Several years ago, when I was a high school teacher, one of my students was seriously injured in a field hockey game. She was a star player and would probably have earned a scholarship to play field hockey. Her season, and possibly her entire field hockey career, was over. Right around the same time, I read an article, I think it was in The New York Times, about the rise in teens who were suffering serious athletic injuries. One of the conclusions of the article was that teens in the 21st century have access to such a high level of year-long training that the chance of injury is actually increasing. Both the quantity and quality of training outpaces the teen body. Compare that to the 1980’s when I played soccer one season a year and coaches just sort of threw the ball on the field and watched us chase it. In high school things were more serious, but the level of conditioning and the amount kids played then pales in comparison to today. Nowadays, kids play for school, traveling clubs, and they go to long summer camps. They play a particular sport all year long, and at a high level of intensity, even at young ages.

Remembering that article, I got to thinking about education, self-directed education, and even my own parenting. And while the parallels may not be exact, the kind of thinking behind sports training is often what compels parents and educators in other areas of kids’ lives. It’s easy to think that more is more. That more math, or science, or reading is better. That if kids do these things early and often, they’ll be better off later on. 

But here’s the thing: not only is there no advantage to doing these things early, but there may actually be a risk of injury. Just as too much baseball may force an early retirement at the ripe old age of 15 years old, too much math may be just as emotionally or intellectually destructive. I can tell you from working with teens over the last twenty years, math can be traumatic. If math is done willingly, and at a developmentally appropriate time in a kid’s life, it can be fascinating and inspiring and vital to a young person’s intellectual and emotional growth. But more often than not, math is pushed too much, too soon. The result? Injury. Kids who struggle with math. Kids who think they are not good at math. Kids who think they never will be good at math. And for many, the obvious choice in math is to take an early retirement.  

And this goes for many areas in our kids’ lives. I’ve seen early retirements in reading, history, science, and foreign language. Kids have been put in an environment that is too intense or where the stakes are (at least perceived to be) high, and the only obvious choice is to take an early retirement as a result of injury, or to avoid injury. And can you blame them? It makes perfect sense to avoid the thing that makes you feel awful about yourself. It often takes years to recover, if ever. 

At the risk of mixing metaphors, I’ll quote a friend talking about kids and sexuality. She says that a child’s sexuality should open like a flower. It can’t be forced. It opens when it opens. But isn’t it all like that? Shouldn’t it all open like a flower? If you know anything about plants, not enough fertilizer, not enough water, and not enough light can hinder a plant’s growth. But so can too much fertilizer, too much water and too much light. Its really about finding that right amount of nourishment to keep the plant healthy and strong and to let it grow at its own pace. We can think about kids in the same way. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that more is more. But it’s just not true. We need to consider what is appropriate and necessary for each child, and allow them to grow naturally into healthy and strong adults.

[Photo Credit: Michael Coghlan, CC BY-SA 2.0]