Ready Or Not, You’re Ready Or Else?

Many coaches and parents try to teach skills and strategies that the children are not ready or able to learn.

Your job, as the coach, is to assess (really learn) what children at the age of your children can do generally and then learn about the individual readiness of each of your kids -- for example, your neighbor's daughter Fran and your Terri are the same age -- Fran is able to field a ground ball and Terri isn't ready to do that yet. Terri is O.K. and should be treated that way - let’s just wait for her to catch up.

One of our favorite psychologists, James Hymes, made this situation very simple. He said, “Every child is ready to learn something - it's our job as teachers and parents to determine what that child is ready to learn.”

Over the years, we’ve explored the work of E. L. Thorndike. Thorndike had come up with some practical ways of looking at readiness and what we teachers should do in working with our kids. He stated his ideas in his three Laws of Readiness.

When coaching, I made another ? translation of Thorndike’s Readiness model to assess our players. Here is how they look on the court or field or arena or pool deck, etc:

1. If Kristen is ready to learn how to hit a ball and she is allowed to hit the ball, she will have a ‘success’ experience.

2. If Kristen is ready to learn how to hit a ball and she is not allowed to hit the ball, she will be frustrated.

3. If Kristen isn't ready to learn how to hit a ball and she is forced to hit the ball, she will have a negative, perhaps even a traumatic experience.

Number 1 is the ideal situation. Kristen is ready to go; you are ready to have her go; and everyone is happy. Most of the time we are dealing with this kind of situation.

Number 2 happens quite often. Kristen is ready and able to hit that ball; she wants to hit that ball, but someone or something is standing in her way, and she is feeling unhappy about the whole business. Have you ever sat on the bench, itching to get into the game, and the coach ignored you - he said you weren't ready, but you knew you were ready? Note that the word frustration is the correct psychological term for this condition.

Number 3 is the really scary one and yet you and I see it many times. This is the one that brings out the negative coaching, verbal abuse and the insults. Kristen is just not able to swing that bat and her coach and/or parents are not willing for that to be O. K. They keep driving and pushing her. “You're not even trying.” “Connie, down the street, can do it and she’s two months younger than you.

Kristen is not there, yet. They are not willing to wait a little while until Kristen has developed physically, socially, or emotionally to the place where she can do the task. Kristen has known those traumatic episodes in which Mom and Dad pushed and shoved her to do things and being abusive to her, making her feel guilty or an embarrassment to her family when she wasn't able to do them. "Well, she's six years old and our neighbor's girl is younger than Kristen and look how she can swing that bat."

Vital Fourth Law of Readiness

I've often wondered why Thorndike stopped after giving those three laws. In our business, this is a 2 x 2 matrix and there has to be a fourth law, so I will give you:

Pierro’s Fourth Law of Readiness -

4. If Kristen isn't ready to learn how to hit a ball, we don’t force her to hit the ball and that's O.K. and she's O.K.

Here we have reasonable, intelligent, caring coaches and parents who accept Kristen right where she is and deal with her in terms of what she can do and what she can't do.

It doesn’t matter the ‘why’ Kristen can’t do it. She’s not ready, yet. The action and support provided to Kristen should be present regardless of the cause. Our responsibility as her coach is to help her positively and supportively bridge this performance gap.

Helping each individual bridge their performance gaps is where the magic of coaching happens. Celebrate the gap. We meet our players where they are and positively coach them to move toward where they want to go. This brings out the best version of everyone.