This article is part three of a four part series at On the Baseline by tennis coach Joe Dinoffer designed to help parents get their kids involved in the sport at an early age. Part One | Part Two.
When children become 6-year-olds and begin fulltime school in the first grade, there’s more that happens than their parents breathing a sigh of relief. The children go through major changes as well. On the positive side, the socialization process continues and becomes a much more powerful influence.
But, along with those increased social concerns, peer pressure also emerges. The result is that children can be both inspired positively by other children or, on the flip side, negatively affected. They are now in school full time and therefore the attitudes of the other children around them impact them much more than ever before. These factors alone will largely affect whether your child is motivated and excited to play tennis, only partially interested, or completely disinterested.
These newly discovered social needs mean that your child will be looking for activities to perform with other children. If they don’t choose tennis, they will choose something else. Read the next section to reinforce your decision to choose tennis.
Tennis is the best first sport
It should be encouraging for tennis families and appealing for others that tennis, when stacked side by side with all other popular sports, is arguably the best first sport for children. How? Consider the following skills that are developed through tennis: Throwing, catching, striking, running and striking in combination, movement rhythm, aerobic and anaerobic, three-step movement patterns, and team-building. Then list baseball, football, basketball, soccer, and golf. You will see that tennis is the only sport that develops all of those skills. In other words, start your child with tennis and the skills developed through tennis will automatically help with any other major sport.
Teaching Good Form or Playing Games
This age is the time to make the first series of decisions about priorities for your child in learning. For decades, the two main theories have been 1) Get them playing and worry about “form” and technique later on if interest continues, or 2) Teach them strokes first so they will never be limited by poor stroke mechanics.
Recently, however, a third option is becoming popular – the game-based approach, which gets the children immediately playing tennis (or a modified approach with modified equipment such as mini-courts and slow balls). The idea is to first give them the perspective of tennis as a fun game to play, and they will then be more motivated to work on parts of their games. Why? Because it will be more connected to playing, rather than practicing isolated strokes, a process that can quickly become boring and tedious to children in this age bracket.
The answer has to be a balance of fun, encouragement, and learning. At this age, only the beginnings of complex skills and combinations of skills are possible. So, keep expectations realistic and fun, with high levels of praise.
How Much Competition is Good?
Here’s another topic of debate. The United States Tennis Association maintained competition in the under 10 age division for decades. Then, in the 1990’s, on advice from child psychologists, they cancelled most sanctioned competition and rankings in this age bracket. Now, once again, it has been reinstated. How does this affect the 6- and 7-year-olds? A lot.
Generally speaking, it is now accepted that some competition is healthy to begin in this age bracket, for it prepares the children for an option of tournament play as they approach 10 years old. And, we all have to admit that life, in general, is competitive, as least part of the time. For tennis at this age, the general advice is to start the children off in a team format. And, as far as possible, give prizes out broadly for general participation.
The children will be far more encouraged with this approach rather than merely giving out the traditional winner and runner-up trophy and nothing else to the rest of the field. Give some kind of prize to all participants. In other words, put competition and the cooperative aspects of team tennis in balance for all the children, regardless if they win or lose. Praise effort first, outcome second.
Gender Specifics
As it was explained in the earlier articles in this series, this age bracket also has coaching and learning implications based on some specific contrasts between boys and girls. As compared to girls, here is what the average boy will be like. He will be:
- better at general math
- better at three-dimensional reasoning
- more apt to follow rules
- more able to separate emotion from reason
Girls, on the other hand, will be:
- better at verbal ability than boys
- less apt to follow rules
- less able to separate emotion from reason
- more creative
Class length
The final tip for this article is to discuss the length of the class, whether it be a private or a group. The overall guideline is a balance between fun and learning as discussed above, with a strong emphasis on fun, anything you can do to get them to be eager for the next class. As a general rule, group classes at this age bracket should last no longer than 60 minutes. For private lessons, 30 minutes should still be plenty. However, this is a guideline, since the most enthusiastic children will nag for more. Our advice? Give in, but not all the time. It is still a good idea to keep the proverbial carrot dangling so they are hungry to come back to the court to munch on some more of those fuzzy yellow balls.
Joe Dinoffer is a USPTA and PTR Master Professional. Visit his site, Oncourt Offcourt, at www.oncourtoffcourt.com.
Since its inception in 1994, Oncourt Offcourt has become the world’s leading source for hundreds of creative training aids, books and videos for the tennis industry.
[...] This article is part two of a four part series at On the Baseline by tennis coach Joe Dinoffer designed to help parents get their kids involved in the sport at an early age. Part One | Part Three [...]