This weeks Coaching Corner written by Peter Casey The key holding areas for a child Barney is a 7 year old boy in first class in primary school. He has a quite a busy schedule for a child so young. He loves going to school. He is getting good at reading and writing. He knows how to add and is now learning to subtract. His teacher says that his homework should take 20 minutes to complete. Sometimes he is tired and it can take nearly an hour. He loves cycling, playing with tractors and sitting in his tree house. His favourite place to visit is his grandparents’ house. The tooth fairy is coming to him a lot at present and providing him with a good source of income. His parents have started him off with piano lessons, scouts and Irish dancing. His friends do a lot of different sports. Some play soccer, football, hurling, rugby, basketball, athletics, gymnastics and golf. Barney would like to play all of those but his parents say he can’t do everything His father loves sport and takes Barney to matches. He has gone to watch Ireland playing rugby and soccer and he often goes to watch his county and club teams play. Barney doesnt really watch the games and sometimes his father asks him if he has any interest at all. He has joined the local GAA club who have hurling and football teams. They train for hurling every Tuesday and football on Thursday. They have a blitz every Saturday and they have a joint hurling/football session on Sunday. He likes some of the coaches. One coach, Martin is very funny and Margaret his football coach is very kind. They play fun games and often they play small sided games with 3 or 4 children on each team. Barney likes those matches because he gets the ball a lot and score goals. Some of the children give out that those games are boring. They say that they want to play real hurling and football. Some of his coaches shout very loud and he doesnt understand a lot of what they are saying. Sometimes they play a big match with lots of players. Barney doesnt like those games because he rarely gets the ball. He went to an under 8 blitz last month. It was raining. His team played 3 matches but it was very cold. He didnt enjoy it even though his team won all their matches. His father said twill harden you up. He still feels cold thinking about that day. He now tells his Dad that he doesnt want to play blitzes anymore. He wants to play hurling and football at home with his brothers and sometimes doesnt want to go to training. His Dad says he has to go or hell never play for the county. Barneys grandfather thinks that the child is too young and that his father should go easy on him for a while. Barney loves playing at school with his friends and would go to the GAA club everyday if Margaret and Martin were always his coaches. At school he plays soccer and basketball and sometimes plays tag and stuck in the mud at small break. He is very fast at school and loves scoring goals. He doesnt like when the big children join in their games. His Dad says he is too soft and should toughen up a bit. Barney doesn’t know what that means. Tony Humphries is one of this countrys top educators. He has conducted extensive research about how children succeed in society. One of the main findings of this research is that the average child has the capacity to have 7 key holding areas in their quality world. That means that there are only 7 places where a child feels they belong. Some children have 5 holding areas while a few children can have nine. In most cases home is one place while a school is a second holding area. Both his grandparents houses are probably two more place and his friends’ house will be a fifth holding area. A child-minder, neighbour or a family friend could also be holding areas. The hurling and football coaches would like to attract the child to their areas. So how can they achieve this? A holding area must be a stable environment for the child. According to Tony Humphreys “children’s wellbeing mostly depends on emotional security - a daily diet of nurture, love, affection, patience, warmth, tenderness, kindness and calm responses to their welfare and feelings. This is asking more of coaches than to be just there to teach hurling and football. All children are different and as we have often written here, 20% of children will succeed in a competitive environment. The other 80% need a lot more from the coach to allow them into their quality world. It doesn’t matter where the child lives or what they do. If they allow you into their holding area they will accept the culture of your club. When children allow the GAA club into their quality world they pay the coaches back by fully following the rules and code of conduct of that club. A quality world is precious to a child and because every child is full of their own intelligence they only allow 7 people into this world. Everyone else belongs to the child’s other world. They don’t really matter to the child. To get into a child’s quality world, coaches have to achieve a high standard. We must keep our promises, call the child by their name, acknowledge the child’s efforts, be kind and good humoured, be respectful and fair, stand up to bullies, teach the child skills, give the child a game and accept their mistakes. When coaches have the above qualities then Barney and all his friends will allow the GAA club to become one of their seven key holding areas.
Posted on: Wed, 02 Jul 2014 19:49:21 +0000
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