Episode 478: Why Team Sports Are Non-Negotiable for Building Resilient Kids

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1:56sports play working out are the three things that we have to find a way to get our kids involved so you did listen to my ted talk i say i say that i say that uh fitness huge sport uh team sports yep huge anyone who's not putting their kids in team sports between the ages of, let's say, three to 10 is doing a major disservice to your kid because that's where you learn all these team building things. If you are going to allow them to use the phone and iPads and tools like that, you have to at least counterbalance. You have to. Otherwise, you are almost for sure signing them up to have social anxiety, depression, and all those things.

2:40If they, you allow that and you don't put them in those because there's hope if they at least get a team sport. Because they're going to learn. What I love about sports is you're going to fail. Someone's going to be better than you. It's meritless. You're going to have to communicate. I think you just said the key thing, though. Somebody's going to be better than you. This is one we have not spoken about yet, guys, which is in life, there are winners. There are losers. There are people who are average. There are people who are better than average. And guess what? You may not have great talent, but if you work your ass off, you can move yourself from a three to a seven.

3:14right that's where you learn these things right if you don't have instead and this is where parents really are screwing up their kids because they want to tell their kids oh you're amazing you're the best you're the best worst thing you can do yeah yeah by telling your kid how great they are worst thing you know praise their work praise their work and their effort don't pray don't tell them how great they are you know why that's a problem the reason why that's an issue is if you this happened to me as a kid uh if you constantly tell a kid you're so smart you're so smart or you're so pretty or you're so great you're so great the second they encounter a challenge that counters that yeah they'll crumble they'll flee yeah this happened to me as a kid i was always told how smart i was you're so smart you're so smart you're so smart and then i got into i did that to you too that's okay as an adult you can say it all you want so i figured this out but then when i encountered actual challenges where i'm like oh i'm struggling not gonna even try because I don't want to destroy the image of how smart I was versus, wow, I can see you really worked hard at that.

4:14Yes. I can see you enjoy that. Or see, look, I say that to my daughter all the time. I'm like, look, you put so much effort into that. You worked so hard on that. And now look at the results of this versus basically praising that effort versus just like, oh, you're so wonderful. Anything you do is great. Or the coach doesn't like you, screw him. Let's go to another team. Because that's what's happening. The parents are pulling their kids off of teams of sports because their kids are not getting enough playtime. The coaches are benching them, which is happening all the time. And so basically the parents are moving them to different teams.

4:51And where the coaches now are like, it becomes this whole thing where coaches are so scared and fearful of losing these players, losing the money. Where now like everybody's going to have equal amount of time to play, equal amount of money. Are you familiar with how NIL is doing that to college sports right now? No. It's a nightmare. Right now, there's this huge problem in college sports with the introduction of NIL, which is basically kids that can get paid now for sports. Oh, yeah. And because they have these options, you have scenarios where a college football team or a college basketball team goes and shops all the other schools that are willing to set them up with better NIL deals.

5:31And then the whole team leaves at once. so literally the coach comes in the next season and all of his players are looking to move out somewhere else because they've been able to shop other the grass is greener on the other side someone else is willing to pay them someone else is with it and so we haven't even figured out how we're gonna solve it dude i had never heard of kids transferring just to get to another school because they thought they had a better opportunity sorry you live here you go to this school and it was like this loyalty there's no loyalty anymore uh and the coaches are having to face that no it's terrible.

6:03So this is the thing about sports that I think a lot of people don't realize because we're listing all the attributes, but really the reason why sports exist in the first place, the reason why games exist in the first place is what games are is games are life, but boiled down to an hour or an hour and a half with specific rules. So we could play the game of life in this sport or this game. It's a microcosm. That's all it is. That's all it is. And so you're practicing life is what you're doing. And what we've done, two things that we've done with sports that have, in my opinion, ruined it. One is everybody wins.

6:40Nobody loses, which is stupid. Not keeping score. Because they're not learning life in that sense. Because life hits you all the time. The other thing is on the other extreme is we've boiled sports into money. You make money. That's what's good about this. So now these kids who are getting paid aren't learning life. They're just learning it's about money, which is equally terrible. So when you put your kids in sports, what you need to think about is my child is practicing the game of life for the next 45 minutes. That's all they're doing. And so if they sit on the bench, what does that show about life?

7:17Sometimes they can't participate. Sometimes they can't participate, but they need to support because that's how life is. Or when they're playing and they're winning, there's lessons there too. Hey, you did a good job. Oh, your pride is building up. Let's talk about that for a second. You're not a badass like you think you are. Make sure you support your other teammates. Or they get their asses kicked and they lose. Great lessons in losing because that's what life's going to show you. They learn how to work with other people. They need to learn how to work with difficult people. That's it. It's all of that.

7:40It's all of that. It's conflict resolution. It's conflict resolution is a big one. And also it shows you who are naturally born leaders and where you are in the slot of life. Right. I think it's a very teachable moment, right? I think that you can learn a lot about your own dynamic, what makes kids likable versus not likable, how you treat others, how you will be then treated, or whatever these things are. These are fundamental qualities that are just being completely decimated. I love that you said that about leadership because what's great about that, and so you got to think about, as a parent, again, think about life for a second.

