The Pica Perspective

If Your Child Wants to Play Sports

Based on what you've read in this blog or what you may have read or learned elsewhere, you know participation in organized sports before the age of eight is far from ideal. It doesn't provide enough physical activity. It doesn't offer skill instruction or enough opportunity for skill improvement. It's often too competitive and therefore stressful for young children. And children under the age of eight don't possess the physical, cognitive, social, or emotional skills to participate successfully in organized sports.

But he wants to play. It's an all-too-common scenario in today's culture. What's a parent to do?

Well, if you absolutely cannot talk her out of it, the most important thing you can do is make sure any experience your child has with sports is a positive one. Otherwise the possibility of a lifetime of physical activity is in real jeopardy. But just this one task entails quite a lot.

Since too often children are enrolled in sports that their parents are excited about, you'll first want to ask your child what sport he's interested in. Does he want to play a team sport, like baseball, or does he prefer an individual sport, like swimming? Choice is essential to both enjoyment and a sense of autonomy. And, regardless of the choice he makes, he'll want and need your full support -- even when he changes his mind and decides he wants to try something else.

Also, bear in mind that any time you play a child in a situation for which she's not prepared, failure is the likely result. With failure comes loss of confidence and self-esteem and, ultimately, a feeling of worthlessness. Surely this isn't what you want for your child and should be avoided at all costs.

Children join sports programs because they want to have fun. Failure isn't fun, especially when you're too young to understand why you're failing; when, no matter how hard you try, you still can't succeed. While it isn't necessary to succeed all the time, a child will have fun if at least the potential for success is present. And that potential is most apt to exist when there's a balance between the child's skill level and the challenge of the activity. If the challenge is too easy, boredom sets in . If it's too difficult, learned helplessness is often the eventual result.

So, once your child has expressed interest in a particular sport, your first job will be to look for a program that doesn't treat children as small adults or, worse, small versions of professional athletes, which is harmful on any number of levels. In other words you don't want to enroll your child in a program where he's expected to play games (or, in a sport like swimming or karate, to take part in competitions) that haven't been modified radically for young children -- where he's expected to use physical, social, emotional, and cognitive skills he hasn't yet acquired.

What do you look for instead? Look for a program where they actually teach children the skills they'll need to eventually play their chosen sport. Yes, some of the instruction can involve playing games. But these games shouldn't involve winning and losing. Nor should they be played in the traditional manner. Fields should be smaller, balls softer, equipment child-sized, and games shorter. Additionally, rules should be minimal, and there should be a small number of players per team.

Is your child having fun? Staying interested? Then it's the right choice for her. If the answer to either of these questions is no, it's time to look for something else.

Ready or Not, Here Come Sports

With spring here, I thought it appropriate to write about young children and sports. First up: why readiness matters.

Participation in organized sports, if developmentally appropriate, can offer children an opportunity for physical activity and social interaction -- both of which are critical to a child's development. But when the requirements and expectations of organized sports go beyond a child's level of readiness and maturation (when it's developmentally inappropriate), the experience will have more negative than positive results.

What determines readiness? Well, it's important to remember that every child develops at his or her own pace. Still, there are certain "givens" where young children are concerned. One is that they're still growing. Their bones haven't completely calcified, their muscles have not reached their peak volume, and their organs are not fully developed. Additionally, their bodies don't possess the mechanisms needed to relieve their bodies of heat; their visual perception is a long way from mature; and their eye-hand and eye-foot coordination won't be entirely developed for another several years!

In a nutshell, children are not just short adults. Among other things, expecting them to play adult games with adult rules and adult-sized equipment puts them in harm's way physically. Doctors advise against high-impact sports like hockey and football for children under the age of 8 because of the immaturity of their organs and skeletal structures. Soccer, which is thought to be safe for children of both genders, actually has a high rate of injury among young children. Even among professional players, almost one-third suffer at least one injury every season.

Where baseball and softball are concerned, the possibilities are even more frightening. These sports were recently determined to be the leading cause of sports-related eye injuries in children, with the highest incidence occurring in children between the ages of 5 and 14. Even scarier, during a seven-year period in the 1990s there were 40 baseball- or softball-related deaths of children in that same age span. The primary causes of death were blows to the head, neck, and chest.

