Children in Sport - Part 2
Author: Jake Downey
Date: 08 Feb 2007
Category: Jake Downey
Article 2. Getting the Balance Right
In the previous article I concluded that we must get the balance right between personal development and the pursuit of success as far as the growing child in concerned. First let me explain what I mean by personal development and the pursuit of success so that you understand just what I am trying to balance.
Personal development includes such areas as physical, mental, emotional and social development. We want to ensure that children are generally fit and healthy while they grow up. In this respect I think we might all agree that the right amount of exercise, diet and rest are important factors. Mentally they need to be learning about the world they live in and how to operate in it both through informal and formal education, and experience of daily life. During these years they are acquiring knowledge of the world, and beliefs and values about what is important in life. This is when they experience in the school of life that what they want often conflicts with what adults believe they ought to have. During this period emotions run strong particularly when, as often is the case with teenagers, they are trying to assert their viewpoints and make their own decisions. They want to be treated like adults while still learning to become adults. Freedom to express their views and to choose what they do and how they do it are important features in their lives.
All this takes place within the context of the various forms of social life. Social interaction in the teenage culture, the home, the school and the badminton scene all come under this umbrella. Imagine belonging to a number of different clubs, each one with different rules about what one ought to believe and value in life. And each one with different rules on how life ought to be lived. How does one decide?
It is a difficult period and for many young people one in which they just learn as they go along. What is important is that they should experience these different parts of life and are guided in forming rational beliefs and encouraged to pursue those interests they have chosen which we, as adults, believe will be of value to them.
Quality
If experiences in worthwhile activities are considered important, it is also desirable that the experiences should be quality ones. It is through participation in activities and interaction with other people that young people begin to form their self image. We would all agree that we want young people to form a positive self image; one in which they have confidence in their ability to cope with the different situations they encounter whether it is in their studies, their social life or their sport. It is important that they grow up to believe in themselves, and to become secure and confident individuals. In this respect the successes they achieve in life play an important part. So let me now examine the pursuit of success and work out where that fits into the life of young people.
Being a somebody.
What is success? I suppose the simple answer is that if one tries for a goal and then achieves it, that counts as success. Why do we value success? One simple answer could be that we value achievers. They are somebodies. Somebodies have status.
There are numerous activities in life in which we can set goals and become achievers. Consider the number of goals there are. Write a list from your own experience. How many sheets of paper might you fill?
How many times have you been an achiever in some task you set yourself and felt good at your own success. Imagine a life without such an experience. Frightening! Yet, unfortunately, there are many occasions for some people when they know they have been achievers and don't feel good. They even feel like failures.
How could this be? Quite easily if you think about it. We feel good if we know that others, particularly those people who matter to us and whom we respect, recognise or would have recognised and praised our small achievements, our minor successes. But more than that we feel good when those others recognise and are prepared to praise our efforts even when, sometimes, we may fail to succeed in our task. But, if our minor successes continually go unrecognised and unpraised we may even wonder why we should bother to attempt anything. And, Even worse, just imagine what it must be like not only to go unnoticed but for someone to criticise us for failing - for someone to imply that we are failures regardless of how hard we tried.
What a confidence-booster! I reckon that most of us will have met these ego destroyers at some time. How tough must the survivors be? Or how much self doubt or lack of self confidence must they have?
WHAT HAS ALL THIS GOT TO DO WITH YOUNG PLAYERS IN BADMINTON?
The connection is quite easy to see if you think of badminton being just like any other worthwhile activity. There are goals within badminton, tasks to be attempted and outcomes which can imply success or failure.