8:22I think when we think of sports, we think the automatic leader is the best player on the team. There are many teams where the worst player is the leader of the team because they're the one that pull the team forward. They're the ones like, what's that movie, Rudy? Where you got that kid on the team that sucks, but everybody rallies around them because of their spirit, because they bring everybody together. So it's not about your kid being the best or the worst or in the middle. It's so much more complicated. The problem with it is it seems simple, and so we relegated it to, oh, it's just you score a goal or you don't.

8:53Maybe we shouldn't have them lose because the kids cry when they lose and we don't want that type of deal. No, no, no. It is way more complex and as long as society's existed, games have existed and the reason why they've existed is because they're extremely, extremely valuable. So putting your kids in them is incredibly important. And then back to like challenging with your kids, we've talked about this, right? Our kids are growing up very privileged from a worldly sense, right? My kids have way more money than I did as a kid. They live in a nicer house. It's like, you know, they don't have to worry about a lot of things that I did.

9:23So how am I going to help them become resilient? You know what I'm going to do? Because they're still going to have challenges. They're going to get frustrated when they try to build something that doesn't work. They're going to get upset when something happens they don't want. They're going to go play with the kid that they don't like or whatever. I don't jump in. I'll just say that. Let them feel it. I create this kind of Lord of the Flies type of scenario, right? That's a little far. Where I feel like to survive, What we should do with our kids is the truth though. We should create a Lord of the flies scenario with our kids and the survival of the fittest, right?

9:59Like I don't jump in. Like I want my kid to, I want to see how they fend for themselves without me getting involved. That's socially, that's with a lot of stuff. Like there's been a ton of situations recently with my daughter, right? Because girls can be horrid. Okay, girls are worse than boys. And it starts young, right? With like social and all these other emotional, social. You guys are socially, you guys are born more socially intelligent. That's why. You understand social complexity. So girls do the whole like. Well, girls are catty at any age. Well, they build their alliances. They build their alliances like Lord of the Flies.

10:36I'm telling you, it's very much like Lord of the Flies. And it's so easy for, especially because like you don't want to see your kid hurting. It's like horrible, right? To not jump in. right? But like the second you jump in, you're, you're, you're taking that game and you're like, the game is over, right? You need to see how your kid can actually fend for themselves in that environment with girls, especially it is, it's a doggy dog world out there for these girls. Let's just like, let's see how, how you survive or how you fend for yourself. So I like to just sit back and watch. Now, as much as it kills me, cause I want to like tear the head off of these, some of these 10 year old girls.

11:17I swear I would if I wasn't going to be put in jail. But at the same time, like that's how they build grit. Like that's how they build toughness. That's how you really build toughness. When you really step away as a parent and say, you know what, you're doing this on your own. You're going to take care of that fight by yourself. You're going to go, if you want to go on that dance group, if you want to be on that soccer team, you know, like you got to practice or you're going to be booted out. Like put them in places where it's hard. Make them do shit that they don't want to do. Put them on teams they don't want to be on and see how they fend for themselves.

11:50But that social integration piece to what you're describing, if there's conflict amongst the peers and the groups, they have to learn how to interact with each other and resolve it themselves. And they will if you stay out of the way. They absolutely will. And this is what I've learned from my observation and meeting a bazillion people I know. And I'm sure you guys too have maybe found the same thing. The people that had the most challenges as kids were the best adults. They were the coolest. They were the most resourceful. They were the strongest. They were the most able, willing and abled for people who had true success in life.

12:30You know, you're right. Right. The root of this, you got to see, this is important though. The root of this is a child has to feel secure with their parent. And that's because they have a home base that they feel secure with. They could take these risks. I'm not saying just boot them out and be like, bye, you're not coming back home. No, but people are like, what's that security look like? The security looks like this. I have a consistent parent there who's consistent with me. They're not sometimes going to scream at me when I do something. They're just very consistent. They're they're honest they're there for me emotionally so i'm going to go to them and be like oh you know the soccer team won't let me play and and mom's like that sucks you know i'm here for you but mom's not gonna go talk to the coach well i'm not gonna fix it for you but i'm here to provide you with that security so they feel secure with that with that home base that's a truth that's a very good point that is now i'm gonna tell this is gonna be controversial and i'm sure people are gonna get mad at this this is a fact though i'll argue this all day long the root of what's happened with what you're labeling as woke culture or what you're labeling as like this gentle parenting or letting your kids do whatever.

13:33The root of this, because a lot of what you're talking about, play, risk, challenge, figure this out, kiddo, is dad. And dad has been gone. So if you look at the data on what has happened culturally, there are a lot of fatherless homes that have existed. A lot of moms, and moms have tons of value. But what moms don't do nearly as well as dads, and the data's a fact on this, okay? Okay, rough and tumble play and pushing your kids a little bit to take risks, right? Mom's the one that says, don't throw him so high in the air. That's scary. Like, oh, wait, don't let him do that thing. And dad's the one that's like, no, no, we'll push him a little bit.

