Developing Your Son or Daughter into an Athletic Superstar

Congratulations, mom and dad, you have yourselves a budding superstar. But, before signing up your precocious toddler for private soccer or basketball training, stop and consider the most important elements of athletic (and life) success.

Pro athletes have an uncommon combination of genes, skills and work ethic. The difference between a multi-millionaire professional athlete and a just-missed could, shoulda, woulda is razor thin, and oftentimes the only difference is the right situation or opportunity at the right time. Look at Boris Diaw or Darko Milicic, first round draft picks about to be labeled major busts in one situation, now ready to sign nine million dollar a year (or more) contracts as integral parts of play-off (likely) teams.

The genes are already taken care of; let's assume you, as the parents, held up your part of the bargain. What can you do to nurture little Johnny into the next Derek Jeter/Landon Donovan/Tom Brady/Chris Paul or Mia Hamm/Diana Tarausi/Lyndsay Davenport?

Most assume the best recipe for success is to get a jump on the competition. I have heard from parents with children as young as six asking for personal basketball training. However, I am not in favor of children ths young even playing organized sports, and I am not alone. "Experts like Rae Pica, a movement education consultant and author of Your Active Child, echoes numerous child-development experts in her argument that kids under 11 or 12 years old shouldn't even be in organized, competitive team sports because their bodies aren't developed enough to safely accomplish certain athletic tasks."

According to Brian Grasso, founder of the International Youth Conditioning Association, young children should participate in four sports activities:

(1) Soccer: Yt is a wonderfully athletic and tactical-based sport. Sudden bursts of explosive power, change of direction, looking two plays ahead, playing a 'forcing' based defense in which the defender uses their body/skills to change what the offensive player wanted to do - these are fantastic athletic lessons that can be filed away in the nervous system and used at a later point in any sporting activity.

(2) Swimming. Unloaded shoulder and hip mobility adds a great deal of pliability to the frame of a young athlete... Additionally, kinesthetic differentiation is a physical skill lacking in many kids (this refers to the knowledge of how much force is necessary to produce a desired result)...Swimming is the essence of building kinesthetic differentiation - kids simply won't last long in a pool if they put as much force as possible into every stroke.

(3) Martial Arts. Almost every martial art I am familiar with is based on skill acquisition as a primary marker. Not only is that mentally and emotionally good for a child, but it infers the teaching of patience and 'enjoying the journey' rather than 'searching for the destination'...Athletically speaking, dynamic flexibility, end-range systemic strength, mobility, spatial awareness - the physical ability built through martial arts is awe-inspiring and can apply to any sport.

(4) Gymnastics. Again, the physical elements that can be built through gymnastics are amazing - spatial awareness, flexibility, relative strength, dynamic and static balance - the list goes on. If for no other reason, the ability to know where you are in space and take a fall 'well' is a required skill for any sport.

Additionally, "the NASPE (National Association of Sports and Physical Education) recommends exposing young kids to a wide variety of physical activities. Add swimming, running, jumping rope and tumbling to first attempts at playing catch, kicking a ball or trying to hit one with a bat or racquet."

Even if your future prodigy is destined for greatness in football, basketball or baseball, these activities provide a great foundation for overall athletic development because of the variety of skills they teach and develop. Additionally, these activities are accessible for young children who are not cognitively prepared for competitive athletics. Taking swimming, martial arts and/or gymnastics lessons does not require participation on a competitive team, yet athletes still receive the athletic benefits and preparation of the training. And, soccer is very easy to play on any small piece of grass at a park or in a front yard with a couple other kids.

The problem with starting your budding superstar in an under-five league is burnout, frustration and de-motivation. "The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) asserts that when the demands of a team sport exceed a child's development, the child may become frustrated or believe he's a failure." When kids quit sports because they view themselves as a failure, they typically leave all sports; kids who have a positive experience in a sport continue with the sport or have the confidence to try other sports or physical activities. And, keeping kids involved in sports, even at a non-competitive level, is essential to reduce the childhood obesity epidemic.

Rather than entering the competitive stream earlier than other young sports prodigies, the answer is developing a healthy, active child and encouraging the budding superstar to try many activities. By encouraging free play, parents serve their child well, as play "has a very unique power and effect on later health as well as intellectual, social, and emotional development, according to Dr. Wendy S. Masi, dean of Nova Southeastern University's Mailman Segal Institute of Childhood Studies.

Unfortunately, "Three-fourths (75%) of pediatricians surveyed report that the amount of time their young patients spend on unstructured play has decreased in the past 5 years." Organized youth sports is one of the greatest factors for this decline, which is positive and negative. On the positive side, these children are participating in an active activity and learning the value or teamwork and cooperation in a team setting. On the negative, organized youth sports often ignore the reasons children shoose for playing sports in the first place: activity, be with friends, learn a skill, have fun, etc.

Rather than creating an environment of play maximizing these attributes of sports, coaches systematically ignore these facts. Activity is lessoned as kids are restrained by the rules of the game and the additional rules a coach imposes on the players; friends are divided onto different teams; skills go untaught and fun is diminished. Add to this that many children are developmentally unprepared for the demands of sports-especially socially,cognitively and psychologically-and organized sports fail to maximize its potential benefits.

People work hard at something they love to do; by initiating a child in a sport too early, and by playing that sport too much, the child is apt to lose the passion for the game and view practice much like homework, which always has a negative connotation. Instead, parents need to nurture a healthy appreciation for the game and the value of hard work by building self-confidence and creating a safe, fun environment.

By using informal play, kids experiment with skills without the fear of failure a scoreboard, uniforms and a coach heightens. When players experiment, they gain a deeper appreciation for their own skills. By building general athletic skills in an uncompetitive environment, through free play and martial arts/swimming/gymnastics, the youth athlete is prepared to join a sports team around ten to eleven years old and experience success, even playing with and against others who have been in the competitive mix for several years.

While the general skill acquisition will not translate to immediate improvement in a sport-specific skill, in the long run, the deeper foundation proves valuable. It is easier to see the progress of a building once it is above ground, and not a hole in the ground, but the deeper the foundation, and the more attention to the foundation of the building, the safer and more stable the building will be into the future. A deeper well of general athletic skills provides the foundation for long term success, even if the results are not immediately evident.

Developing your son or daughter into an athletic superstar is a long process. As Zen Master/Los Angeles Lakers Head Coach Phil Jackson said it: "There's no percentage in trying to push the river or speed up the harvest. The farmer who's so eager to help his crops grow that he slips out at night and tugs on the shoots inevitably ends up going hungry."

Athletis success is a process. And, the journey-the skills developed and the experiences-is greater than the destination.