Among the reasons for these horrific statistics are the facts that:

• young pitchers can't yet throw accurately
• young children don't possess the reaction time needed to instantly evade a fast-approaching ball
• the chest walls of young children are thinner than those of teenagers and adults
• figure-ground perception -- the ability to distinguish an object from its surroundings -- doesn't reach maturity until 8 to 12 years old
• depth perception -- the ability to judge distance in relation to oneself -- isn't usually mature until about age 12

According to the American College of Sports Medicine, more than three-quarters of a million children under the age of 14 are treated in emergency rooms for sports-related injuries each year. It's frightening and ironic, considering that concern about children's safety is one of the reasons parents enroll them in organized sports.

Then, too, there's the potential for psychological harm. Though not as devastating as the possibility of physical injury or death, it's still very real and can also be life-altering. Many adults harbor continuing feelings of inadequacy resulting from early failures in sports and other physical activities. Since children have sports-related perceptions of their ability by first grade, we can see that these beliefs persist over quite a few years.

Finally, there's another reason why readiness matters: the very real possibility that children who are asked to perform tasks for which they're not ready will develop bad habits. For example, the child who doesn't yet know how to throw correctly isn't going to learn to throw correctly because he's pitching a couple of games a week. The child who runs with his feet pronated (feet rolling in with baby toes comign up off the ground) won't learn to run correctly simply by running. Rather, the chances are that these bad habits will become more ingrained over time, making it probable that the child will be unable to continue pitching or running.

But, you're thinking, don't the coaches teach the children how to perform these skills? Unfortunately, the answer is almost never. Many well-meaning coaches, after all, are simply parent volunteers who don't know the correct mechanics of the motor skills involved. Other coaches are so intent on winning games that they focus exclusively on the skilled players, leaving the less-skilled kids to fend for themselves. Either way, it's almost always the game that matters -- not fundamental skill development.

One of the great misconceptions about youth sports is the belief that children who are enrolled in organized programs are taught the skills needed to play -- or to become physically capable people. More often than not, children are instead thrust into playing situations, given instructions that make little sense to them, and expected to go to it. It's rather like taking a child who can't yet walk and trying to teach him to skip first.

These kinds of negative experiences can affect a child for years -- if not a lifetime -- whether we're talking about injury, perception of ability, or poor skill development. All of these possibilities are likely to produce a child who may have begun sports participation with the greatest of enthusiasm but soon is unable or unwilling to take part in any physical activity at all.

Providing Feedback to the Little Ones - Part 2

As promised in Tuesday's blog (March 11th), here are some suggestions for offering feedback in developmentally appropriate ways -- ways that will be most helpful to young children:

• Make one correction at a time. Young children can't absorb multiple pieces of information.
• Use words you're sure a child can understand. "Go a little faster" makes a lot more sense to a preschooler than "Pick up the pace a bit."
• Correct the behavior, not the child. "See if you can try it with all of your toes touching the floor," as opposed to "You're walking wrong."
• A "sandwich" approach helps cushion the criticism. An example of this approach is: "That jump was really high. Make sure you bend your knees a lot when you come down. But you swung your arms to get really high with that jump." You'll notice that the constructive criticism is "sandwiched" between two positive remarks.
• Make your statements in the positive. For example, "Bend your knees a lot when you come down" is preferable to "Don't come down with straight legs." The reasoning has more to do with a child's developmental stage than with promoting self-esteem: young children often fail to hear the "don't" part of an instruction. In the example here, the child will most likely hear the "straight legs" part and do the opposite of what you suggested.
• When possible, use demonstration in combination with your words. The more senses used in the learning process, the more children retain. So if you demonstrate landing with bent knees as you explain it, the child has a better chance of understanding what you mean.
• Don't compare a child with anyone else! This serves no purpose except to create alienation between your child and whoever you're comparing him to.
• Remember, you're also modeling playfulness, and in true play there are no mistakes. That doesn't imply mistakes aren't made. Rather, it means that if a child doesn't get something right the first time, she gets a "do-over" -- but only if she wants one! (Remember do-overs -- and how freeing they can be?) Most likely, she's going to want to accomplish whatever you've shown her, and she will try over and over again -- sometimes while you're watching and sometimes when you're not. But she'll try because she wants to -- not because someone insists she should. (You may be relieved to know that in youth sports the most skilled players are typically those who initiate practice themselves and not those who are externally motivated by parents or coaches.)
• Use neutral, as opposed to judgmental, wording. Education experts say to avoid "moralizing" or judging when providing feedback. For example, a jump isn't "good" or "bad." A jump is either light or heavy, or high or low. If we use the former, we haven't told the child anything helpful. If we use the latter, however, we've provided both vocabulary for what the child did and useful specifics.

