How to Make Sure Youth Sport is Delivering on Your Expectations

 

Many parents sign up their children for sports for the social and emotional development, as well as the physical benefits. Sport can teach problem solving, emotional regulation, conflict resolution, and of course, leadership. But those aren't guaranteed outcomes. 

Here, board-certified family physician and TrueSport Expert Deborah  Gilboa, MD, shares ways to make sure youth sport is delivering on you and your athlete's expectations. 

Help Your Athlete Define Their Why 

It's easy for both parents and players to get caught up in a sport and spend years aimlessly going from game to game without ever defining why they're actually investing so much time and energy. Is it a scholarship they're chasing? Is it just for fun? Does your athlete see their sport as a way to stay healthy, develop their leadership potential, or simply spend time with friends? Gilboa suggests having a conversation with your athlete and getting clear on why they want to play and what success looks like for them—and for you. This becomes even more important as your athlete gets older and the expectations for the sport become higher. You may suddenly need to coordinate cross-country trips for Nationals, be expected to pay for extra camps and coaching, and of course, there's a time commitment for both parents and athletes that can cut into other priorities and activities. 

"Talking about the goals for sport participation is a reasonable conversation to have given the incredible expense and outlay of time and resources for not just the athletes, but the family as a whole," she says. "Your athlete should have a clear reason for why they're playing." This is useful not only to keep motivation high in the moment, but also so that you can regularly check in to ensure that the sport your athlete is playing still meets those needs. 

Make a Social Contract 

Once your athlete has a clear 'why' for sport, it's easier to define expectations for both them and for you as the caregiver. "It helps you better evaluate situations where they want to quit,” says Gilboa. If you know their why, it's helpful in making a decision about whether they should push through a difficult situation or if this team or sport is no longer serving them.” She suggests using their 'why' and coming up with a list of possible scenarios that your athlete may encounter that would potentially cause them to want to quit—and deciding how to handle each. 

For example, "If being the best on the team and being the star player is part of their 'why,' what will they do if another player who's better than them joins the team?" she asks. "Or what if their 'why' is spending time with friends, but their best friend decides not to play next season? They will almost certainly encounter moments like this, so knowing how they will respond can help you set your own expectations—and can open up deeper conversations about when it's worth pushing through difficult times." 

Help Lead Your Athlete to Skill Acquisition 

Don't assume that your athlete's coach is teaching them all the life skills that you hope sport will provide. "Sport can teach those problem solving, emotional regulation, conflict resolution, and leadership techniques, but only with the right team leadership in place," says Gilboa. “A coach who gets angry and screams at athletes after a loss isn't going to teach your athlete good emotional regulation.” 

If you don’t feel as though your athlete is learning these more intangible lessons from a coach, you can gently encourage them through post-practice or game discussions. “Having a discussion about the appropriate way to handle a loss gracefully with your athlete on the drive home from the game may help them better understand how to dial up or down their feelings,” adds Gilboa. 

Help Athletes Take Lessons Beyond Sport 

Even adults struggle to take lessons learned in one part of life and apply them to another, but often, we assume that our athletes are learning life lessons from sport and easily applying them elsewhere. But that isn't the case, says Gilboa. As a caregiver, it's important to be intentional about helping your athlete understand how those lessons from sport can apply to life. 

"It's a rare student who's truly a lateral thinker, someone who hears an idea in a song they listen to, or movie they watch, or a speech that a coach gives, and thinks, 'This is the exact problem I've been having with my best friend, and I should take this strategy from here and apply it over there,'" she says. "That is an unrealistic expectation to have. But you can help them make those connections by asking questions about what they're learning in sport and continuing to ask follow-up questions so they can discover other applications."