As a junior golf coach, I am regularly approached by parents who would like to discuss their child’s performance. They want to know why isn’t their child doing as well as they were in previous weeks or months, or why they haven’t advanced to the higher-skill group.

I always welcome these questions, because they give me an extra chance to educate parents on the goals of our junior golf development program. But unfortunately, some parents are not as understanding as they should be, or don’t have access to the right information. For that reason, unreasonable expectations are a big problem in junior golf.

I get it. As a parent, you want to see your child do as well and hit as many good shots as possible. It makes you proud, and that’s not a bad thing. It’s human nature that you want to see your child succeed. I wrote this article to help explain why your child can often struggle, and why long-term development supersedes instant success in junior golf.

Success does not follow a straight-line pattern

If you speak to any successful athlete, you will find that they likely experienced just as many lows in their career as highs. The important thing about their development, however, was that there was a general trend upward, despite the lows.

when I hear, “come on Johnny, you were doing better  last week,” I cringe. if you want your child to drop out of golf, then carry on.

For both parents and children, it’s easy to become obsessed with instant success, instead of thinking about long-term development. I guarantee that every child will at some stage go through a period of difficulty with their golf, as the top pros do. To aid long-term development, do not demotivate your child by highlighting their struggles. Instead encourage the child to be resilient and problem solve through this period. These are traits that top athletes have, and encouraging these traits in young children will not only help their golf, but also their development as people.

Growth spurts

Growth spurts are unavoidable. All children go through them, and these changes in body proportions drastically affect the coordination abilities of a child.

• At age 2, a child’s legs make up 2/5 of their body. By age 7, their legs are now 1/2 of their body.
• At age 7, a child’s arms are 2.75/6 of their body, but by age 14 their arms are 3/7 of their body.

Imagine if I added 3 inches to your arms and asked you to swing a golf club. Your swing would be all over the place. Of course, a child’s arms do not lengthen 3 inches overnight, but the growth process affects coordination and movement skills. Furthermore, when bones grow quicker than muscles, subsequently stretching and stressing the tissue, a child’s abilities can also be affected.

Don’t make growth spurts harder on children than they already are by expecting them to maintain the same level of performance they had before their growth spurt. It won’t be long before your child is feeling confident in his or her body again.

Performance Plateaus

With anything in life, there becomes a time when performance plateaus and the journey to the next level may not be as quick as the previous journey. For example, reducing your handicap from 28 to 20 may have been reasonably easy, but the lower your handicap got the harder it was to reduce it, right? For a child, a common plateau occurs when they cannot hit the ball any farther. And in most cases, we need to wait for a child to get stronger before worrying about more distance.

Like periods of growth spurts, there will also be long periods of no growth, where a child’s strength may not increase for a period of months. So, if your child is struggling with gaining distance, do not get over concerned and let their bodies grow. To me, this is another great example of times when development supersedes instant success. While there may be no instant successes of hitting the ball farther, other valuable sport and life skills can be developed during this time, such as work ethic, team work, goal setting and important social skills, to name a few.

In our FUEL Junior Golf Programme, we are passionate about creating well rounded individuals who are physically active and love the game of golf, hence our motto #personathletegolfer.

Relative age affect

In short, relative age effect discusses the chronological age (how many years old the child is) and the biological age (actually how old/developed their body is).

Let’s say an 8-year-old named Billy and an 8-year-old named Johnny play against each other. Johnny might hit it 30 yards past Billy off the tee, but Billy’s relative age is only 6. Chances are, Billy won’t be 30 yards behind Johnny for long.

Cognitive development versus motor development

In layman’s terms, research has shown that a child’s movement skills are heavily related to their ability to process information. For that reason, it’s common that young children can sometimes not grasp new movements, despite all our efforts to help.

In this case, we have to allow time for a child’s mental abilities to improve before expecting any changes in movement. Moreover, a young child is often more interested in looking at the clouds than listening to your swing tips. So quit the advice and let them play, fail and learn.

When was the last time a top athlete thanked their parents for their coaching? That rarely happens, but they almost always thank their parents for their support.

Summary

As parents and coaches, we must understand that the development of a child is a highly diverse process and crucially, it is not always about golf. Sport is a great tool to help children develop in a variety of ways, and it is important not to judge them on only their sporting skill. So the next time you’re frustrated with the development of your junior golfer, remember all the reasons they could be struggling.

• Success does not follow a straight-line pattern.
• A child has no control over growth spurts, which can dramatically hinder their performance.
• Performance plateaus again cannot be avoided in some areas of the game. Remember, there’s isn’t one world-class athlete who hasn’t hit a performance plateau. What’s the worry?
• A 6-year-old can hardly add 12 and 15 together, so it makes sense that they won’t always understand the leg, knee and arm positions of the golf swing.
• Developing your child into a well-rounded, respectful and mannered individual is most important.
• Remember that as parents, you are there to support… not coach.

On a final note, if you want your child to become the best golfer in the world (and they better share that goal), understand that you have 20+ years to achieve it. Believe me, there is little value in being the best 10-year-old golfer in the world.