Scotth:
I have one daughter who is now 14 (teenager!). She has been involved in basketball for a number of years which she decided to drop this year to concentrate on "acting". She at least once was a pretty darn good runner. Her school had a sport day when she was 4th or 5th grade and she ran the second fastest time for 50m out of her grade--boys and girls. I have a picture of her sprinting full out and her form was so powerful and relaxed and good (I think she was 9 or 10), that I got a call from Dick Brown of Eugene, OR (we included that picture for our Christmas card) and he said, "When she turns 17, can I start coaching her?" Perhaps a half joke, I'm sure... Unfortunately I could see her form chanegd a lot once she started wearing those thick bulky rigid BB shoes... (yes, I'm a minimalist!).
We aways encourage her to do some sort of activities. We do lots of cycling and walking during the summer. She has run over 20 minutes before; she has run a couple of miles with my wife who runs marathons (3:47); I've gotten her out for a 3-mile run on a trail (with lots of walking breaks) when she was, I'd say, 10. She's "competed" some "competitions" before including those kids 500m or 1 mile. She always starts out in a middle of a pack, jogging with her friends, smiling. During the summer, once in a while, we all jog down to a coffee shop by the lake, a little more than a mile, with books; and have some cookies anc coffee cooler and read. Most of the time, we end up walking home... But that's fine.
Last year when she was 13, she told me that she ran a mile in her PE class in 6:40. Not a bad time but there was another girl I know who's run sub-6. I tease her that I want to coach her (friend who ran sub-6) but NEVER in a context that that's better than 6:40.
She always tells us that she doesn't like running (more like because I want to watch running coverage on TV when she wants to watch SpongeBob). She's met Arthur Lydiard, Dick Quax, Lorraine Moller, Kathrine Switzer, among others and wore Lorraine's bronze medal around her neck. She can't help but get some sort of influence and inspiration from running, living with me and my wife who also runs. But she continues to refuse liking running and that's fine (now she claims that she wants to do pole vault in high school...). I see some potential in her; but one thing is that you just CANNOT squeeze something out of them. A lot of coaching is "guiding" and "being patient".
I'll tell you a story: we used to bring her to Japanese school in Mpls. The school was designed for families who would eventually go back to Japan, in other words, they would try to follow and teach the general cariculum. My daughter didn't need that. They give us so much home work because they have to keep up; but for us, US school's homework was #1 priority. Besides, I didn't want to beat her to finish her work so, more often than not, if she didn't want to, I let her skip all the homework. Japanese School's teachers were all criticizing me and blaming me for her slow progress but I absolutely refused to push her. Their drip-out rate after kindergarten was something like 2/3 at the time. In the end, we dropped out but she still continues to learn Japanese and, if anything, enjoys studying Japanese now better than ever. Slow learning, sure. But she still continues. The desire MUST come from the learner. As a parent/coach, the best you can do is somehow create the environment, sometimes manupulate, so their desire will eventually come forth. This young lady I'm coaching, for her motivation, I flew her to Colorado and got her meet with Steve Jones, Frank Shorter and Lorraine Moller. I set up a lunch with Carrie Toleffson. She's 25 but I'm training her really really light. And hopefully desire to train more will come from her, not from me.
Okay, I digressed a bit; hope some of what I said actually answered your question! ;o)