Pressure

Today I took my 6 year old to his last basketball game of the year. His grandma was here to see the game and the kid felt a bunch of pressure. He was looking for a way out of it all morning and it just consumed him.

I did some bad parenting before the game and made him cry by telling him we were going to play. Well, the child takes the court and proceeds to play way too rough and gets thrown out of church league upwards basketball game.

The ref gives him a good talking too and I get him and head to the car but before I get in, I stop and knee down to talk to him about what in the hell are you thinking. I look in to his eyes and see that he is relieved to be out of the self imposed pressure. He was looking for a way out and found it.

Something clicked for me that yelling at him some more was really not what he needed. So, I told him your daddy has been kicked out of church league games for playing to rough. I tell him that you can’t play that rough in basketball.

I started thinking about pressure, failure and success. How we have to expose our kids to all of that (maybe 6 is too young). Experiencing all of that as a child is good because you are going to get it as an adult and you have to be ready to deal with it.

My peewee baseball team went 1-13 over two years of play. There was pressure every time I had to bat. My life time batting average was .000 and I was a starter in center field. I could run balls but I could not hit one. Failure on a scale that few will be able to equal. I truly expected to loss every time out. Tons of pressure

My high school track team won 3 straight state track championships, which I scored points in the pole vault, 110 high hurdles, and 330 intermediates. Success. I truly expected to win every time out. No pressure. I knew we would win.

I water skied for Louisiana Tech (yes this is a collegiate D1 sport at many southern schools). I never was really good at that level. But the coaches could count on me to put points on the board. I don’t know that I felt any pressure because no one expected us to win just do well and I was not the star just a role player. There was some pressure there probably but I was at the point I could deal with it.

I played basketball at a lot of different levels and even in 40 year old guy church league I feel pressure. This is coming from a guy that had chances to play d2 basketball. After the game starts the pressure goes away.

I feel a mixed bag of pressure in autox. At local events I never feel any pressure because they are all test n tune for me. I think I finished dead last at the 1st regional event this year. Now move up past the regional level and I feel pressure to perform. At the 1st TLAC last year the car ran strong but I folded under the pressure of coning the 1st couple of runs and never recovered. I felt like I should have been in the top ten of the field of about 100. I did not even come close.

At the Eastern States Championship I felt pressure there too. I expected to beat everyone that was local in STU and any RWD car there. There was pressure to put down clean runs at pace. I managed to put a clean run down on pace on the 1st run. That carried me through the weekend.

As we end the season the life lessons that the kids have learned here will stick with them for the rest of their lives. There are lessons even losing.

(02-27-2010 04:54 PM)insideualr Wrote:  Pressure
I started thinking about pressure, failure and success. How we have to expose our kids to all of that (maybe 6 is too young). Experiencing all of that as a child is good because you are going to get it as an adult and you have to be ready to deal with it.

Perhaps there is enough pressure in life from things that really are important for us to create artificial pressure from things that are not.

(02-27-2010 04:54 PM)insideualr Wrote:  Pressure
I started thinking about pressure, failure and success. How we have to expose our kids to all of that (maybe 6 is too young). Experiencing all of that as a child is good because you are going to get it as an adult and you have to be ready to deal with it.

I was listening to an audio book about that very thing today.
+1

Robert, was it good to let them have a taste of it at 6? I am really questioning pushing him to play ball this year.

(02-27-2010 06:26 PM)insideualr Wrote:  Robert, was it good to let them have a taste of it at 6? I am really questioning pushing him to play ball this year.

In principle, it was good. It sounds as if you went about it the right way. If a kid says he wants to play ball he needs to face the competition. It's just a game. Then thye won't back down from real life challenges when they are adults. Kids these days get coddled and have excuses made for them way too much.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh59AEC41kE