Youth Sports and Rec

When we first enrolled my son in soccer, we wanted to introduce him to a sport with structure and rules. While it was all fun and games in the beginning (he really liked running around and playing with friends), the expectations shifted from just “having fun” to peers yelling, “Stoffel! Learn to kick the ball!”

By the end of his second season, he told me he didn’t like playing anymore. From people charging at him when he had the ball to multiple teammates screaming at him to pass the ball, the pressure was a bit more than he wanted to handle. That was fine by us. He’s now in his third year of baseball and has been enjoying it much better. The nature of the sport operates at a slower pace and each player must equally contribute both offensively and defensively, without multiple people in his face to make a play.

As our kids get more involved in youth sports, the expectations change. Aside from learning how to be a team player and to appropriately win/lose/enjoy the game, they are now also expected to practice on and off the field and remain on task for at least an hour (and that’s after a full-day of school). Some practices and games may be late afternoon or evening, interfering with daily dinner time and sleep schedules. And, it only gets later and longer as our kids age and advance their skills and commitment.

As always, this isn’t exactly how our parents approached youth sports when we were growing up. Back then, we either did what our parents did (or told us) or it was kind of up to us to figure out what we wanted to play. When parents learned that you could earn acceptance and scholarships to competitive colleges for playing sports, kids started seriously playing sports and “specializing” earlier; thus the rise of travel teams.

We’ve also seen parents want to introduce a huge variety of sports early on, so that their kids have a good foundation of skills. This would explain the rise of kids enrolled in “lifelong sports” like golf, skiing and tennis. And then with the Olympics, more obscure sports are being brought into the mainstream-fold and they increase sports enrollment: rugby, men’s gymnastics, fencing, syncro swimming and diving to name a few from this year.

So now we’re here and our kid has a lot more decisions to make. But it’s not as easy as “just sign them up and they’ll be fine”. The type of sports your child may gravitate towards are based on a few factors:

Sensory Processing

Sensory processing (aka sensory integration) is the ability to take in, interpret, and organize information from our body and environment to appropriately engage with our surroundings. The nature of athletics relies on multiple sensory systems. These include:

Vestibular – lets us know where we are in relation to the ground and the objects around us, as seen with tumbling, cartwheeling, or diving
Proprioception – gives us body awareness, telling us the location of our body parts and how they are moving relative to one another, like extending our left hand out to catch a flyball while running backwards
Tactile – alerts us about what is in contact with our body and its properties (weight, size, shape), allowing us to know how much effort is needed to toss an object like a dart or a ball

*Note: When these three systems are activated together, they give us a physical sense of self, providing a feeling of safety necessary to move without fear in our environment.

Visual – informs us of what we are seeing regarding the location, distance, color, shape, and movement of figures, like kicking a ball towards a goal with opposing players in the way
Auditory– allows us to locate, decipher, and discriminate sounds, like a teammate’s voice from a rival’s

How we process and modulate sensory information is different for everybody, especially our kids. While some require intense input to feel regulated and focused (skateboarding, football, wrestling, running, etc.), others may just need a drop. Golf, anyone?

Some kids may also seek certain inputs, like movement or deep pressure. Because of this, they enjoy training and are more likely to practice their skills to pass the time. Rhythmic movements are also regulating, like dribbling or tossing/catching a ball. The more practice, the more second-nature the skill becomes.

Moral of the story: Each sport is going to provide different combinations of input. Depending on your kid, some may suit their sensory cravings more than others. So you might have to do a bit of try-on to see what fits.

Brain Chem

How we process and remember situations can also influence sports participation. Certain activities provide high-stress situations, from everyone counting on you to score the winning point OR everyone coming at you to stop you from scoring the winning point. That intensity can trigger a flight-fright-fight response in the brain. (Remember Patrick Renna as the goalie in The Big Green?) While some kids can take that adrenaline and use it to focus, some kids can’t handle it. They don’t like being chased, they don’t like people screaming at them, they don’t like the pressure. They are out. See you in the car mom. I wanna go home.

While peewee league sports are all about understanding and appreciating the game, it starts changing around 6 years of age, the same time when friendly competition becomes a thing. Kids at this age are gaining more awareness of what they’re capable of and begin to compare themselves to others. They start to realize where they excel and where they don’t. They also notice if their best is worthy of peer/coach praise (or dismay). They might have a bad game or hear a snide comment from a teammate about their performance. If they can’t shake that off, it can mess with their psyche.

If our kids don’t feel like they are doing well or excelling, they may start seeing themselves as a failure. When we experience failure, the brain releases cortisol (the stress hormone) while our executive functions are analyzing and figuring out a solution. With each fail, more cortisol is released resulting in more stress. If failure (or even the thought of it) goes unchecked, it can strengthen the circuitry of reactive emotionally driven regions, hindering executive function connections in the process. Quite the vicious cycle. This can explain why kids may not want to continue playing a sport they originally enjoyed.

On the flip side, if our kids feel success through winning a game or praise from their teammates and coaches, then they are prone to want to stick with it. When we experience success, our brain releases dopamine (the feel-good hormone) and serotonin (the happy hormone) to encourage us to engage in that task again. That activation also lingers for several seconds, making brain activity more efficient the next time we do the task. With each success, the brain fine tunes and processes the information quicker than the last time. And even on a bad day, that large hit of dopamine is strong enough to motivate our kids to practice and work harder to achieve their goal. The more they engage in that activity, the stronger the circuitry will be. That powerful connection between actions and the memories of how it physically and emotionally made us feel is what drives behavior, and what helps shape our kids into better athletes.

Temperament

Temperament is a set of fixed traits that shape how we respond to the world, serving as a basis of our personality as we age. There are nine temperament traits:

Activity Level – This refers to the “speed” of your child. Is your child always on the go or do they prefer to sit and chill?
Distractibility– The degree of concentration displayed when not particularly interested in an activity. Can your child focus on a non-preferred task or do they find other things to attend to?
Intensity – The energy level of a response, regardless if it’s positive or negative. Does your child outwardly and overly express their emotions or mute them?
Regularity – The predictability of internal body functions, like sleep or appetite. Can you set your clock based off when your child is hungry, or do they graze at weird times of the day?
Sensory Threshold – The sensitivity to external environmental stimuli. Does your child pick up on every little sight, sound, smell, taste, or texture, or is unbothered by it all?
Approach/Withdrawal – The response to new situations and people. Does your child just jump right in or are they slow to warm up?
Adaptability – The response to transitions and change. Does your child cling to you during drop-off or do they to ghost you while greeting their teacher?
Persistence – The amount of time invested in activities in the face of obstacles. Are they working diligently through a task or do they give up and ask for help?
Mood– The tendency to react to the world in positive or negative way. Does your child think everything is awesome or is only happy when it rains?

Temperament varies between kids, but certain characteristics may make a child more inclined to sports than others and which kind. For instance, a child who has a high activity level, high sensory threshold, and high persistence may gravitate towards contact sports while one who has a low activity level, low sensory threshold, and high withdrawal may prefer individual sports like golf or archery.

While it may be great that your child might love the same sport as you (can’t tell you how excited we are that our kids enjoy playing baseball), don’t be upset if they want to do something else. The chances are it’s because something about the activity truly makes them happy.

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