Picture an 8-year-old—let’s call her Sofia—who adores playing soccer. Her parents don’t need to tell her to practice. She runs outside at recess, eager to try new dribbles with her friends. Training with her coach is the highlight of her week, and her abilities are growing month by month.

Sofia’s on track to becoming a happy, skilled athlete, with intrinsic motivation (an ideal situation!)

As parents, we wonder, is there a way to help that happen? The answer may surprise you: Support kids in going for their passions, and you won’t need to pressure them.

But don’t we need to push our kids to be excellent?

As coaches who have worked with hundreds of child athletes, we’ve often seen the power of support, and the damage that early pressure can do.

Let’s imagine now that Sofia’s mom decides soccer is her ticket to an Ivy League. She ramps up Sofia’s practice hours, and sends her to tournaments 3 states away. When she doesn’t score, Sofia’s dad berates her for being unfocused. He isolates her from her friends for a month.

“I’ve got to get this girl motivated,” he says.

But all that pushing makes Sofia’s motivation fall apart. While Sofia’s parents may feel they’re giving her a “leg up,” she might even become depressed, or want to quit.

How can we avoid falling into the pressure trap?

Unconditional Love: The Bedrock of Motivation and Resilience

Kobe Bryant, one of the world’s top athletes ever, once told a surprising story. At about 10 years old, he played in a basketball league an entire summer without scoring even once!

“I remember crying about it…and my father just gave me a hug and he said,‘Whether you score zero, or you score 60, I’m going to love you no matter what,”’ Kobe recalled.

“That is the most important thing you can tell a child.”

Kobe’s dad gave him security. From that place, Kobe could decide on his own to improve his skills, because he was motivated by his own desire to play better.

Yes, kids will have bumps in the road—even with activities they love. Learning any new skill is emotionally challenging. But at those moments, it’s even more important for us to offer our unconditional love.

The Science of Intrinsic Motivation

Children are born with a tendency towards intrinsic motivation. As humans, we are wired to seek out challenges, be curious, and to practice and develop new skills, even when there’s no clear external reward. In short, humans like to learn.

Think of a typical preschooler, bursting with questions about the world around him, full of an “I do it!” attitude. No one is giving him a gold star for asking whether ants pee, or keeping a balloon up in the air. He’s just naturally interested.

Children whose parents nurture this tendency with time spent listening to them, letting them try things without expecting immediate mastery, and steady affection, are better set up to thrive.

Numerous university studies show the benefits:

Children with affectionate parents had an almost 10 percent larger hippocampus—the brain area responsible for memory, learning, and emotions. (Washington University, 2012)
Children whose mothers stepped back—instead of telling them how to use their toys—displayed stronger bonds with their parents, a trait psychologists say strongly predicts self-esteem, emotional regulation, and ability to make friends at school. (University of Missouri, 2013)

Hard-working NBA star Steph Curry thanks this kind of parenting for his success.

Though Steph’s dad was a past NBA player himself, he modeled determination, instead of requiring it.

“Dad always told us that whatever we wanted to do, he'd support us. He wasn’t ever going to push us to the gym,” Steph once told ESPN.

“Sure, he’d go with us, but it’s not like he’d wake us up and force us to go. That helped me a lot because my work ethic has always been my own and not someone else forcing it on me.”

Burnout Vs. Fired Up

Steph and Kobe aren’t the exceptions–they’re actually the norm, according to the book The Best: How Elite Athletes Are Made. For the book, a sports scientist and sports writer studied highly successful athletes’ roads to the top. Most had parents who helped them get good training, but also let them play their sport for fun.

“The parents of super champions allowed the children to get on with things themselves. When discussing sport with the children, these parents focused on asking questions, rather than telling their children what to do,” wrote Tim Wigmore, one of the book’s authors.

Meanwhile, the “almosts”--athletes who burned out as elite kids–typically had controlling, high-pressure helicopter parents. They were much more likely to suffer from crippling performance anxiety and depression.

Realistically, it’s not likely our kids will all become pro athletes. But supportive parenting can create the same resilience for happy, fit youth soccer players, with a lifelong love for learning.

Overcoming the Pressure to Apply Pressure

If grandparents or teachers criticize our child, if we grew up with harsh parenting ourselves, and if we live in a highly competitive society, this change may be hard to make. Our doubts and fears may feel bigger than science.

A good place to start is to ask yourself what you hope your child will get out of youth soccer:

What does my child really like to do?
Am I pushing my child to be a good athlete because I wasn’t? Or conversely, because I was?
Can I have patience with my child’s learning process, knowing it may take years?
What will I do if my child doesn’t score all summer?

These are tough questions but can be game-changers.

What You Can Do

When you’re ready to let off the pressure, scientists at Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child strongly recommend three evidence-based tactics for nurturing intrinsic motivation:

Process:
Notice your child’s learning process, not the outcome, as in “I see you’ve really been practicing that new move,” instead of, “You finally scored a goal!” Praise about results can feel like conditional love. Observing and naming the process, instead, shows you pay attention and care.
AGENCY:
Let your child follow their interests. How many kids fight through years of miserable violin lessons when they would have happily sprinted to daily dance training instead? There’s no substitute for passion in nurturing motivation.
RELATEDNess:
Your child will learn best through relationships. Step back and allow them to learn from qualified coaches, friends, and older kids in the park.

Finding Healthy Sports Training For Your Child

At JOÜK, we look for growth, not perfection. We think of a child’s sports journey as climbing a mountain, not just one sprint. There will be up and down days. The important thing is to stick with it.

Our guiding principle is, make learning soccer skills fun and start with fundamentals. It may take kids a long time to be able to confidently dribble left and right past defenders. So we break that skill down into small steps: learning to use the big toe and little toe, learning to shift body weight from one foot to the other, and so on.

Experiencing little successes as kids master each step is enjoyable. It helps build confidence and motivation. Take a look:

And after the soccer skills training is done, bring on the play! We love setting kids up to play 2v2 or 3v3, no pressure, no instructions. Their brains bring together what they’ve learned, laughing and smiling, just enjoying the game with other kids. The result is magical–suddenly they are showing off new moves! They naturally want to play more.

That, for us, is what it’s all about: happy kids, motivated to grow.

Images: Freepik, Adobe Stock, Unsplash

Support, Not Pressure: Essential Soccer Parenting