Michael: Yeah it was hard, and then I decided I was going to West Ham and I was comfortable with that and then right at the last minute I’m having a bit of a panic thinking you know was it the right thing to do. And I think it just hit me really moving to London on my own and having a bit of a panic…At the last minute I said, ‘I don’t wanna go to West Ham.’ I said to mum, she made me go. It was rubbish of course. Up until then I’d been fine so I was just panicking at the last minute. But I went and it was fine… for me to say that to my mum it was awful because she’d done everything she could for us and always allowed us to make the decisions.
Graeme: That was just our family way and it’s not until now and you reflect on it and realise that we did make a lot of decisions. Even quite young at 10 or 11, ‘Do you want to go Newcastle or somewhere else?’
Michael: Yeah. From when I was under 9, and I went to Middlesbrough and I could’ve gone to Newcastle and I can’t remember the words, but there was a decision made there and I was only 9. Mum and dad asked me, ‘Well which club do you want to sign for?’
Graeme: It wasn’t just one check either it was repeated, ‘Well where do you like best? Where do you like?’
Complex Families
In 1993, Csikszentmihalyi and colleagues presented a landmark study of the relationship between family interactions and the development of talented children. In their work, they described the ‘complex’ family as one who provides an integrated environment, one that is stable and consistently supportive, combined with a differentiated
surrounding that encourages family members to develop their own individuality through new challenges and opportunities.
The authors recognised that while there were other important factors that influenced talent development, a family setting that provided the child with security, but concurrently offered enough meaningful challenges to develop ‘flow’ behaviours and experiences, increased the chances of refining talent.
Furthermore, the complex family is compatible with the autonomy supporting, authoritative (not authoritarian) parenting style, described earlier, that establishes clear boundaries for responsible behaviour. An authoritative parent uses structure, two way discussion and choices when interacting with their children. The paradox of this style of parenting is that by prioritising the child’s self-expression and enjoyment over success, the parent actually make success more likely. The reason for this it seems is that intrinsic motivation is maintained for longer, which is especially important through the teenage years when other distractions become more available and take many talented young people off track.
Steve Peters, consultant psychiatrist to the England football team and Team Sky Pro Cycling, “So a golden rule for younger kids, it’s non-stop encouragement. They will work with encouragement. It’s pretty obvious, I’m stating the obvious. You shout at a child, it’s hardly likely to feel happy. It’s very damaging. If the child’s doing what it can, it’s not going to help it. If it’s misbehaving, you’re better off confronting it and saying ‘I don’t think you’re trying your best because…what do you think?’ You know children are reasonable, they will listen and talk, they’re probably more reasonable than some adults. You’ve got to set them boundaries and all the rest, so you’re acting in a very alpha role, a parent role, which is reasonable and sensible as a coach too, and there is a point when you’ve got to wean these children off you into an adult role. And I think we get stuck both sides, we treat little kids as adults, which is very damaging, and we can treat adults as children which is equally as damaging.”
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