Thursday, 19 January 2012

Burnout- When Do We Go Too Far?

Today, in my Sport Development class we were discussing burnout amongst youth athletes. Lots of discussion was had about the idea of burnout and how we need to change our traditional view of burnout as personal failure (medical model) towards a failure by society. To clarify, the author of the article (Coakley) was trying to show that the youth shouldn't be blamed for failing, but the parents, and coaches should be blamed for placing increased pressure on these children.

This made be begin to think about my one day parenting techniques. I am going to make an assumption about my unborn future children and say that they will be involved in either sports or music, or something that they enjoy. This whole idea of burnout makes me wonder, how far is too far? As a parent you want to encourage and support your children to succeed in things they love, but when does your support and encouragement become pressure and undue stress on the child? Even as a coach, how can you be sure that you aren't putting too much pressure on your athletes?

I believe it is a fine line that we toe as adults engaging with children. In sport, we typically treat children and youth as mini adults, and we all know that they are not mini adults. As adults, we need to be cautious when we approach youth and children with 'goal setting', and 'training plans'.

As a sport developer, or coach, I feel that proper education is a step in the right direction. We need to be educating parents, caregivers and coaches on the proper way to interact with young individuals. We need to be educating them on signs of burnout and what to do if they feel a child is under extreme pressures from parents or other coaches.

Remember:

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3 comments:

  1. KK20 January 2012 at 14:40

    I like the pic that you posted! Is it from some sort of advertising campaign?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Peanut20 January 2012 at 15:44

    It was from a gymnastics coaching website

    ReplyDelete
  3. Candice24 January 2012 at 11:55

    After taking the classes we have taken and learning what we have learned, I wholeheartedly challenge the socially constructed sport perspective. I'm not good at sports, so I don't typically play. Why? Because we value success, which is defined by winning. I'm not a winner, that's for sure. So, I have been deterred from participating in sport, until now. I'm going to become more involved in whatever the hell I want to because I enjoy it, not because I know I will succeed.

    Also, I want my children (when they exist) to be able to do whatever the hell they want to without HAVING to follow the models and without HAVING to win win win. I want my kids to have fun. If they have fun, they will be successful in turn. The parent who pushes their kid too hard has their child perform at an elite level, only so they (the parent) can live vicariously through their child is the failure.

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