The pressure of the Twix! - a tale of developing a growth mindset.

Many of you will know that I have a little boy called Evan who is a bit of an ongoing N=1 experiment in how to develop a sportsperson with a 'growth mindset'. Evan is 7 (Evan Seven!) and he is a proper multi sport kid. The list of sports that he does is pretty long but at the moment he does gymnastics, cricket (fundamentals), golf and swimming as well as a range of informal garden games that I play with him.

He is getting pretty good at his golf, he goes to some junior coaching on a saturday afternoon and his game is getting better all the time. We are lucky to have a 3 hole academy course at the club that I am a member of and it is usually pretty deserted so we can usually play around as many times as we like. I have to say that it is a pretty special feeling being able to play golf with your little boy and I do love to watch him learn each time he goes round. He usually plays pretty happily and the experience is a lot fo fun for us both.

But our latest round was very different.... it is probably fair to say that it was quite an interesting learning experience for both of us in more ways than one!

When we play we have started having little competitions, Evan has a number of shots that he is able to complete each hole in that we call 'Evvy Par' and I have to complete the hole in the standard par to match him (this is called 'Daddy Par'). Of late I have failed to match him that many times and so Evan suggested that we change his Evvy Par to "give me a chance" (sheesh!).

Traditionally after the round we go to the club house and he has a juice and a chocolate bar (Twix is his favourite) but this time I thought I would try something and suggested that we 'play for the Twix'. If he wins he gets all of it to himself....if I win, we share it.

That's when it got really interesting...

So we are standing on the first tee and he gets out his 7 iron (he could reach the green with his fairway wood but his 7 iron is his favourite club, he is playing safe!) but he tops the ball and it goes about 2 yards in front of him, he wheels around with a the look of anguish on his face was soul destroying! He wanted me to give him a mulligan, I said that he can have 1 mulligan in the round and he could use it now if he wanted to or save it for later. He tried again and hit a low shot that went into the semi rough and started to stomp off after it with a big black cloud over his head and a face like thunder....

He ended up making 8 shots on the hole (an Evvy double bogey) where as I made 'Daddy Par' and was 1 up.

The rest of the round then saw Evan disappear into a slump of dispair with quite a few tears being shed and a number of minor tantrums when things didn't go right for him. When I asked him why he was so one stage he just shouted to me "I just really want the whole Twix why can't you just let me win"?

So I was faced with a bit of dilemma. On the one hand the coach in me was thinking that this was a brilliant learning moment for him and that I just needed to let him work through it . On the other hand the parent in me was thinking that I could or should help him out in come way otherwise he might not want to play again.

So I went into questioning mode...

Why was he so upset?

Why did he think that things were going wrong?

Was being upset helping him play better or play worse?

What could he do to get better?

I won't try and pretend that all of his reponses were entirely rational and he didnt really want to talk about things too much butI could tell that they had an effect because he did knuckle down and ended up winning the last couple of holes so that my winning margin was only hole.

We shook hands and went to the club house.

In the club house we just chatted and I said to him that he could have the rest of his Twix after dinner if he thought about what happened and told me what he had learned.

In the car on the way home he said that he had learned that getting upset doesn't help him play better and that he should try and be calmer if he wants to play well.

Bingo...one proud dad!

So what were my takeaways from this experience?

1. Be careful with incentives / rewards.

I was quite surprised at how powerful a small thing such as playing for the reward could be. He was always going to win at least half a Twix but to him that was massive! What I thought was a small amount of added interest and pressure was actually huge for him. I need to make sure that

2. Fight your instincts

Resist the temptation to wrap your arms around your struggling upset child when they are having a hard time. My instinct was screaming at me to help him by saying that it would be alright and that we didn't have to play for the Twix but I also knew that I could send a very powerful message at that point. He could be self reliamt and he could come through this...I am convinced that it will benefit him in the long term.

3. Let them struggle - that's where the learning is.

By the end of the session he had bounced back and was his usual bubbly self and he had learned something valuable. It was a bit of an unexpected experience but one that he will be able to call upon in the future.

That said it will be interesting to see of he wants to play for a Twix next time around!

Are we starving our children?

All over the world children are starving. You only need to switch on the news to see images of children in underdeveloped countries suffering with a lack of nutrition while the adults who should know better are too busy fighting or scoring political points off each other to make sure that they are properly nourished. Well I am afraid to say that the very same thing is happening in the developed world. In the developed world it is not that food isn't abundant, it has never been more plentiful! It's that the food we provide is the wrong kind of food. Children in developed nations are eating more highly processed food that is full of sugar and lacking the essintial micro nutrients to support their development than ever before and guess what...there is an obesity epidemic!

