(11-01-2021, 06:33 PM)Jags Wrote: (10-31-2021, 03:15 PM)Cleatwood Wrote: Dude. They don’t even do this in professional sports.
Once the game is out of hand, every team eases up.
I think that is [BLEEP] too. Sure, pull your future HOF QB, WR, etc. but why let up? I just can’t fathom why anyone would ever play a game and not give it their all. I don’t let my kid win. What’s that teach her? It teaches more practice is needed. She can take it from there if it’s something she wants to peruse or not. I’m not gonna let a 6 yr old think she’s the best soccer, basketball, baseball whatever player because I let her win and “we all had fun”. I’m not going to let her win a board game. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a complete [BLEEP] hole. I’m not gonna reject every shot because I’m 6’2 full grown [BLEEP] adult and she may be 4ft. It may be considered good sportsmanship, but whatever. I know anytime I didn’t perform as well as I could, I spent many hours practicing to get better. And there are sports I’m good at (or was at the time) and others I wasn’t. I didn’t play organized basketball because I was a mediocre shot and just got rebounds. Baseball, hockey and football I was good at. I played all of those in organized leagues. Didn’t mean I threw the basketball in the trash. I still enjoy “trying” haha.
I think there's a line, especially when it's parent v. 6 year old. I mean you can Mutombo them all day long and waggle your finger after a savage block, but that alone isn't going to help them motivate to improve. Sometimes it's leaving the ball unprotected so they can get a steal, or kick a lazy goal shot so they can defend. They get the taste of success and want to keep getting that. Improve as they do, so that they don't just revert to learned helplessness and assume that trying isn't going to yield any different results.
I did this a lot when my son was learning chess. Games could have lasted 10 moves at most if I wanted to dunk on simple mistakes. Instead, a lot of times we would pause action, and I would ask, "What am I trying to do by moving this piece where I did?" or "Is there a better move than that one?" and we would talk the strategy through. He still is stuck thinking just about his next move, and not two or three down the road, or about counters to his move, but starting with those questions early help him more than if I just take his king without any exposition of the hows or whys along the way.
He just started running cross country this fall. A week or so in, we decided to do a run through a nearby park and I (stupidly) decided to run alongside him to motivate and show him running is more about persevering through the discouraging voice in your head than being some superhuman. It was tough, we were both winded, but I busted my tail to finish first, but not by much. A few weeks later, he's been training with the team daily, and I've been on my butt staring at a monitor, and we decided to do a run through the neighborhood. He whooped me bad, and I let him have a chance to gloat a bit about it. It was good to see him realize the reward of his efforts.
