Every Parent Should Have To Watch This Clip Of Padraig Harrington Talk About How To Get Your Kids To Love Sports
"If your kid gets good at the game that doesn’t necessarily make them love the game. But if the kid loves the game, it’s likely they’ll become good at it. It’s the love that should be first."
I'd imagine that it's the same across all sports. There are always going to be those parents who get their kids into a sport and then treat it like they're in Soviet Russia. Everybody thinks their little Johnny is going to be the next LeBron James, or their little Tommy is going to be the next Wayne Gretzky. They have the kid training every free hour of they day. Individual training, extra group trainings, they're playing on multiple teams going to every single tournament every single weekend. They grind their kid in the hopes of turning them into the best possible player he or she could possibly be, and all of that is mostly in hopes of getting a scholarship to go play in college.
It comes from a good place. I get it. They're just working the kid hard because they think it'll all pay off one day. But by the time the kid is even old enough to go to college, they are burnt out. They hate the game, its taken over their life, and they can't wait to be done with it.
And it's not just parents. There are plenty of coaches guilty of this as well. They'll treat practice for a bunch of 9-year-olds like they're running an NFL training camp. So Padraig Harrington's message isn't just to the parents out there, but anybody involved with youth sports--just let the kids live. Let them have fun and fall in love with the game themselves. They might need a little kick in the ass at some points to keep them on track, but 90% of the time the best players are going to be the ones who truly love the game more than anybody else. The kids who get obsessed and addicted to the game, and want to get better because of it. Not because their dad is going to scream at them on the car ride home about the $500 he wasted for extra training.
Youth sports would be a much healthier environment if that 3-minute clip was required watching for parents getting their kid into a sport for the first time. If your kid is 12 and you're already focusing on getting them recruited for college, just take a step back and watch the 3-minute video. Realize what an insane person you are being, and go have a quick soda with your kid.