Originally Posted by
Jolt
I think it depends on the individual kids, the parents, and the coaches...
especially parents and coaches!!
There are ways to make a child’s sports experience positive and ways to make it negative.
My parents always promoted the idea of not defining success and failure in sports as winning and losing. It was about challenging myself and seeking improvement. Failure could be a gift to be viewed in a positive way as a source of motivation to improve. Their positive guiding and support instead of criticism helped me enjoy a couple of sports and especially martial arts when I was growing up and now all my physical activities. I’d say my ability to be completely absorbed in the here and now of challenging my limits in a hard physical effort reflects very well on their early guidance. Hopefully I'll do as well with a child I have.
Now if a child is taught it IS just about winning and losing and losing is failure, if a parent or coach uses anger to deal with losing, if the goals of a parent are more important than a child’s, if criticism is used instead of positive motivation and if self esteem is harmed by degradation and humiliation etc. etc….then you get the negativity that you’ve put into it.
‘The negative feelings we all have can be addictive…just as the positive…it’s up to
us to decide which ones we want to choose and feed”… Pema Chodron