Seeking advice on raising high level athletic children

becarefulbro said it well. The OP needs to fix his priorities and his focus real fast. Teach kids about process rather than outcome. That isn’t to say that you can’t raise goal-oriented kids. But every important thing any of us will ever do is all about process. Moreover, by focusing on the process of, say, becoming a good soccer player, your kids will learn to focus on fundamentals, to not cut corners, to ignore hype as much as negativity, to plan ahead, to rely on the advice of others, to value a community of practice, to have self-respect, etc. In other words, by pursuing a sport with enthusiasm and by doing it because they truly just want to be the best they can be, the OP’s kids will accumulate many insights and habits that can be translated into other contexts—their studies, their performance sonar relationships, their own parenting someday. But I think those insights, habits, and lessons are best learned if the kids are guided to focus on their own growth in the sport rather than some external goal like being D-1.

Like others have said, try to give your kids a variety of experiences. I would say literally set up a PE class for your kids at home. Teach them the basics of all the normal sports. Literally anything is going to build their hand eye coordination and athletic ability. This will give them way more confidence on the playground with other kids. It's a huge hit to a kid's psyche to get picked last and that can be a real turn off from athletics in general.

. It definitely helps if you're active also as kids always want to try whatever their parents are doing. So if you're sitting around watching TV or browsing online, you're gonna have to find better hobbies or else your kids will be doing the same thing.

This is really important - teaching kids how to be an athlete and train, at the expense of crushing the competition early. Train more, travel/compete less. Thing is that some of these stupid parents will professionalize their 9 year old and they WILL crush, given enough $ and coaching and insanity travel squads. There’s a great book called Range which describes the ‘broad childhood, narrow (late) adolescence’ that works for 95% of sports, with silly things like golf & swimming being the exception. My personal experience is that mom and dad did a good job to connect me with coaches who knew what the hell they were talking about and shared the generalist to specific philosophy and then they got the hell out of the way.

Many famous people have kids sitting in rehab for drugs or other addictions because their parents supported them fully in whatever they wanted to pursue. Every boy wants to be a gamer these days. I guess every parent should fully support it.

Dad of a Boss wrote:

Thing is that some of these stupid parents will professionalize their 9 year old and they WILL crush, given enough $ and coaching and insanity travel squads.

Finally someone admits it. It works. Pretty sure that's what the OP and most parents want. I understand if your kid is not athletic or academically gifted, but nobody wants to raise needy junkies. Maybe stop trying to bring other people's kids to your level.

youawarebrah wrote:

70% of the nfl? You would actually have a hard time putting together a team exclusively raised in a two parent home in the NFL/NBA.

NFL NBA players are the best athletes in the country.

It's all genetics....all these parents pushing their kids and stressing about don't realize this. ITS ALL GENETICS.

Not in upper middle class white people sports like lacrosse. You have to be in the system when little. In swimming it's those who started as babies who do best. I'm a triathlete and it's totally a thing where if you start swimming as an adult you will never ever swim as well as those who grew up swimming competitively. Women's hockey exists solely for rich people to get their girls into Ivy and other top academic schools through being an athlete.

For highly competitive sports, yes. We've all seen first-hand and read about sprinters and football players who started when they were 18 and were suddenly the best. Giannis was a lanky street vendor teenager who'd go days without eating and a couple years later was an NBA millionaire and is now the best player in the world.

And as I said before, puberty reshuffles everything in most sports. All that "work" as a kid will not get you past the unathletic kid (like me) who suddenly grows freaky long and springy legs.

Distance running is kinda a tweener. Work and discipline will get you a long way if you have at least a little talent, but talent still matters.

dopedgills13 wrote:

brien evans wrote:

All the replies up until this very reply are from losers with kids who are going to hate them later on in life for making them mediocre at everything.

Sure. Don't push your kids. Be their friends. In other countries where they don't have this pussification of society, they are pushing their kids, and they're eating our lunch.

Your kids are going to lose out on scholarships to Nambian runners, Australian kickers, and Ukrainian tennis players.

You all caused this.

most of our superstar athletes in the usa didnt even have father figures growing up. It's honestly rare for a star nba/nfl player to have a dad in their life.

