High support, high standards: A parenting expert's keys to motivating young golfers

When your kid loves golf, the toughest days are when they also kind of hate it. Water balls, tears, occasional sprints to the parking lot—there’s enough trauma available in golf for a parent to wish for something simpler. The best argument for having your kid stick it out might be how the game can help kids navigate everything else in life.

David Yeager’s best-seller, 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People, isn’t specifically about golf. The University of Texas psychology professor’s book is a deeply researched exploration into the developing adolescent brain, how it responds to challenges and stress, and why certain messages resonate with kids more than others. For a book that isn’t about golf, a lot of it feels like it’s about golf.

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“I am never playing again!”

Among Yeager’s central tenets is that with kids, parents should adapt a “mentor mindset,” which falls between two common extremes. Consider a familiar scenario, an 11-year-old unraveling in an early golf competition. The parent who only disciplines their child is setting too high a standard with insufficient support—what Yeager calls an enforcer mindset. A parent who wants to swoop in and save the child, or worse, decides not to let them compete in the first place, is guilty of a protector mindset—all support and no standard.

The mentor mindset is built around an equal measure of high support and high standards, which means giving young golfers a chance to develop skills while reinforcing their ability to cope with what the game can throw at them. Yeager’s refrain is that kids seek “status” from adults more than we realize.

“Choosing to be in this important competitive environment is impressive. It’s a high-status thing,” Yeager says of the message he advocates sending kids. “If you’re going to compete where it’s uncertain how you’ll do, that takes courage.”

“I’m sooo nervous”

Yeager forces parents to reconsider the assumption that stress is only detrimental. As Yeager notes, stress—from a racing heart to sweaty palms—is simply the body activating for performance. The tricky part is how we perceive it.

Yeager’s research elaborates on the difference between a “challenge-type stress response” and a “threat-type stress response.” When a golfer has butterflies on the first tee, the “challenge-type stress response” is to accept those nerves as a natural sensation before playing, and the body responds favorably. The “threat-type stress response” is when we believe something is wrong, and the body starts to panic even more. One of the worst things a parent can do is encourage kids not to be nervous, which is telling them to suppress an emotion they can’t control.

“For the kid, the implication is, ‘Well, I am stressed, so that must mean I’m not talented,’ or ‘I am stressed; therefore I didn’t prepare,” Yeager writes.

“But I don’t want to hit balls!”

Parents and children can often be at odds around “It’s-good-for-you” tasks like homework or cleaning a room. With golf, this argument can often be about practice.

One misconception is that a truly dedicated golfer never needs to be coaxed because motivation always comes from within. Yeager says that’s not realistic. Golf is hard, and practice can be tedious. Rather than expecting a child to want to pound balls on the range, a mentor mindset helps the player see why it could help and appeals to their sense of reward.

“The message the parent is providing can be, ‘ It’s high-status for you to put in the preparation that other people were going to shortcut or half ass,’” Yeager says. “For you to be the kind of person who’s chosen to push yourself now and get better, when other people wouldn’t, ties into status and respect.”

“Stop telling me what to do!”

Yeager’s kids are more into baseball, where he fights the tendency to tell his son what to do at every step of his pitching motion. However well-intentioned, a parent’s desire to overload their kid with knowledge usually comes at the expense of the athlete developing his or her own instincts. When a young player is pulling every tee shot left, a knowledgeable parent might note it’s because their kid is rising out of the backswing and coming over the top. Rather than tell the player the solution outright, Yeager advises asking players enough questions so they can diagnose and fix the problem themselves.“You want to practice in an environment where you’re coaching them, but you’re coaching in a way where they know how to critique their own mechanics and form,” Yeager says. “The logic is that players need to play the game in their heads, but if, as a parent, you’re telling the kid how to play the game, then you are owning the mental effort.”