Psychology should ultimately be about common sense. So when a policy is proposed that is just so jaw-droppingly loopy, the urge to reach for my lap top is overwhelming. But in this case I’m conflicted, I’m on the philosophical fence and the pain is sharp! Let me explain.
According to football legend Graham Cornes, writing in the Adelaide Advertiser (9/11/18) some undoubtedly well-meaning, caring, compassionate officials in the South Australian National Football League have requested that all the junior football clubs under their jurisdiction adopt the AFL’s rules and match conditions, as outlined in its booklet Australian Football Match Policy – AFL guidelines for the conduct of Australian Football for players aged 5-18 years.
The booklet is a straightforward – actually quite well written – declaration of how these people say that junior AFL games need to be played with no tackling, no scores, no record of goals, and definitely no premiership ladder, goal-kickers or best players. The rationale behind this policy is simply that by not having any scoring mechanisms, the children will somehow gain more enjoyment from the game and presumably the league will attract zillions of little players and build the AFL stocks for the powerhouse Adelaide-based clubs for decades to come.
As a psychologist that obsesses about the wellbeing of our young people, the single most upsetting issue for me this year is the research results on kids’ physical activity levels. Evidence is emerging that Australian kids are indeed falling behind their international peers and are performing worse in skills such as kicking, throwing, catching and jumping than they were 30 years ago.
2018 research shows more than 90 per cent of girls and almost three quarters of boys aged 12-17 are active for less than an hour a day. An overwhelming number of these kids are cemented to screens for excessive periods of time. The findings published in journal Preventive Medicine reveal up to 85 per cent of children get more than the recommended two hours of screen time per day. This year in March 2018, VicHealth CEO Jerril Rechter warned today’s kids could be the first generation with a lower life expectancy than their parents. From a physical point of view, the real headline grabber is that a staggering 92% of teenagers are not meeting daily physical activity targets, study do not meet the minimum requirements for daily physical activity.
So clearly, all right thinking people would be in favour of anything that actually gets young people into team sport. I assume that the AFL have consulted, researched and investigated and found that this does actually work. Please tell me that the ‘no tackling, no scoring, no recording of goals, and no league ladder, goal-kickers or best players’ does get more bums on seats. The only problem is that I cannot find one single jot of properly conducted peer reviewed research that supports this contention. Nothing, nada, not a sausage of serious literature.
I am ready to admit that my research skills may have deserted me after 30 years of clinical practice and if anyone reading this, could shove the peer review evidence for this practice, I’d be eternally grateful and grovel before the football bureaucrats who dreamt this up.
But while waiting for this uplifting epiphany – may I point out that the most up to date and carefully prepared research literature is abundantly clear that the physical and mental health of our young people is in an increasingly perilous position.
Just ponder some of the latest mental health statistics around our young people. According to Emerging Minds, 1 out of every 3 12 to 25-year olds report high or very high psychological distress. 1 out of every 8, 12 to 17-year olds report a mental health problem and 1 in every 10 14-15 year olds self-harmed in the previous 12 months.
This learnt helplessness is now being seen in our adolescents in the annual Mission Australia Youth Survey which in its 2017 report that surveyed over 24,000 young people demonstrated that that the number one issue in the lives of young people is an inability to cope with stress, with 45.3% saying that they were extremely concerned or very concerned about this ability.
It seems to me, that we are seeing the progressive ‘wuss-ification’ of our young people from schools that have actually banned ball games, best friends, somersaults and cartwheels, and even hugging!
The unpalatable fact is that by any objective measure, today’s children have much worse mental health than their parents – who grew up in an environment where ball games, best friends, cartwheels, hugging, scoring, winning and losing were all part and parcel of life!
So perhaps it’s time for us all to reconsider this arcane idea before even more damage is done? Besides do you seriously think the kids aren’t keeping score anyway?
Dr Michael Carr-Gregg BA(Hon) MA, PhD MAAIP
Child and Adolescent Psychologist
The subject of resilience comes to mind that we recently discussed. Maybe adults need to butt out more & leave kids to work some of these things out for themselves. You know like we did.