Finally, it's been said that coaches should use a four-to-one ratio of positive to negative remarks. That may be so, but I need to make it clear that "positive remarks" does not mean praise, praise, false praise, and more praise. If you really want to help a child improve skills, make sure praise is both deserved and specific. Together with your instructive feedback, your praise should provide information she can use to improve her skills.

Providing Feedback to the Little Ones

It's hard to watch a child -- especially your own child -- do something incorrectly and resist the urge to "fix" it. Often, our solution is to offer constructive criticism, a practice we see as both helpful and harmless. Unfortunately, what we say may be neither.

Young children possess two means of acquiring information about their abilities. The first is through exploration and discovery. A child sees someone else do a forward roll and becomes excited about the possibility that he could do it, too. So in the yard, in the living room, and wherever else he has the chance, he practices this move. The first couple of times, he can't get past the top of his head, so he eventually figures out he should tuck his chin to his chest. That helps, but once he does get over he ends up flat on his back, so he learns to make his whole body rounder. If he wants to do more than one in a row, he finally determines that if he bends his knees, keeps them bent, and finishes with his feet flat on the ground, it's much easier to launch into a second roll. That's self-feedback.

The second way children acquire information about themselves is through feedback from parents and other important adults in their lives. Such feedback is significant to them. They have a strong innate desire to feel competent and a compelling need to please the important adults in their lives. This makes for a powerful one-two punch and means we, as adults, have a responsibility to handle their feelings with care.

Now, you know that I'm not all about inappropriate praise or "giving" children self-esteem; but I feel strongly that constructive criticism has to be doled out in ways that are conducive with what we know about child development. With that in mind, the first thing to realize about constructive criticism is that to children it's just criticism. Furthermore, they don't always understand that our words are related to a behavior (their failure to bend their knees upon landing from a jump, for instance) and not to them as people.

Of course, if your child frequently lands her jumps with straight legs, or walks with her feet rolling in, or throws "like a girl," you're going to want to help her. And if the corrections appear to be something she can't discover on her own -- through self-feedback -- you should help her. You simply want to approach such assistance in the best way possible. So, in Friday's blog, I'll offer plenty of suggestions for how you can do that! Stay tuned...

What to Look for in an Organized Program

In the latest (March) issue of Parents Magazine, I'm quoted in a piece on the best "classes" for toddlers. With that in mind, I thought I'd expand on my thoughts here...

Even if your little one is too young for organized sports (and you know I think they are if they're under 8), you may still want to participate in some kind of structured physical activity program. You may be looking for regularly scheduled opportunities for you and your child to socialize -- to get together and have fun with other parents and children -- or to set aside a certain time each week where physical activity is guaranteed. If so, you won't have any trouble finding programs from which to choose. The difficulty may lie in choosing the right one.

Many centers, in the tradition of playgrounds, provide space, equipment, and opportunities for moving and socializing. Some offer Mommy/Daddy-and-me "classes" for babies and toddlers. Some offer drop-off programs for preschoolers. The latter type should have a small participant-to-instructor ratio (no more than 10 children per adult). With any kind of program, the instructors should be well trained, with special understanding of early childhood. The equipment will be child-sized, but they should also be of the types that were originally created with children in mind. That means there are no treadmills or barbells -- no pieces initially designed for adults but later miniaturized for children. Finally, the program must have a philosophy of fun first -- of play, as opposed to regimen.

Beware of programs that promise to improve your child's physical prowess, "accelerate" his skill development, or get him "pumped up" (increase his muscle strength). The first two aren't physically possible. The final promise is somewhat of a possibility, but generally strength training isn't appropriate for children under 12 (primarily because the bodies of younger children aren't yet fully developed). Even if getting pumped up were a possibility, because fitness is fleeting -- an ongoing process, as opposed to a finished product -- any pumping up gained will be lost as soon as your child stops working at it.

