{"id":5414,"date":"2018-02-14T13:34:00","date_gmt":"2018-02-14T13:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iplayhockey.ca\/2018\/02\/14\/avoid-specializing-too-soon\/"},"modified":"2025-09-01T16:30:38","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T16:30:38","slug":"avoid-specializing-too-soon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iplayhockey.ca\/fr\/avoid-specializing-too-soon\/","title":{"rendered":"Avoid Specializing Too Soon!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Original story posted ici<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Here in Canada many kids grow up wanting to be hockey stars, and so, when they start to show some promise, parents immediately encourage them to drop all other sports, in their quest to create the next Sidney\u00a0Crosby. Unfortunately, that kind of\u00a0specializationrarely does your child any favours \u2014 and it\u2019s not any better to focus solely on golf, soccer, tennis, basketball, or most other sports parents think are their child\u2019s calling (there are a few exceptions that do require early specialization like gymnastics and skating, for example).<\/p>\n

According to a\u00a0David Epstein article\u00a0in the New York Times:<\/p>\n

“Children are playing sports in too structured a manner too early in life on adult-size fields \u2014 i.e., too large for optimal skill development \u2014 and spending too much time in one sport. It can lead to\u00a0serious injuries\u00a0and, a growing body of sports science shows, a lesser ultimate level of athletic success.”<\/p>\n

Epstein points out that one reason\u00a0hyper-specialization is so popular an idea is because of stories about athletes like Tiger Woods, who started early, focused in, and then rose to greatness; but the reality is his story is not common. In fact, studies show that it\u2019s better to engage your child in multiple sports until at least age 12, and that many successful athletes practiced their sport less through their early teenage years, only honing in on their chosen sport as they got older. Those benchwarmer athletes who never hit their stride most often were the ones who specialized too early.<\/p>\n

Those are the facts, and they\u2019re reason enough, but there are other things to consider; when parents encourage their kids to compete to be the best, it takes away the pure love of playing. A little competition is good; too much single-minded focus teaches kids the only thing that matters is being number one.<\/p>\n

We all want our kids to be their best selves, but that doesn\u2019t mean forcing them early on to a chosen path. Maybe your kid is meant to be the next Serena Williams or Michael Jordan, or maybe not. Just keep them playing lots of sports and having fun; give them the chance to figure out for themselves who they\u2019re meant to become.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Original story posted here. Here in Canada many kids grow up wanting to be hockey stars, and so, when they start to show some promise, parents immediately encourage them to drop all other sports, in their quest to create the next Sidney\u00a0Crosby. Unfortunately, that kind of\u00a0specializationrarely does your child any favours \u2014 and it\u2019s not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5078,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"segment":[],"class_list":["post-5414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iplayhockey.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iplayhockey.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iplayhockey.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iplayhockey.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iplayhockey.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5414"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/iplayhockey.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5415,"href":"https:\/\/iplayhockey.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5414\/revisions\/5415"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iplayhockey.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iplayhockey.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iplayhockey.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iplayhockey.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5414"},{"taxonomy":"segment","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iplayhockey.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/segment?post=5414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}