Youth Sports: What Parents Need to Hear To Help Their Kids Develop into Good or Great Athletes

Helping your kids and their teams succeed in youth sports is neither obvious or intuitive to most of us. We need some outside professional perspective to get it right. Today, most are getting things horribly wrong. This video is an interview with Peter Mattsson, the elite sports director of the Swedish Sports Confederation. He understands that to succeed at the highest level in sports, we must learn to succeed at the lowest levels. Many, many players who have enormous potential to make it at the highest levels (or simply enjoy amateur sports for life) are quitting before the age of 12, when it's simply too early to tell anything about their potential. Not only are we not getting things right as loving and supportive parents, we're usually adding unnecessary pressure and increasing the risk of injury to our kids. This eye-opening video will hopefully form the basis of some smart discussion for any sports team or club, jumpstarting a dialog between the parents and the coaches about how long the season should be, how many away-tournaments they should play, how many hours they should practice, how to help them get more free play, what to do about yelling coaches, and creating policies regarding what parents should say (or rather not say) on the sideline and in the car on the way home -- all to help keep the kids from getting injured or quitting early. Good news is that fixing the system isn't that complicated.