There’s an art to keeping kids in the game

“I love to watch you play!”

This is the best thing a parent can say to their kids — great advice from John O’Sullivan, author of Changing the Game.

We have hopes and aspirations for our kids to earn gold medals and scholarships or to become a professional draft pick.

Nonetheless, it always comes down to the pleasure of play. Many of us still play — there is joy, power, freedom and friendship in play.

“Try harder,” “you have to work at it,” “hustle Johnny” and other profound bits of advice shouted from the stands or during the car ride home have a little impact on a player’s skills. Our comments create short-term motivation, but do not make the game more enjoyable.

There is an additional role that we can serve — that is, to ask the character-building questions. We can help kids become better teammates — we are social animals after all — by asking our kids and ourselves: Who is the best teammate? Should the team’s captain be the best player or the player that makes everyone else better?

Should we go to tournament hotels with waterslides?

Is it more fun to win 8-0 or 3-2, or lose 3-2?

Organized youth sports offers opportunity for personal growth in skills and team development.

These are two separate but mutually reinforcing dimensions of youth sport. Sport has a great reputation for building character when both the skill and team dimensions exist. If these two critical dimensions of building character are separated, then the joy of the game is lost.

The joy starts to disappear when kids feel over-organized and stifled (too much work on skill development) or when everyone receives generic praise (too much social belonging). The joy of sports needs both skill and team reward.

The power and the freedom of play brings skill and team together. Skills development is obvious — practice makes perfect. Team development comes through play where kids (and adults) interact with each other. Through play, we test the boundaries, break the occasional window and learn to depend on teammates to make each other better. Play is undefined, unbounded and impossible to force.

Unstructured play empowers. A sense of team emerges.

The benefits of practice become incorporated into a personal understanding and enjoyment of the game. With play, the motivation to improve is found in our love of the game.

“I love to watch you play.”