Don't Compare Your Child's Performance to the Best You've Seen Them Play
“Comparison is the thief of joy.” —Theodore Roosevelt
Don’t compare your child’s performances to their best ones. They will be inconsistent. This is another thing I have seen a lot of over the years. A child will have a good game, and suddenly parents will think they’ve cracked it. The child is suddenly at a different level. Well, it doesn’t work like that. Children will be inconsistent. Adults are as well, for that matter. Even Messi and Ronaldo have had bad games, so young children will obviously have many. The problem is that lots of parents compare each performance against the best they have ever seen them play as some sort of benchmark. Anything below that standard is deemed a bad or average game. This is even worse if you are a parent who likes rewarding your child for “good” games. If this is something you do, then I strongly suggest you put a stop to it. I discuss this more in Chapter 78. It’s only ever acceptable to reward effort levels, and even then, I would do so cautiously. It’s much better for children to put the effort in for intrinsic reasons rather than for external rewards. I watched a game recently where an Under 11 scored a fantastic long-range shot. A parent said to the parent of the goal scorer, “That’s worth at least £10!” to which he replied, “It’ll be a McDonalds on the way home.” Now, it was a very good goal, but ever since then, the lad has been trying to recreate it and shooting from all sorts of places on the pitch! It has affected his decision-making, and not for the better! It’s had a really poor impact on the child’s development, even though it was done with the best possible intentions.
Children learn more from the bad games than they do from the good ones, especially if parents and coaches understand this, embrace the process of it, and help guide them to aid their development. There are too many factors and variables in each match to compare performances. Enjoyment and effort are always the key things to look for. “But my kid hates losing,” I hear you say. This behaviour has been learned from somewhere, probably Mum and Dad, and the sooner it is unlearned, the better. Fear of losing can have disastrous effects in terms of development and fulfilling potential and can lead to performance anxiety. I believe it’s good for a child to want to win, and even more important that they try to win; however, whether they do or not is not that important. It’s just an outcome and one that nobody can have complete control over. What a player can control and what can be encouraged and nurtured by you is effort, attitude and how you deal with victory and defeat. And it’s from defeat and failure that the best life lessons can be taken.
In summary, don’t compare your child to the best you’ve seen them play, and don’t do anything that affects their decision-making. They have to explore the possibilities for themselves. You can only compare your child with their previous effort levels, not their performances. They’re actions and not their outcomes, especially if you can tie it into a goal to strive towards. In a season, a player should always be trying to narrow the gap between their best performance and their worst but without continual comparisons to either. This is where consistency is found.
This blog was taken from my book, Did You Win, Did You Score…? How to Help Your Child Succeed at Football and Life.
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