Helping our children understand that reaching their goals in sport is the product of persistence and perspiration is a genuinely difficult sell in today’s world.
Why does this seem to have become more of a problem in recent times? Quite simply, because so much else in their lives arrives instantly.
Technology has played a real part in this. Children can shop at the touch of a button, order food to their doorstep within minutes, and even in a quiet moment send a message to dozens of virtual friends, almost guaranteed an instant reply. Every one of those small hits of dopamine makes them feel good in an instant, yet we already know there’s no real shortcut to high performance in sport.
Success and sporting development is a long journey. It’s arduous at times, full of highs and lows, and very rarely achieved without huge amounts of persistence.
Patience is genuinely on the wane in young people. A parent told me recently about waiting with her child in a doctor’s surgery. Her daughter had a 30-minute wait for an appointment, with an iPad to help pass the time but fifteen minutes in, she announced she was bored and didn’t want to wait any longer.
Her mum explained they simply needed to wait, and to show some patience. The nagging continued regardless. So she took the iPad away and instead took her daughter on a trip down memory lane showing her the magazines lying around, and the joys of the abacus sitting in the corner that used to occupy children for hours on end.
Her daughter was genuinely shell-shocked. She couldn’t quite process that this was all there’d been to do when her mum was young, alongside a bit of quiet thinking time, talking softly, or a game of noughts and crosses. None of it, unsurprisingly, went down particularly well. They were ultimately saved by the bell of the appointment being called.
So how do we help our young people build patience and persistence, while genuinely understanding just how valuable that skill is?
Model it yourself. Children learn largely by example, so it’s worth demonstrating persistence in your own life. Let them see you facing a challenge, working through it, and sticking with something rather than giving up.
Notice and celebrate it when it happens. Acknowledge your child’s effort, progress and achievements, and talk to them explicitly about how persistence helped them get there. Knowing their hard work has been noticed is a genuine motivator to keep going.
Set goals together. Working with your child to build clear goals gives them a roadmap through the tougher stretches, helps them understand what’s actually expected of them, and builds patience and persistence along the way.
Build in some quiet reflection. Helping children notice their own thoughts and feelings, without judgement or an immediate reaction, builds real self-awareness which is useful, given how impulsive and quick to change their mind young people can be.
Keep the journey enjoyable. Motivation depends on children continuing to enjoy what they’re doing, struggle included which is partly why we’ve started using the word “enjoyment” rather than “fun” in a lot of our work. Fun implies ease whilst enjoyment can sit alongside genuine effort.
Point out the wins along the way. Help them see the opportunities that persistence opens up, the people it introduces them to, and the small improvements that build up over time.
Use role models who had to earn it. Bringing your child’s attention to figures they admire, through film, documentaries, books or social media, and showing just how much persistence sat behind their success, can be a powerful way into some genuinely useful conversations, especially in the teenage years, when messages from us don’t always land easily.
Play down the shortcuts. Help them see that a shortcut rarely leads anywhere lasting. If something’s taking real time and real effort, they’re probably doing it exactly right. Plenty of people give up when they’re closer to a breakthrough than they realise, we never quite know how close success actually is.
Normalise the setbacks. Encourage your child to be brave, and to take the occasional risk. If we can build our own honest narrative around disappointment in sport, and treat it as simply part of the process, we help our children build a far more balanced, longer-term view of their own development.
Keep them talking. No one manages entirely alone, and your child needs a genuinely good support network around their sport. Encourage them to talk, share how they’re feeling, and ask for help when they’re struggling. Knowing that support is there makes persistence far easier to find.
In an ever-changing world, persistence remains one of the key building blocks of sporting development, and it isn’t going anywhere. We’ll leave you with a thought worth sharing with your children: Calvin Coolidge once put it plainly that talent, genius and education are all common, and none of them guarantee success on their own. Persistence and determination, he argued, are close to all-powerful. Thomas Carlyle made a similar point in his own words: it’s persistence in the face of every obstacle and setback that separates a strong character from a weak one.
Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. (Calvin Coolidge, US President)
Permanence, perseverance, and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragement, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak. (Thomas Carlyle)
