Turning the Tables on Coaching Those Problematic Kids

There is a line from Matthew McConaughey, from his first movie actually. It hasn't aged well and I'm a bit nervous to use it here but it illustrates a point worth making. The line is from Dazed and Confused and it is: '(As) I get older, 'freshmen' stay the same age.'

The context I hasten to draw your attention to is that, as coaches, we grow older year after year but the children we are coaching say the same age. When we are 25 they are 15, when we are 35 they are 15, and when we are 65 they are still 15 years old. What starts as an age difference of 10 years ends up as an age difference of 50 years.

Whenever I see coaches commenting on how kids have changed, I wonder whether it is not the kids, but the adults who have done all the changing. Understanding people who have a 10 year age gap to you is very different to a 50 year age gap. 

I wonder whether best idea is to throw out the idea that kids are changing completely. Then focus on how the distance between adults and kids is constantly increasing so when adults are 30/40/50/60 they need refresher courses on what children are like an how they should work with them? This might help the coaches who get older and can no longer understand how to coach children. Some coaches have a history of complaining about this going back 10 years or so.