When we parents think about our child’s youth sports experience, we often think about goals or wins. We think about paths to future success born out of these early sports experiences. What we don’t think about, or rather, what we try not to imagine, is our child failing at sport. We don’t want to envision them missing the mark, feeling down on themselves. or quitting sports entirely.
Many things can cause a child to want to throw in the towel. Maybe they had a tough loss or a tough season, they missed a winning shot, or perhaps the grind and practices are beginning to feel overwhelming. Whatever the reason, that child’s sports experience has become such a burden that they want to leave it all behind them.
The thing is, these moments need not be the end-all, be-all moments they are often made out to be; not if we parents use them as an opportunity to build grit and perseverance in our children. In this article, we will talk about these two qualities and how they can help children push past their broken confidence and misgivings so that they find happiness and success in their chosen sport.
What Are Grit and Perseverance?
We know what you’re thinking, “Grit and Perseverance, what the heck do those things even mean, really?” There are actual definitions to these words of course and they are often used together to express a certain resilient quality in an individual.
Despite their similarities and familiarity, they represent slightly different ideas. For one, grit is defined as one’s ability to stay committed to long-term goals, while perseverance means the ability of an individual to push through short-term challenges.
As it turns out, kids in youth sports experience both of these feelings on a fairly regular basis. Kids might have to work toward improving a skill over weeks or months (grit) or face setbacks during the course of a game or practice (perseverance). Whatever the case, these experiences often form a foundation for resilience that extends far beyond athletics.
Why Sports Are Ideal for Building Grit
Famous actor John Wayne once said, “True grit is making a decision and standing by it, doing what must be done. No moral man can have peace of mind if he leaves undone what he knows he should have done.” This is a pretty deep quote when speaking about youth sports, of course, but it is actually fairly apt if one thinks about it.
Like anything in life, youth sports naturally include challenges that kids have to overcome. Yet, unlike many other activities, sports provide kids with clear goals and immediate feedback on their performance, as well as plenty of opportunities to try again. Essentially, sports shows children that improvement doesn’t just happen instantly, it takes time, learning, and effort in order to make actual, tangible progress.
In essence, staying with a sport, keeping with it despite falling down, missing shots, and what have you, isn’t just a real life example of grit; its how it goes hand-in-hand with perseverance.
Normalizing Struggle
One of the most important lessons sports can teach children is that age-old adage about how the “struggle is real.” Well, maybe not so much real as it is a normal, natural part of playing sports. Every athlete, from Olympians like Simone Biles to basketball hall-of-famers like Michael Jordan, face mistakes, losses, and frustrations throughout their careers; sometimes when they are competing at the highest level imaginable!
The trick is to frame these moments as part of the journey rather than something they can even try to avoid. Parents can help with this reframing by focusing on what they learned, how they handled the particular challenge, and how they might improve the next time around, rather than bringing further attention to the negative outcome of the snafu.
After all, they’re already thinking about it too much for their own good, why bring it back up if it’s not going to be helpful? The point of this particular approach is to help your young athletes view these setbacks or missteps as temporary.
The Role of Effort
Grit is a quality built up through consistent effort. Attending practices regularly, trying new skills, and staying engaged even in difficult moments are all ways to up one’s grit factor. By recognizing one’s own effort, rather than just the less-than-satisfactory results, one can see how they can cultivate long-term success.
Encouraging a Growth Mindset
A good way to build both grit and perseverance is by instilling a growth mindset in our young athletes. Growth mindset refers to the belief that abilities can improve with effort. Sports are an excellent place for this type of mindset to grow (pun intended) because kids can feel how practice leads to improvement, how effort changes the outcome, and how persistence builds skill.
As parents, we can hammer these points home by using positive language that focuses on how our children are growing. Saying things like “You’re getting better each time you try” or “That was a tough drill, but you stuck with it” can show them that we believe in them. Also, make sure to celebrate all the small wins, not just the big ones; this can help growth happen more subtly over time.
Managing the Urge to Quit
What happens though, if your kid still has the urge to quit after all of this? Platitudes and proof are not always a guarantee of perseverance, unfortunately. The key, in these cases, is understanding why they still feel like giving up. Perhaps they are still feeling overwhelmed, frustrated with their overall performance, or just lacking the confidence that they ought to have.
To find out what the reason is and maybe help them to rethink the decision, it would be helpful to talk openly with them about the situation. Identify the root of the issue and see if you can explore possible solutions together. If, ultimately, they still don’t enjoy how the sport is making them feel, it could be time for a change. After all, differentiation is often the key to finding which sports activity they do enjoy.
Cultured Athlete Says…
As you can see, Grit and perseverance are not qualities that develop overnight. Fortunately, sports, with their natural ups and downs, provides one of the best environments for helping children learn them. Through trial and error, through experience, support, and practice, children can build up the resilience they need to keep going.
In so many aspects of play, youth sports provide a powerful environment for adolescent growth. The challenges, setbacks, and successes that kids experience through youth sports all contribute to building up this perseverance and grit.
Ultimately, even if they don’t fully take on these qualities, if things still don’t work out after they have tried and tried again, the most valuable outcome of sports is the lessons in resilience they DO pick up along the way. Those are lessons that they can take with them even after they have left the sports field behind them; lessons that will help them in many ways throughout the course of their life.
Discover more from CulturedAthlete
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
