The mental health of professional adult athletes has been getting a lot of attention lately. But what about the 45 million amateur youth athletes in the US?
Many parents/caregivers have asked us how to push for athletic success without pushing your child over a mental health ledge.
Are Youth Sports Good for Mental Health?
On the face of it, youth sports participation seems like the golden path to optimized mental health.
Studies suggest that young people who participate in sports derive benefits that include:
Lower obesity rates
Lower use of tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drugs
Higher high school/college graduation rates
Fewer mental health struggles, including lower rates of depressions and anxiety, especially for youth athletes in team sports
Parents and caregivers enroll their children for many reasons:
Exercise for better overall health
Stress relief through dopamine released in the brain (especially important for kids with ADHD)
Better discipline
Understanding the importance of practice
Self-confidence
Improved motor skills, eyesight, weight control, nutrition
Strategic thinking, understanding game theory on an innate level
Better body image that focuses on function, instead of form
Sportsmanship and a sense of fair play
Grace under pressure
Being a good loser
Learning to be a good team member
Becoming a leader
And, most important, to have fun!
Why Are Kids Leaving Youth Athletics?
Many kids are turned off by sports because of the pressure to compete at elite levels. According to one survey, the average child spends less than three years in a sport and quits by age 11. Another survey stated that 80% of young athletes quit by age 15.
The problem stems, mainly, from the way some people approach youth sports.
Sports used to be the realm of the generalists. Kids played different sports depending on the season. Seasonal young athletes worked different skills and muscles, and participated in different teams with different kids, coaches, and dynamics.
Today, youth sports has careened from a fun way to blow off energy to a serious world of specialization. Kids as young as ten are being asked to make a life choice of a single sport that they will play (in many cases) all year long. Even kids as young as three are participating in traveling T-Ball teams.
The perceived need to specialize early is acute. Many parents/caregivers say that the intense competition in elite youth sports requires double digits of hours of practice every week. That’s double the time kids spent in the 1980-90s. That’s on top of a regular school load. Many parents homeschool their kids so that they have time to practice at the elite level and compete on the road almost every week of the year.
This leads to overuse of the same muscles that never have a chance to heal as they would in the off-season. Orthopedic doctors are seeing a surge of children with sports professional injuries requiring procedures like ACL surgery.
Many of these children are facing performance pressure that is economic. They have to compete at an elite level in order to get a scholarship at a top school.
How Do You Mentally Prepare Your Young Athlete?
For those seeking a college scholarship or Olympic glory, the super-heated pressure is intense enough to ignite fusion. The pressure starts early: a 13-year-old, Momiji Nishiya, won a gold medal at this year’s Olympics.
According to one study, 58 percent of elite athletes tested positive for a mental health issue.
Fortunately, decorated celebrity athletes like swimmer Michael Phelps, gymnast Simone Biles and tennis star Naomi Osaka (among others) have recently become true role models by coming forward not only to talk about mental health issues, but prioritize mental health above sports glory.
"I have to put my pride aside. I have to do what’s right for me and focus on my mental health and not jeopardize my...well-being,” Biles told reporters after she decided to withdraw from an Olympic gold event. “That’s why I decided to take a step back."
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine (among others) have recently released statements prioritizing mental health.
There is a new tool for identifying potential issues with elite athletes that can also be used for youth athletes. The Sports Mental Health Assessment Tool (SMHAT) is a diagnostic tool for medical professionals to use.
How to Get Your Young Athlete Mental Health Support
Remove the stigma of seeking mental health help: Athletes of all ages are taught to “tough out” problems. “No pain, no gain” isn’t just about physical challenges. This emotionally stunted ethos rears its ugly head in all sports.
As Tom Hanks’ character said in A League of Their Own, “There is no crying in baseball!”
Let them know that they are not alone: Mental health is a concern for everyone, not just young athletes. Because of the performance pressure, the lack of sleep, school challenges, and more, anywhere from 20-58% of youth athletes experience mental health issues at some point in their career.
Train team parents/coaches/family/friends to see the warning signs: The Sport Mental Health Recognition Tool (SMHRT) is a tool to help coaches, friends, and family of athletes to identify mental health signs and symptoms.
Let the young athletes know what mental health resources are available to them: At the elite level, there are a lot of resources for athletes, but at the youth athletic level there aren’t as many. You need to reach out to the school or youth athletic league to discover what is available locally. You may want to research mental health professionals who work with athletes.
Reframe mental health problems as a sports performance issue: To get over the stigma of having mental health issues, sometimes it helps to attack a problem as a performance issue. Treat your brain like a twisted ankle. For athletes, there’s no shame in taping your ankle or resting it for a while so you can compete later.
Seeking mental health help to deal with stress, anxiety, and depression, significantly reduces athlete illness and injury rates. Dealing with these Big Three can increase attentional systems which helps with higher executive functioning. This helps athletes cope and plan better.
Help Your Youth Athlete Reduce Stress
Each sport has its own argot for glitches that impact performance. In gymnastics, it is called the twisties. In other sports it is called the yips. They are muscle spasms or loss of attentional control that strike even seasoned athletes out of nowhere. This is often called sports performance anxiety.
Mindfulness/meditation are tried and true stress relievers that also can help improve performance. There are countless apps, websites, and YouTube videos to get you started. Meditation that focuses on diaphragmatic breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, visualization, positive self-talk, etc. are especially helpful for athletes.
Teach Your Youth Athlete How to Live in the Moment
Too many stresses can cloud an athlete’s mind. According to the wisdom of TV character Ted Lasso, the goldfish is the happiest animal because it has a 10-second memory. Be a goldfish.
You need to focus on the process (the sport), not the product (the trophy). The reward is the athlete doing their personal best. When you speak to your athlete make sure that your language focuses on the technique, not the outcome. The crowd, the score, the trophy, are all secondary.
The Goldman Dilemma
Young athletes’ identities are often so tightly woven into their sport that they will make foolish choices in order to win. They will starve themselves. They will work out until they are exhausted. They will hide their pain (both physical and emotional). They may secretly take drugs to try to enhance their performance.
A physician named Robert Goldman once surveyed elite athletes with this hypothetical choice: Take a magic pill that would guarantee them an Olympic gold medal but will kill them in five years. Fifty-two percent of the athletes said they would take the pill now and die later.
No matter how much you want them to win, you need to be the grownup in the room. You need to show them that their athletic career is only a tiny sliver of their whole lives.
Practice May Make Perfect, but It Won’t Make You Michael Phelps
Young athletes lack perspective. There is a misnomer, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, that all it takes is 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to transform you into an elite performer.
While it is true that hard work will improve their performance, practice makes them better, not necessarily the best.
Numerically only a few can be the very best. It is a difficult lesson that almost all young athletes will learn the hard way. Then what?
Young Athletes Are More Than Their Sport
Your job as a parent/caregiver is to help your young athlete see themselves as more than just their athletic performance.
So many young athletes don’t have an identity outside of their sport. If they aren’t a swimmer, who are they?
Even while they are competing in sports, they need a network of friends and activities outside of it. You, and they, need to make the time.
The same discipline they use to practice can be harnessed into music, the arts, or other activities where the joy comes from the act itself, where there are no winners or losers.
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