Dr. Don Wood explains why young athletes get stuck on mistakes and fear failure. Parents should praise effort and process over stats, coaches should expose kids to tougher competition so they learn from losses, and asking open questions after games helps surface what they actually did well.
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So with all these young athletes that you're working with, what are you seeing as the common things that you need to help them with? Like what, what's the, the most prevalent things that you're seeing?
Most common is their ability to move past mistakes. So many get stuck on. It has to look perfect, it has to look a certain way. I can't mess up, I can't let anybody down. That is probably the most common one that I see.
Yeah. And I shared with you when I was playing tennis, the best advice I got from my tennis coach was when he said to me, you want to be a great tennis player, right. I'13. Right. And I said, yeah. And he goes, we'll lose a lot.
Yeah.
Which didn't make any sense. I said, why would I want to lose a lot? I mean, as a 13 year old, that's sort of counterintuitive. Until he explained what he meant is he said, don't be afraid to lose, go play against better players. And he says, play in the older divisions. And so, you know, I'd go play in 15, 16 year old tournaments, 17, even adult tournaments, and I'd just get blown out. Right. But at the same time, what he taught me was that's how you learn. So I expected that I'm going to make some mistakes, I expected that I was going to lose. But what he was sort of teaching me is how many games can you win in a set? Right. So if I came back losing one and one, it sounds sort of silly, but I'm like, I took two games, I took two games off that 18 year old.
Right.
Which made me feel pretty good. I was chomping up and chunking out my success.
Yeah.
And amazing, like life experience. And if I had not done that, I don't think I would have excelled as fast as I did.
Yeah. That's another reason why I love sports. And ultimately wins and losses don't define who you are. Was basketball everything to me when I played it? Absolutely. But it didn't define me as a person and it took me a while to figure that out as I worked on myself and I gained that. And that's what I work with my student athletes about. And I think when they're able to be resilient like that and overcome these different losses or lessons and they're able to look at it like you just said, as curiosity, like, oh, what didn't I do beforehand? How did I not prepare? Is there something different that I could do rather than I messed up and keep hammering on that message? That gets lost in what sports is all about. And sports is just all about that lesson and how we can grow and be resilient and get better and develop these relationships and the connections. And as long as our athletes don't get lost in their wins and losses. Define me. That's. That's not what it's about. It's about who is it making you? How are you building? How are you growing?
I absolutely agree. Hockey, I guess it was my number one sport. My parents didn't really know anything about hockey. My dad was not a hockey player. They were phenomenal in terms of support and getting me there and taking care of everything. They always wanted to reward success and not in a negative way. They were doing it, I think, trying to do it in a positive way. But what I didn't like is we'd come back from a hockey game and they would say, oh, my gosh, Corey was the best player out there tonight. Wasn't he phenomenal? Right. If Corey wasn't there, we wouldn't have won. And I'm like, but I played well, right? I didn't. I may not have scored that game. And I kept thinking, they don't understand that. I made three checks. I got back and picked up my check and stopped a goal.
Right?
But they didn't sort of see that. And that's what I think is important for parents to understand, is don't always just think about the successes, like the goals. Because that was the obvious thing. It's easy to see goals and reward it. I wish my parents had said this, what do you think? You did really well tonight? And then I could have said, did you see, like, how twice I got caught up ice, but I skated really hard and I caught my guy and I caught him from behind when he would have had a breakaway. Like, those are the things I was seeing as a kid, but they weren't seen. But I think if we can get kids and parents to understand that. Look at the whole game, you know, I mean, how many games did you play in where you made it? Maybe didn't score a lot of points, but you contributed on the defense, for sure.
Yeah, it happens all the time. Happens all the time. And I actually just had one of my hockey players. I said, how'd your games go last week? Not so well. I didn't score any goals and didn't have any assists. And I said, okay, so the games didn't go well? He's like, no. And I said, well, what else did you do well? Well, I won all my face offs. Okay, that. That's huge. Yeah, exactly. So it's challenging them. Parents need to. To challenge their kids, too. On looking at all the other things, how did you respond to the turnover? Did you get back on defense? You know, those type of things are so important rather than just focusing on. On all the statistics. We get so hung up on. On leading scores or leading assists and things like that, rather than what they're gaining in the things that they don't show on the stat sheet.
Because if we keep re.
Our children are basically thinking their value comes from success as opposed to effort. And as we know as athletes, if you put in the effort, the success will come. Go with effort, the results will show up.