If your child is still a baby, it's best to avoid infant exercise programs that call for working your little one's limbs. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) warns against programs in which a baby's limbs are exercised, held in various positions, or otherwise manipulated. Naturally, you wouldn't intentionally push beyond your baby's limits. Still, it's all too easy to do, and pediatricians are seeing more fractures and muscle strains as a result of programs like these.

Before making a decision, visit the centers you're considering and bring your child with you. If the program is intended for infants, the emphasis should be on ensuring one-on-one time between you and your baby, during which you gently play and move together. If your child is older, ask yourself which programs look like the most fun. Which offer a balance between structure and free choice for the children? Are their goals developmentally appropriate? How well do the instructors interact with the children? Most important, which program is your child most enthusiastic about?

Parents & Sports

Ellen's post in response to my blog called "Do Sports Build Character" just begged for some comment from me on sports parents! In other words, it gave me the perfect excuse to address this issue -- if only a little for now...

I absolutely agree that this is an area that calls for balance -- and that an awful lot of sports parents are pretty unbalanced where their kids athletic "careers" are concerned. The example Ellen gave of the parents whose two sons -- ages 8 and 10! -- are being prepped for college hockey is a perfect one of parents who need to get a better grip on reality. So, here's some reality:

• Most children who begin specializing in a sport at an early age end up quitting, either due to burnout or overuse injuries. According to a survey conducted by USA Today and NBC, 75% of the children who'd started playing organized sports at 6 or 7 had stopped playing by age 15.
• Only 25% of the stars of youth leagues become stars in high school.
• Fewer than 1% of children playing organized sports will obtain a college athletic scholarship.
• The odds of a high school football player getting to the pros are 6,000 to one.
• The odds of a high school basketball player getting to the pros are 10,000 to one.

I actually saw a YouTube video today (interesting timing, since I almost never go to that site) regarding this topic. Don Lucia, coach of the University of Minnesota's men's hockey team, talks about parents and coaches in youth hockey. He starts off by saying that the best coaching job in the world is to be head coach at an orphanage: No parents! He also says that if parents took all the money they spent on camps, equipment, training, etc., and put it in a savings account, they wouldn't need their children to get athletic scholarships for college!

Great point!

Do Sports Build Character?

It's a given that parents only want the best for their children. And that's one of the reasons they enroll them in organized sports -- often at a very early age; they believe that sports participation builds "character."

People can go on and on, expounding on the many values children supposedly learn by taking part in competitive sports. It's been the conventional wisdom for longer than I've been alive. But the truth is, there's little research to support the theory. There is, however, evidence to the contrary.

Consider this: a 1995 poll of 198 Olympic or aspiring Olympic athletes, reported in Sports Illustrated, showed to what lengths individuals will go to win. Asked if they would take a banned, performance-enhancing substance that would both go undetected and enable them to win, 195 said they would; only three said no. And when asked if they would take such a substance if they wouldn't get caught, they would win every competition entered for five years, and then die from the substance's side effects, more than half of the athletes said yes!

But, you may be thinking, those were athletes whose lives had revolved around winning for many years; they're probably an exception to the rule.

Maybe, but the attitude had to begin sometime and grow from there, as this story indicates: a survey of 965 students at four middle schools in Massachusetts found that almost 3% of the children were using anabolic steroids to enhance their appearance and performance. From where do children as young as 10 learn such skewed priorities?

Other research shows that long-term participation in sports results in the display of less sportsmanship and more aggressive behavior -- and that even if athletes learn some prosocial behaviors on the field, they rarely transfer them to other areas of their lives. Studies have also demonstrated that competitive children are both less generous and less empathetic than others.

Most recently, the Josephson Institute of Ethics released a report on the impact of high school sports on the values and ethics of student athletes. Here's part of what it found:

• Boys who play baseball, football, and basketball are more likely to cheat on the field and in school.
• Nearly half of the baseball and football players saw nothing wrong with using a playbook stolen from a rival team.
• A high percentage of both male and female athletes thought it was okay for a coach to tell a player to fake an injury.
• About half of all baseball players thought it was okay for a coach to tell a pitcher to throw at the opposing batter.

Still, people continue to believe that sports participation builds character. But is that the kind of "character" we want our children to grow up with?

Dog-Eat-Dog, Part II

As I suspected, the subject of competition creates a lot of dialog, much of it diverse in perspective! A couple of colleagues chose to e-mail me with their thoughts. And since they're definitely worth sharing, I'm going to include them here.

