By Paul Weiss

The question I hear most often from parents of young athletes is, “When should my child specialize in one sport?” Unfortunately, there isn’t a simple formula or sport-specific answer to this question. Even worse, there is evidence that success in sports at the age of 10 or 11 generally has little correlation with later success when athletes are 17 or 18—the the critical years for many athletes in terms of their physical development, capacity for performance, and timing to participate in college athletics.

Some of the most interesting statistics are from a study authored by Genadijus Sokolovas, USA Swimming’s Director of Physiology. Sokolovas compared the swimmers who achieved the top-100 times in their age group from the 10-and-under through the 17-18. Among the 17-18-year olds, only 10.3 percent of girls and 13.2 percent of boys were listed in any event as 10-and-unders! For the 11- and 12-year-olds, the percentages were 20.3 for girls and 12.6 for boys. Not until the 15-16 age group did the percentages become statistically significant (49.7 for girls and 53.5 for boys). As Sokolovas concluded, "Most of the future elite swimmers swim slower than age-group champions, especially at ages until 15-16 years."

So what does this very low correlation between competitive success as a 10-11-year old and success as a 17-18-year old tell us? It tells us that early competitive success is the wrong predictor of future competitive success. There are several reasons for this, some intuitive, some not. First, chronological age (CA) and maturational age (MA) are quite variable in pre- and early-pubescent youth. Look at any 5^th grade classroom and you’ll see huge disparities in height, muscular development, and signs of puberty. These variations in MA play a huge role in early success athletically.

Second, and often forgotten, is that athletic success as a young adult is dependent on continued participation in sport! Often, a young child who is particularly successful at 10 or 11 years can become very frustrated when their peers close the gap in maturation (MA), or when they simply stop improving that much against their own results. This frustration can quickly lead to burnout. Similarly, young athletes who specialize early on can become disenchanted with the rigors and discipline of training (when “the game” simply doesn’t feel fun to play anymore).

The third factor—and a hard pill to swallow—is that parental pressure to succeed is often a key factor in mental exhaustion, stress, and feelings of entrapment on the part of the child. The desire for empowerment, self-control, and personal choice that leads to the pre-adolescent behaviors that parents find most vexing are the same sources of dissonance and discomfort that the young athlete develops towards competitive sports. Middle school age children start picking clothing styles that irk their parents, they listen to “their” music, they adopt new language, and pick new friends, all of which are manifestations of independence. Their approach to sport often mirrors this process. Parents who have invested heavily in the development of their young sports prodigy can find it very difficult to let their child make their own decisions about participation as they get older, and this conflict can be a key contributor to burnout and dropout.

Usually, if the parent who asked the original question (“when should my child specialize in one sport”) is still listening to me, and hasn’t started either snoring or weeping, they then ask, “Then what can I do to help my child be successful? There must be something I can do to help them develop athletically that won’t ultimately sabotage them as athletes, or as people, right?”

The answer is yes, but as with all parenting involvement, it requires a thoughtful approach and is connected to the way you and your child approach decision-making more generally.

If you’re goal is to raise a child with a lifetime attachment to physical activity, and the best shot at being “in the game” when their body is at the ideal MA for peak performance, here’s what I recommend:

Make participation in sports and physical fitness a priority in your family, at a comparable priority level as music, art, reading, and other pursuits. Children whose parents are physically active and maintain a robust work/play-exercise balance are most likely to accept a similar school/sport-fitness balance and adopt similar lifestyle values.

Let your child prioritize “fun” in their sport choices. Fun does not equal “chaos.” Youth sports should be organized. Sports experiences that are structured, empowering, connect your child with an adult mentor, create strong peer-relationships, and contain an age-appropriate balance of skill-acquisition/rehearsal/critique/performance opportunities, are habit-forming and self-reinforcing for the young athlete.

The first goal should be mastery of skills, not objective performance. Coaches who provide feedback, reward success for skill acquisition, and do not discriminate against late developers are unfortunately the minority. However, they are key contributors to long-term attachment to sport for the young child. Age group athletics is often problematic because it categorizes by CA, while MA is more closely correlated with immediate athletic success. Great coaches and sports parents understand this, and can create qualitative measures of success, improvement, and excellence that are positively reinforcing for the young athlete.

As children’s bodies change and develop, particularly with the onset of puberty, their physical abilities may similarly morph. A child who has a growth spurt and goes from the 50^th percentile in height to the 95^th may suddenly find that they are less suited to gymnastics, and more suited to basketball or volleyball. Exposure to multiple sports throughout elementary and middle school can ease these transitions by providing the child with the broadest possible athletic skill set and the confidence to refocus on a sport that better suits them. Children should learn how to swim, throw, catch, shoot, volley, swing, jump, and learn the rules, rituals, strategies, and game play for the sports that employ these fundamental movement skills. Your child is more likely to “get in the game” if they feel confident about their basic skills and rules/play comprehension.

When you child crosses the threshold into the tween years, it’s time to start thinking about sport specialization. However, the focus should still be on mastery of skills. Athletes in endurance sports are naturally going to spend more time on conditioning, this includes swimming, running, cycling, and rowing, but technique and form should remain the priority. Conditioning for all sports is key to injury prevention, developing the strength to execute good technique, and increased max and sustained efforts, but this should be increased gradually through the middle and high school years. Find a coach who considers their first obligation to be teaching and you’ve probably got the right mentor for your young athlete.

Sports specialization, like picking a major in college, should be done in the context of developing the whole person. Your child will be more likely to continue to love sports and self-define as an athlete if they feel it’s their choice to do so. Your job as a parent is to measure their enthusiasm, joy, and self-concept. It’s the coach’s job to hold the stop-watch and keep statistics.

The most important advice I can give parents is to raise the whole child and make sports a critical part of this whole. You’ll only know you’ve done this right when your young-adult child is still making sports part of their daily life, regardless of how elite their performance was as a young athlete. Then you’ve achieved what most parents regard as their initial and primary goal for raising an active child: helping them be a happy and healthy person.

Dr. Paul Weiss is the Chief Program Officer at Asphalt Green, a comprehensive sports and fitness organization located on the Upper East side, and a second campus opening this spring in Battery Park City.   Dr. Weiss, who holds a PhD in Educational Psychology, has coached world class athletes and educated coaches and trainers for over 20 years.

For more info on Asphalt Green visit asphaltgreen.org. and for more info on sports classes and leagues for kids around the city, visit newyorkfamily.com.