) decided I needed to change my free-throw shooting technique to be better. He was considered a bit of an expert coach because his eldest son had played college basketball. I was the best free-throw shooter on the team and in the area (won a local, then citywide contest to prove it), but he focused on me, changing my stance, talking about my elbow, and criticizing my pre-shot routine. Adults need to involve themselves, even when a child is successful. I never shot as freely again.
Parents and coaches often see a small bit of success, which could be beginner’s luck, and attempt to capitalize on and improve it. They change their behaviors completely rather than maintaining the same attitude that preceded success. Henry was positive and relaxed as he hit the first ball, but changed to more demanding and prescriptive as he hit the second ball. Praise and hustles quickly became technical instructions, which became a reproof (body language) when Shawn broke the window. The initial positive, playful experiences become a negative work-like experience.
My largest clientele when I worked as a private trainer was players whose parents were a coach or former college athlete. The parents knew they possessed the knowledge to help their children, but also possessed the intelligence and humility to trust someone else in order to retain their child-parent relationship. They remained the positive reinforcement after games and training, while I provided the instruction and critiques. They could shoot around with their sons and daughters in their front yards without needing to instruct or ruining the father-son/daughter time with instructions or reproofs. They could be a parent, not a coach.
We set up children for failure when we see the initial success, such as Shawn’s first throw, and announce his precociousness to the world, which is now common with social media. Players post their child making a shot on a mini hoop and title it with “Class of 2040” or something similar. I imagine these posts are made in jest, but the attitudes pervade.
Many coaches and parents proclaim an 8 or 9-year-old as a surefire college player, but few make it. Part of the failure is the difficulty with evaluating really young children, but some has to be the environment, the pressure, the expectations of achievement placed on young children who should play for fun at that age, rather than training for a professional career. Once they meet the inevitable hiccups in the talent development journey, will they have the grit, the growth mindset, and the resilience to persist or will they collapse under the weight of their disappearing talent?
Seeing mistakes or areas for improvement and not saying anything is difficult, as coaches and parents feel their job or purpose is to help their children develop and improve. Sometimes, the best way for a child to improve is for the adult to remain silent. Allow the child to learn on his own.
Children make mistakes. Part of the learning process is trial and error, making and learning from mistakes. When we instruct immediately, we disrupt this learning process. Furthermore, when we offer explicit, internal, technical instructions, we overcomplicate the skill. Players need knowledge of the skill (the doing), not the knowledge about the skill, as Mark O’Sullivan says. When Shawn threw a perfect strike on his first try, he did not need instructions about the perfect execution. He just wanted another try. He was motivated and interested. Hit him another ball. Let him try again. Children need more play, more child-initiated activity.
Tharp, R.G. & Gallimore, R. (1976). Basketball’s John Wooden: What a coach can teach a teacher. Psychology Today, 9(8), 74-78.
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.