Nancy Alexander, Executive Director of Northwestern State University Child and Family Network, wrote:

I agree with you completely. Yes, life is full of competition--and it is full of disease and injury. But do we deliberatly expose children to the risk of disease and injury? No, of course not--but we do teach them to be healthy and to reduce risk. Just because life is full of competition is not an argument for adding to the competition. Helping children be their best -- just as we teach them healthy habits -- is the answer for me. Frankly, I've seen too much of the "win at all costs" for me to relish competition among children.

And from Craig Buschner, a professor with the Department of Kinesiology at California State University, Chico, and current president of the National Association for Sport and Physical Education:

Agreed, children who become adults will need to understand (even guage) their level of competition in this culture. However, competition is fraught with pitfalls. Competition can be positive or negative--depending upon "the child".  When learning is the goal, competition should be carefully considered as a tool. However, when this tool is used inappropriately learning can backfire and attitude development can be hindered.

Knowledge and skill are directly related to a child's motivation for competition. When children, or adults, lack these prerequisites, they often see little need to compete.

I have found that each child has his/her own developmental sequence and forcing competition on children can become overwhelming. Some children will learn to dislike movement if the outcomes continually center on winning and losing (individual or group).

As I study this culture, I find that most children just need to play.The doing is the key and developing a love of play---hopefully for a lifetime.

For those of you who'd like to give the subject some more thought, I highly recommend Alfie Kohn's book, No Contest: The Case Against Competition. Yes, I know you can tell from the title that it's not exactly in favor of competition. But, in all of his books, this author makes some very strong arguments and backs them up with considerable research. If you'd like a preview of his thoughts, go to his website. Either way, I promise you some provocative insights!

Is It Really a Dog-Eat-Dog World?

There are two topics that generate the greatest debate among the physical education professionals who belong to the PE listserv I subscribe to. The first is dodgeball...a subject we won't address at this time but which I'm sure I'll have to comment on eventually! The second is competition. Is it good for children? Does it belong in a PE program? Should it be eliminated from the PE program when "kids are going to have to compete every day of their lives?"

The latter comment was made by a PE teacher who cited this argument as the reason he hadn't completely eliminated competition from his curriculum. "Kids are going to have to compete every day of their lives."

It's a fascinating and provocative idea. It certainly got me thinking. And, no matter how I look at it, I simply can't agree. I just don't see the world in this way.

For example, it isn't as though there are only six A's allotted per classroom. If kids want good grades, they'll have to work for them -- not in a way that causes someone else to fail, but by doing their own personal best. If they want to get into a good college, it's the same thing. Yes, there are only so many placements at each university, but if they've put forth the appropriate effort, learned a good work ethic, and are people with character, regardless of whether they get into their first or third choice of schools, they're going to be just fine. And the same pertains when they apply for the job of their dreams. Yes, they're competing against other applicants, but it's unlikely they even know who those other applicants are and what they bring to the table. Nor can they be aware of all the factors involved in the selection process. All they can do in that situation is to, once again, be their own personal best.

Well, those are my thoughts on the subject. Now I'd like to hear yours! Do you think kids need to learn to compete because they're going to have to do it every day of their lives?

National Youth Sports Week

Did you know July 22-28 is National Youth Sports Week? Neither did I...until I saw a posting in a physical education listserv.

If you've read A Running Start or attended one of my presentations, you're aware that I'm opposed to children participating in organized sports before the age of 8. And I'm not the only one. The experts agree that children under 8 don't yet have the appropriate developement -- physically, socially, emotionally, or cognitively -- to succeed in sports. And if there's little chance of success, why would we want to subject them to sports? Failure can only lead to frustration, which in turn will lead to a dislike of physical activity in general. And that's certainly not the way to promote lifelong fitness!

Well, that's my argument in a very small nutshell. That said, if you're looking for a sport or physical activity program for your child, there's a wonderful set of guidelines provided by the National Association for Sport & Physical Education (NASPE). Appropriately enough, it's titled "Choosing the Right Sport & Physical Activity Program for Your Child," and it can be downloaded for free at: http://www.aahperd.org/naspe/template.cfm?template=position-papers.html.

I realize it's the middle of summer and many of you have already made your choices. But, whether your child is happy or unhappy with the choice, this document can help you understand why. And it can help you do just as good a job -- or an even better one -- the next time you go "shopping."