Two GOATs... Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. Both very much influenced by fathers in the home.

Golf, tennis, swim, hockey, ski, snowboard, gymnastics, figure skating, table tennis, rowing, sailing. There are way more sports that require lifetime dedication than not.

Slik Rik wrote:

dopedgills13 wrote:

most of our superstar athletes in the usa didnt even have father figures growing up. It's honestly rare for a star nba/nfl player to have a dad in their life.

Two GOATs... Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. Both very much influenced by fathers in the home.

You're cherry picking. So is the guy who mentioned LeBron James. You can't possibly find any useful information by citing a few successful athletes out of the millions and millions of people who participate in sports.

You are tge one cherry picking by focusing on basketball and football. Those 2 sports are dominated by people who are larger and more athletic than the average person. Stanford has 20 female sports. The vast majority of women on a scholarship there have been doing their sport since the age of 5.

young dad wrote:

You are tge one cherry picking by focusing on basketball and football. Those 2 sports are dominated by people who are larger and more athletic than the average person. Stanford has 20 female sports. The vast majority of women on a scholarship there have been doing their sport since the age of 5.

I actually did not mention football. I mentioned basketball because other posters mentioned James and Jordan. Anyway, you also are cherry picking. Stanford women's sports is a tiny, tiny, sliver in the world of sports whose total number of participants is smaller than the number of players in the NFL. I'll mention it now since you did.

I'd also be interested to know how you know what the women on scholarship at Stanford have been doing since they were five. Even if you're correct, it means there are some women there who were not doing their sport since they were five. It does not explain what sort of involvement these women's parents had with their sports lives. And it does not tell us anything about what happened to the "vast majority" of girls who began doing a sport at a very early age. If you are going to support any sort of argument on this topic by citing specific examples you'll be cherry picking.

So what you are saying is... if you took Arch Manning and put him in a trailer park as a baby with a single mom, it wouldn't matter he'd still be one of the best high school QBs. He'd just naturally find sports and naturally have the motivation to work on his craft. I mean, he would still have the genetics and that's what mostly matters.

I would actually double down on the opposite. If my family swapped babies with the Manning family my blood would do better in sport under the Manning's raising than their genetic kid under my raising.

I really do not understand people who read something someone has written and then decide the writer meant something else, something the writer did not say. How did you conclude that I said what you think I said? Do you want me to comment on Arch Manning? Assuming you do I'll just say that neither of us knows what would have happened to him if he grew up with a single mom in a trailer park. He might have needed to drop out of school to work and never gotten into football. Or he could have gotten into football and been as good or even better than he is now but no matter what the outcome was it means nothing relative to what will happen with your kids.

Bottom line is that 75% of scholarship athletes come from families that supported them and got them in their sport early and pushed them to succeed.

He who laughs last... probably didn't get the joke.

I think you are admitting to the fact that what goes on in the home of a child can influence what happens with the child's future. I think we can both agree that is a fact.

Given that fact. I don't see how seeking advice from people who have had athletic success is a waste of time. Like learning from others to consciously change my behaviors so that I might get closer to a desired outcome is some kind of insanity. Seems like people think I'm playing god or something by trying to push my kid a certain direction. I think its called parenting unless I have gone insane.

If you read through the 8 pages of replies the overall sentiment is that you should have your kids involved in all kinds of sports and let it be really fun for them and then once they are older IF THEY CHOSE to even participate in a sport, encourage them and support them- but that's it.

young dad wrote:

Bottom line is that 75% of scholarship athletes come from families that supported them and got them in their sport early and pushed them to succeed.

not true at all.

Most scholarship athletes are football players(largest team at every university).

Majority of good football players are from poor single parent homes. I just linked proof to that.

These are biggest, strongest, fastest athletes in college athletics.

You can cope all you want buy putting a 5 year old in classes, and thinking you are the venus/serena father like figure that will make them great, but the facts are that NONE OF THIS MATTERS. Ultimately, if your kid is athletic enough, strong enough, fast enough, and has internal motivation, he will succeed in sports.

Just sign them up for sports like any normal parent and ensure they have enough to eat. Stop stressing this.