Now I could write a lengthy piece about nutrition but there are lots of people out there who can provide you with that kind of information (see Chris Cresser for really in depth stuff or this article for a maintream position or this article for a less maintream view)

But this piece isn't about children being malnourished in terms of what they eat. This article is about children being undernourished in terms of what they do. I believe that children in western societies are starving when it comes to a lack of play.

In her brilliant book 'It's OK not to share', Heather Schumaker argues that play is as essential to the healthy development of children's brain and personality as food is to their physiogical growth and wellbeing. She argues, "What is precious in these early years is play. Free, unstructured, child directed playtime. It's an old fashioned idea with modern Neuroscience backing it up".

"Play is not a luxury. Play is a necessity"

- Kay Redfield-Jamison

Looking at the way children's sport is now being provided I have to question whether our generation has begun to be too involved in children's play and started to take it over. There are a whole host of commercial providers who offer 'sport' activity sessions for kids as young as 3. In previous generations these same children would be inventing worlds with wooden blocks, building dens or climbing trees.

I think that there is a tendency to get children 'doing sport' too early and this sports experience can be too focussed on the development of techniques when the children are not ready to take these techniques on board. Schumaker makes reference to this being the 'rule of 7 plus or minus 1' where she refers to how scandinavian eductionalists (children don't start school until the age of seven in Sweden and Finland) consider 7 to be a magic age where children become able to grasp concepts and ideas much more readily.

She proposes that trying to teach things to children before they are ready is actually counter productive and will actually harm a child's development for that aid it.

"Miseducation teaches us the wrong thing at the wrong time"

- David Elkind

In the book she proposes that children should be entitled to develop at their own speed and pace and should not have the aspirations of adults thrust upon them too soon. This is enshrined within a document that is referred to as 'Children's Renegade Rights' which is published in the pre school that she founded.

Children's Renegade Rights

A child has...

A right to unstructured free play

A right to choose her own playmates

A right to use props and chose their own play themes

A right to uninterrupted play during playtime

A right to feel safe

A right not to have objects taken from them (forced sharing)

A right to move and use their body vigorously

A right to be outside

A right to experience and express a full range of their emotions

A right to ask questions and know things

A right to stand up for their own rights by setting limits on others behaviour

A right to be listened to, be respected and have their rights constantly supported by adults

Coming back to the starting point of this post I feel that we are trying to feed our kids the wrong kind of physical diet. Instead of providing a balanced diet of physical activity that is appropriate to their developmental capacities we are force feeding them on a specialised diet of highly structured, adult directed, technique driven sport specific activity that they aren't ready to eat and will ultimately harm their development long term.

I remember watching an awful film during sport relief about a mother in Africa being forced to give her baby solid food because she was too under nourished to produce any milk and there wasnt anything else to eat.

We have a different choice...

Is competition a losing proposition for kids?

I wanted to share this excellent article and podcast from my favourite radio and podcast station, NPR on winning in childrens' sport. As you will know this blog as all about providing coaches and parents with thoughts and ideas to help make the sporting experience for children better and I think that this sums up some of the challenges we face in trying to tackle the 'win / lose' question really well.

Working to change children's sport can create some pretty vitriolic responses from some quarters of the population so I totally get where this is coming from and it almost exactly sums up my stance on the topic. In my experience, competition for children can bring out the worst in otherwise well meaning and perfectly rational adults (take a look at the comments in the article for some pretty pointed examples!) and any discussion on the subject often descends into some pretty ugly exchanges.

I don't think that sports organisations help the situation sometimes either. Last year a county organsiation announced that it was changing its county tournament structure so that it was a festval format and had no semi finals and finals so therefore no overall winners. The response kicked up such a storm that it made national TV!

I'm not surprised that it got this kind of reponse, change like this never goes down well and if you add the emotive aspects that comes with the 'win vs lose' discussion then you may as well light the blue touch paper and stand back!

Why not offer both experiences. A fully competeitive offer with semi finals and finals and shiny cups and a competitive offer with winning deemphasised that has no final but everyone gets a medal. They could then compare and contrast the experience for the players and the kids could experience both and judge for themselves which one was most suitable going forward.

What, give children choice? That's just crazy talk!