The Youth College Soccer Guy tells parents of young kids to focus on fun, not criticism. Record games and show only positive clips, use open questions instead of feedback, and try a Soccer IQ sheet that lets kids compare their touches to pros and self-coach.
If you're 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 years old, do you need to be thinking about college soccer? Youth College Soccer Guy, you're crazy! Why are you even making me watch this video? Are you nuts? That's correct, I'm crazy. So if you don't like crazy, get out of here. I'm the Youth College Soccer Guy and I help you play MLS next season. Now, so if you're 4, 5, 6, or 7, at this age obviously it's about having fun. But Mom and Dad, I would have you start taking video. You don't need to go over the video, you don't need to do anything with the video with the son or daughter, but you should just take the video. Naturally, your son or daughter would love to see their goals Only show them the positive stuff. Never do any negatives. You cannot do any negative at that age. You should only show them how great they are. So if you're gonna show them a clip and say, "Next time you should have done this," don't do that. That will mess up their headspace at that age. Now if you wanna ask them a question such as, pause the video and say, "Where are your options? Which one would you pick?" Whatever they pick, just say, "Great job." If you wanna say, "Oh, look at this other option. What do you think of that one?" And they go, "Oh, that's good too," great. As long as they're having fun doing game video review, then you're doing fine. If they're not having fun, it feels like a chore, you're going to screw them up and they're going to want to quit. The best thing you can do is compare them to a pro player. So what you do is you take a video clip of them, then you go watch your favorite player in the Premier League or your favorite player in the NWSL, and you go, look, you did the same thing as them, you're so good. Just talk about how great they are constantly. The human brain will constantly criticize itself as they get older, so they do not need any further criticism. The best coaching they can get is if they can teach themselves how to coach themselves. And this is important because when I work with students who are 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 years old, as crazy as it sounds, is we start doing game video review and we talk about what they need to do in order to become a college soccer player one day. Because when they're 14, 15, 16, they need to be really good if they're going to play Division 1 soccer. But when we go over the video with them, we don't want them, you know, thinking negatively. We want them just seeing the positive reinforcement over a long time. And so we do something called a Soccer IQ sheet, which is where we write down how many touches they took and then we compare it to a pro player and we just look at the facts and we don't go over the negative, and then they get much better, much faster, and it's super cool. If you want more help, call me, links in the bio. Talk soon, bye.
