Jessica Halloran: Young people aren’t learning how to be resilient
A leading psychologist says not keeping score in junior sport is part of the “wuss-fication of an entire generation” and declared kids need to learn how to deal with defeat.
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At my kids’ school athletics carnival, everyone gets a ribbon.
On the junior footy field, the scores are not kept.
My kids don’t know what losing feels like and I don’t like it.
Out on the sporting field, Australian kids are not actively learning how to deal with defeat and heartbreak. They’re not learning how to rise up from disappointment.
Auskick? There’s no match results. No ladder. No finals. No representative teams. That junior version of Aussie Rules runs up until the age of 12.
In junior league — yep, my five-year-old kid doesn’t know the score. My mate who coaches juniors on the Central Coast says they start scoring in under-10s. On mini-footy gala days, there are no scores and no finals. Soccer, even at some representative levels in the under 10s, they don’t tally the goals.
Learning how to deal with disappointment, in turn developing resilience, isn’t this an essential life skill to have?
Being able to praise your opposition for their victory, shake their hand, that’s incredibly important, too.
When I call up leading child psychologist Dr Michael Carr-Gregg to talk about this no-score, everyone-is-a-winner way in junior sport, he is incensed.
“It’s the part of the wuss-fication of an entire generation,” Carr-Gregg said.
Carr-Gregg said this mollycoddling in junior sport is creating issues for a generation of children with greater anxiety levels than ever before.
Major sporting codes have embraced “no scores” without doing in-depth, forensic research into whether this is really is the right thing to do, he said.
“Where is the evidence base from any study anywhere in the world that this is advantageous for children,” Carr-Gregg said. “And seriously, do you think the kids aren’t scoring in their heads? Please.
“Isn’t failure your first attempt in learning?
“I don’t like the whole idea of not scoring in junior sport. I think it is idiotic. It’s just dumb.
“Where is the evidence to prove this is the right thing to do?”
Carr-Gregg, who is the author of 14 books and a specialist in families, parenting, children and adolescents, said children not learning to deal with defeat is simply not helping them.
In fact, he believes it is contributing to greater anxiety levels.
“Anxiety levels amongst young people is at the highest level they have been,” Carr-Gregg said.
“Professor Harriet Hissock, from the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, her recent research showed Australian teenagers are being diagnosed with mental health problems, like anxiety, at an alarming rate.
“Yes, social media has a lot to do with this, but I think this whole idea of not being competitive, never failing and just focusing on participation is eventually contributing to young people’s anxiety levels.
“Young people aren’t learning how to be resilient.”
THE other week I interviewed French Open champion Ash Barty and her dad, Rob.
Rob told me one of the initial lessons his daughter’s first coach, Jim Joyce, taught her was to how to lose with grace.
Barty was a junior tennis gun. Barely lost to anyone her own age. So, Joyce would deliberately have Barty play tougher, older opponents, knowing full well the talented kid wouldn’t beat them.
Joyce would make sure Barty didn’t throw her racquet, scream or shout in defeat. That she could handle disappointment and respect her opponent.
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I believe it’s part of the reason Barty is held in such high regard in this country — she knows humility. She knows what it is like to lose and not lose her mind. How to pick herself up again and charge forward.
After her recent fourth-round Wimbledon exit to Alison Riske, she remarked: “It’s disappointing right now. Give me an hour or so, we’ll be all good. The sun’s still going to come up tomorrow.”
I, too, want my kids to know how to get on with it after defeat, and like Barty says, that “the sun’s still going to come up tomorrow”.
It’s time for the sporting codes to drop the pretence that losing doesn’t matter. It does. It is more important than winning.
Of course I want my kids to go out, “have fun”, try their heart out, but I also want them to walk away having learnt something. I want my children to know how to be good losers. I want them to deal with defeat with respect for their opponents.
My son played both Auskick and rugby league this season, both had no scoring, but the most ridiculous part of the AFL junior program was the weekly email where your child’s progress was summed up by a junior coach.
It was always positive, a paragraph or two on our son’s progress, but it just felt like, way too much.
Which makes me think, why the hell are the sporting codes head honchos overcomplicating junior sport?
Bring back the scoreboard, thanks.