Recently I was caught in the middle of a conversation between two friends who I respect immensely. Both women are high achievers — academically and professionally — and are dedicated to raising their children to be well-adjusted, thoughtful, successful adults.
The conversation turned toward the increasingly competitive nature of kids’ sports, and the fact that we, as parents, often have a hard time finding a sport or activity that holds our kids’ interest.
How do we know when to let our kids quit an activity, and when to encourage them to stick with it? Friend #1, a competitive athlete herself, said she sees value in team sports beyond the physical benefits of exercise and excelling in the sport itself. Learning to play as part of a team — even just at the recreational level, she has observed — teaches essential life skills that translate to success in the workplace and in life.
This friend pointed out that in her field (she’s head of a sales group), it’s the people who know how to work as part of a team — to play a supporting role, as well as to be a leader when needed — who are the best at their jobs and most likely to move up the ranks.
She finds that those who are less adept at working in a group and navigating a variety of different personalities are at a loss when it comes to achieving professional fulfillment and success. Therefore, she stated, it was essential for her to find at least one team sport for each of her kids to enjoy.
“I 100 percent disagree with you,” countered Friend #2.
This friend, unlike the first, said she shudders at the fact that team sports encourages a group-think mentality, that the sports teach kids to compromise and hold themselves back rather than take charge and own their accomplishments.
Being chained to a team of less competent people, she postulated, is both frustrating and fruitless. It’s not fair that kids who can’t pull their own weight are often able to ride the coattails of the superstars just because they wear the same uniform, she said.
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Friend #2 said she puts more value on encouraging kids to pursue their individual interests and talents in a way that’s unfettered by team dynamics — so that they realize their fullest potential. Plus, she noted, there are plenty of careers for people who would rather work independently. Here, she looked at me, a freelance writer.
I see both points of view.
Certainly there are kids who find team sports a miserable experience, just as there are parents and coaches who can make team sports miserable. So if kids can get their exercise and motivation from an individual sport, why not foster that and look for team-building opportunities elsewhere?
But I flinched at the assertion that there’s no value in team sports. Could Friend #2 honestly think that having to work as part of a team, one with varying skill sets and ideas of how to achieve a group goal, could be deleterious to a kid’s emotional development?
In a recent essay for the New York Times, Claire Cain Miller made the case that qualities like cooperation, empathy, and flexibility — the kinds of soft skills that kids build working with a group — are traits that will prove to be “increasingly vital” for future professionals.
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She says as the employment landscape changes, and more jobs once held by people are being done by machines, the best jobs available to future generations will be those that require emotional intelligence and social perceptiveness — sharing and negotiating, for example, as well as “trusting one another, bringing out one another’s strengths, and being coachable.”
How do we build these skills? Through group activities, “like sports, band or drama.”
Among our country’s corporate leaders, 70 to 80 percent participated in sports, while only 20 percent were on their school’s honor roll.
“Kids who play sports are more likely to perform better in school and succeed in the future workplace,” according to Paul Caccamo, the Harvard-educated founder of Up2Us, a nationwide program that advocates and supports youth sports as a means to reduce youth violence, promote health, and inspire academic success.
He adds that kids who participate in sports “attend school more, are more community- and civic-minded, get in less trouble, and tend to be more successful in the workplace.”
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Caccamo also cites studies that show that among our country’s corporate leaders, 70 to 80 percent participated in sports, while only 20 percent were on their school’s honor roll.
As for Friend #2’s observation that as a freelance writer I don’t need to be able to work with a team, I credit my current employment to a winding professional path that required I negotiate my way through a variety of small and large companies as everything from a lowly fact-checker to an editor at a worldwide media corporation. To be where I am today, writing independently from an office next to my kitchen, I had to learn how to sit in meetings, manage a team, plead my case to my boss, and advocate for my work in a roomful of people.
Yet, as a parent, I would be hard pressed to push my child to participate in team sports if he truly had no interest or aptitude. I have seen how the frustration in kids whose skill and passion differ greatly from their teammates’ can chip away at their self-confidence and joy. But even if that were the case with my kids, I would seek other opportunities to expose them to group dynamics — ones where they could test their skills, both as a leader and in a supporting role.
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