14:09Let's let him go do this thing a little bit. And so dads have been gone. Moms have been going to the games. And it's moms that are saying everybody needs to get a trophy. It's not fair that my kid is crying. It's not fair that my kid isn't playing. And I'm not blaming moms. Moms are doing the best that they can. Dad's gone. so dad needs to be involved and it's the dads that provide what you're talking about that's lacking so a lot of this is the non-involvement of fathers when dads are involved you see a lot of this disappear that's an interesting yeah because if you take like again this is anecdotal because my own experience I think right away my two best friends I go all the way back to their child they would tell you that their dad couldn't do anything they both come from homes, parents are married, stay together forever mom ran everything yeah you know mom ran everything dad was not dad didn't do dad worked dad worked all day long did his thing and i mean they didn't turn out weak they both are strong men and successful and figured it out without dad being involved so i don't know if you can pinpoint it to that just that because mom can do that mom could potentially so here's what the data shows dad just being there is a million times better than dad not even being there no but what's better than that is a dad that's involved, who's consistent, who provides those things.

15:25Like rough and tumble play is a big deal, right? So playing rough with your kids, which dads seem to do naturally. I mean, so here's, I guess the point that I'm trying to argue, because what you're going to hear from me, and it's just because I have such a strong stance on the iPhone. Been screaming it on this podcast for fucking 10 years almost now. I just think that that takes away so much. You're right. That all these things that you're saying isn't, you're not wrong. You're right. Because these trends were happening before the iPhone. I think you're totally right. So it requires that because otherwise, let's say you don't have a dad.

16:00I mean, obviously, I didn't have the most consistent parenting stuff going on at my house and figured all this stuff out. But I played and I interacted with kids and I did sport. And so because I did all that, it filled all those gaps. And without that, I feel like - Have you seen children without fathers who play organized sports and what the coach does for them? Yes. Okay. First of all, this is what's interesting about this. You're both right. So if we didn't have smartphones and there's so much data on this, we would be left with hours and hours a day to be bored. We would have to figure shit out.

16:34We would have to be like, okay, where's Bobby? Maybe we can go for a bike ride. Where's Lucy? Maybe we can climb that tree or do this painting. because now every time, every minute, even if we're in an elevator for 27 seconds, we're scrolling our phone because God forbid we have a moment. But if we took away the phone or the smartphones and the iPads, that will leave us with all this time to basically distract ourselves in a good way with actual socialization, dating, doing real things in life. The other thing, what you said, Sal, about the lack of fathers is a 1 million percent. If you look at data on that as well, because the dad provide a role that a mother just simply cannot.

17:24My question to you is, where did all the dads go now beyond where they were before? Is it because they're working constantly? Are they working more? Are they just like - It's still a huge fatherless problem. Why? That's true, but why? Well, that's a deeper question. I mean, Yeah, I think marriage has been devalued. I think that they've lost their sense of community, which you need as a married couple that was the church for a long time and then that was gone. You think it's more today than it was 20 years ago? I was going to say. It's maybe a little better, but it's still bad. Okay, so that is a vote.

17:54So that's where my argument, that's why. It's like, I don't think it's any different. I think it's the same too. I just think that your point, though, that you're making that I agree with is that because of the introduction of Ted, that robbing those kids of so much, that his role becomes paramount it's like your your mom that's not what she gives that's not her her thing god bless the single moms that have to try and figure both out but that's not what her strength is that's dad's strength and then if he's not going to be playing with friends playing sports that you've got to step the fuck up or it's almost guaranteed he's going that route i just think that that phone has robbed these kids of so much of that stuff of life i mean i look at this is something where my son, I have a very sensitive son who like his default is to cry when he doesn't get his way or doesn't like things.

18:41He'll start to get sad and he'll cry. And like watching him interact with kids, he's younger than a lot of kids. So a lot of times they're stronger. They take, they dominate a little bit more. So I definitely have this kid who I'm trying to build that resiliency and, you know, we'll let that, we'll let it unfold. But the conversations I'm having to have with him a lot are things like, Max, listen, sometimes you don't get to play what you want. Sometimes you got to play what Timmy wants you. You don't always get to play what you want to do. And so either one, you play with what they want, you play and do what they want to do for a while, or you go do your own thing, but you don't cry.

19:12You don't cry because you don't get to play this way or do that. That's not how you do this. That's not how real it was. So I'm having to have a lot of conversations like that because of, and thank God we, we foster that play and making sure he's doing that with kids and he doesn't get all this, but it is, I could see that if you didn't, if I didn't insert myself into those conversations and teach him that lesson, then he could easily become that really soft kid who just every time he doesn't get what he wants, cries and defaults to that. Yeah. The fire started with, with, with fatherless homes and the gasoline is social media, the internet and smartphones, but it started before that.

19:50And now you have a situation where, um, we are trying to, Here's the problem. The problem is that parents, you are competing with something that you're going to lose against. You give the child an opportunity to choose between a smartphone and outside. Smartphone's going to win.