Dr Carr-Gregg,
I am in the middle of my PHD looking at adolescent well-being in particular school based well-being programs where there is also limited peer review research supporting the over 745 well being programs. I have done a quick search and can’t find any research either supporting or refuting the benefits of not scoring in a game. This goes alongside the “ I ran in a race’ or ‘I swam in a race’ stickers given out at school carnivals. My initial pilot study found adolescents hated this, they wanted us as adults to be honest. They see sport on TV they know that a race with eight people, one will win, one will lose and the rest will come in some order across the line. But adolescents see this race as all the people deserve to be on the start line, they have trained, worked hard, and on the day they come in where they do. Winning or losing does not define them. But we should not steer away from scoring. I will keep looking for some research to support or refute this interesting area as there is some great reasearch coming out in this area. Keep writing, your straight forward manner is refreshing in an era of political correctness and people pleasing.
Having watched my son progress through the under-age football teams from Auskick, under 8’s through to under 12’s last year I can say having no scores is the worse thing ever thought of. My son always knew the actual score after the game and so did his team mates. Being competitive is almost as important as breathing and eating and this is not just in sport, but in the classroom and in the adult world. Learning to win and lose is part and parcel of growing up, learning to win graciously and accepting a loss are character building.
My son’s school had a Sports Day recently in which they removed all recognised events such as running races, long jump, throwing events…etc and replaced them with ‘Mickey Mouse’ egg and spoon races and jumping castle recreational events to get everyone involved. Why is Australian sport going backwards on the international arena? (women’s sport is skyrocketing and going against the trend) I think because everyone is trying to be politically correct, in trying to not offend anybody, little Joey Bloggs who is never likely to play sport is becoming more of a priority than the sporty kids who want to improve and get better. As Sco Mo would say, ‘Fair dinkum’ the world is going crazy!
I believe it’s really important to learn to win and lose with grace. If you don’t score how can you measure if you’ve improved. Give kids more credit. They know how to cope with scoring and the lift themselves to win. Taking it away removes motivation to try harder.
The research into the Overindulgence of children springs to mind. http://overindulgence.org/
I am working with families and schools in New Zealand to support parenting in this new environment. We are creating problems for the future. Actually as you state they are already here. From NZ to Bangladesh and all around the world.
This poll from Deloitte also makes interesting reading.
https://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/about-deloitte/articles/millennialsurvey.html.
The purpose of parenting and raising children is to have them competent to lead the next generation. That is not happening.
Dr Carr-Gregg, would love to work with you some more to publicise what we can do to grow awareness.
Dear Dr Carr-Gregg, some points to consider. Excuse the writing as I am putting down some observances as a teacher and sportsman in the early 50’s. The 1980s saw workers compensation claims rise, insurance companies become all-powerful. For sports, that saw local councils close ratepayers sports grounds for fear of being sued by ??? if a child were to fall into a puddle of water and come out muddy. A forecast of light rain on Friday and weekend sport is cancelled. School camps are not as popular as parents panic of the risk of ‘something’ going wrong to their child. School work experience finished in the eighties too.
Registration fees soar, kids play fewer games. Tennis balls are banned at school as ‘someone may get hurt’. Principals have divided their stance too. Our reputation of being ‘Australians the sports-loving nation’ now ‘Australians… great sports viewing nation’. Now the media compete for ratings and you are its scalp, while we competed for our own spot on the sports team.
Monocultural migrant population in Australia see parents of children relegating sports as a nonsense pastime when they could be studying and being doctors. Kids are forced by overzealous parents to attend tutoring colleges instead of trying out with your teacher after school for a rep footy team after school. Mums 4WD is parked outside at close of school in case something happens to their child. Children are indoors at school from 8.30 am to 3.30 pm and the panicked voice of the deputy principal shouts on the microphone” children stop running…this is lunchtime’. At the end of the day and back indoor at home, they bow and pay homage to the X-Box, iPhone X and the vicious cycle of inactivity begins again.