My son is 6 and has begun to love baseball.  It is so wonderful to watch him have fun learning to play.  And as a dad, just playing catch with your son is pretty awesome too!  As he learns my goal is for him to develop the ability to self reflect in the micro and the macro, the big and the small.  I sincerely hope he can develop the ability to reflect on his performance and think of how to get better.  After each practice or game I ask him what was one great thing and one opportunity for improvement.  I also find myself praising the characteristics I like about his performance.  I like that he is listening to his coach.  I like that he pays attention to the game as it happens.  I like that when he is corrected, he responds differently the next time.  I like that even though he is scared to get out when playing a good team, he tries hard anyway.  I like that when he does get out, he has learned to be tough and move on.  If he can learn to grow from the success and failure of each game, each measurable outcome, he will continue to improve.

I also want him to be able to look for for opportunities to improve even in small ways.  He has been learning to hit off of the pitching machine, which is proving to be tough for him.  The timing and variability of the pitch are hard for him to master.  I am trying to encourage him to get the elements under control that he can control, then respond to the situation.  If he can develop the ability pitch by pitch to diagnose possible causes for failure and work to remedy those causes, he will get better very quickly.

This seems like a lot for a 6 year old, and it is.  He is not very good at it yet.  His takeaways are sometimes random and his ideas to get better are rarely the most important thing for him to improve.  However, the more we do this, the better he gets at it.

Sometimes I believe the most important thing about it is how it conditions my behavior.  It forces me to be positive in my praise of his performance and limits my suggestions to one on offense and one on defense, preventing an overly developed perfection expectation.  So maybe it is expecting a lot, but at least it manages those expectations.

This has quickly no longer become about baseball at all, but about life. The game simply becomes the method with which he develops life skills.