There are personal performance goals which include: getting the strokes right, skilful footwork, intelligent tactics, trying hard throughout the contest, being fair and sporting. Without these it would be impossible for any player to defeat others of comparable standard. That is why players must work on these aspects in practice and training in order to become competent and then highly skilled badminton players. They appear as tasks that the player should try to get right which is not always easy to do in a game. Getting personal performance goals right in competition is a big achievement, e.g. to change grip quickly from forehand to backhand as necessary, to hit a backhand clear to the rearcourt while under pressure from the opponent. These are personal successes which should give personal satisfaction regardless whether the player wins or loses the game. When players get something right they are entitled to have that personal success recognised and praised. Not only does that make them feel good, thereby strengthening their egos and helping to build self confidence and self esteem, but it also encourages them to keep up the work they must do if they are to become competent in their craft.
There are also competition goals. The outcome of skill and effort being victory or defeat in a contest. With victory usually comes the feeling of personal success; with defeat can come the feeling of personal disappointment. However it should be recognised that TO BE DEFEATED IN A CONTEST IS NOT TO FAIL AS A PERSON!
In badminton there are these three goals. There are many different performance goals which young players can try to achieve, all of which contribute towards realising the competition goal of winning. And there is the effort goal, to try ones best. There are therefore many aspects of a young player's game which can and should be recognised and praised. ALL YOUNG PLAYERS CAN BE ACHIEVERS!
The ‘failure' approach
It would be quite easy to ensure that all young players were achievers by recognising the distinction between ‘effort' (trying one's best), performance goals and competition goals. Unfortunately too many adults only consider the competition goals; too frequently they are only concerned with winning. For such parents any sort of failure is disapproved of. Even making mistakes is seen as a failure to get things right, and disapproved of because it may cause defeat, the greatest failure. From this viewpoint little account, if any, is taken of the amount of effort or the good aspects of performance that might have gone into trying to win.
Parents and coaches who take this approach ‘fail' to get the balance right as they possess a limited view of what counts as success in the game and a lack of knowledge and understanding about the feelings and emotions of their young players. Those who take this approach risk distorting and retarding the personal development of young players. The outcome of placing the emphasis solely on winning, is that too many young players can become doomed to experience permanent failure.
It is not uncommon, therefore, for some players to come to see themselves as failures as a result of adopting the expectations and beliefs of their parents and/or some coaches and peer group (influenced also by parents and coaches) that the only measure of success is victory. Hence the negative behaviour in competition when they make errors or experience the fear of losing.
A different emphasis
By placing the emphasis on performance goals and on becoming a better player children would learn the skills necessary to win games whilst also developing their self confidence as they master the different aspects of the game. They would learn to analyse their performance more efficiently and begin to understand and appreciate what counts as good play. They would learn to appreciate the importance of regular practice to get things right; to give a hundred percent effort in a contest without any fear of losing and without any fear of failure that can come with defeat - because they would no longer see defeat as failure. They would learn that doing one's best (effort) and skilful performance are highly valued in our social life and are essential for both future success ( as winners) and for the personal satisfaction that often comes from feeling a somebody. Children would begin to develop a positive self image.
Some years ago, when I was the Director of Coaching for the BAofEngland, we became aware of these issues in our weekend camps when coaching national development groups. Parents would phone to ask their sons and daughters how they were doing. What they wanted to know was who their children had beaten or lost to that day. This was a typical question when the players returned home. The asking of such questions indicated a lack of understanding of the point of development work in which the emphasis was on teaching young players how to master the craft of playing badminton. Our sessions were not used for competitive trials and games in which players might be scared to experiment with new ideas and practise new techniques in case they lost. So we discussed this with the players and advised them that the answers to questions about how they had got on should be, "I can now hit a more powerful smash", "I have improved my defence and my tactical play as the front player in doubles…etc". These were all performance goal answers. Any other sort of answer and the players would have missed the whole point of their weekend camp. They would have wasted their time and ours.
Young players would benefit more if adults and coaches would take into account the different sorts of goals and give praise where due for different sorts of achievement. If they did so it would be one area in which we could claim to have got the balance right.
In the next article I will
discuss how we might create the right environment for young players.
(c) Jake Downey 2002
