Caitlin Clark's Childhood Shows 'Delayed Specialization' Is the Best Way to Raise Successful Kids, Backed by New Research

Caitlin Clark after win against the LSU Tigers during the finals of the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament in Albany, New York.

Clark’s developmental background is the norm for most outstanding athletes–and for most successful entrepreneurs.

I asked some followers on LinkedIn to guess whether Caitlin Clark — if you aren’t familiar with the basketball star, you probably aren’t reading this — grew up focusing solely on basketball. Nearly all of them guessed yes.

Makes sense: In sports, early specialization appears to matter. Take Tiger Woods, who was less than 2 years old when his father began teaching him to play golf. Or Andre Agassi, who started playing tennis when he was 4 years old. Michelle Wie qualified for the U.S. Amateur Championships at age 10.

Since elite performers in any field tend to spend significantly more time on deliberate, focused, consistent practice than non-elite performers, the sooner you start focusing on one thing, the better.

Or not. Here’s an excerpt from a profile of Clark (h/t to David Epstein):

Brent Clark is often asked by other parents of young kids about his recommendations, how he and his wife Anne nurtured Caitlin to become the basketball star that she is.

His answer? Get your children engaged with as many different activities as possible, sports or otherwise.

Beyond basketball and soccer, Caitlin at some point during childhood was involved with piano, softball, tennis, track and field and volleyball. As her parents look back now, all of those activities elevated certain skills, both mentally and physically.

Epstein writes in his book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, “Among athletes who go on to become elite, early sampling across sports and delayed specialization is by far the most common path to the top.”

According to Epstein, “eventual elites” tend to devote less time early on to deliberate practice in the activity in which they will eventually become experts.

Instead, they undergo what researchers call a sampling period. They play a variety of sports, mostly in unstructured — think neighborhood pickup games — or lightly structured environments. They learn. They develop. They gain a range of skills.

Along the way, they discover what they’re really good at — and what they really like. Then they start to focus. Then they dedicate. Then they pursue excellence.

New research backs that up. According to a new study just published in Sports Medicine, kids who entered talent promotion pipelines (academies, specialized programs, etc.) at a young age were worse off — in terms of skill, performance, etc. — than side entry kids who entered a pipeline much later.

As the researchers write:

Effects on short-term junior performance and long-term senior performance were opposite, whereby higher-performing junior athletes commenced TPP involvement at younger ages than lower-performing junior athletes. In contrast, higher-performing senior athletes commenced TPP involvement at older ages than lower-performing senior athletes.

Why? A couple of possible reasons. One, the earlier you identify a child as having unusual talent, the more likely you are to be wrong. (And the more likely the relative age effect as described in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers can play a role; after all, an under-8 kid born in September should have physical and developmental advantages over a kid born the following June.)

Another reason is the loss of diversification. Roger Federer grew up playing soccer, handball, badminton, and basketball. Patrick Mahomes played baseball well into college. John Elway was drafted in the second round by the Yankees. Abby Wambach credits her soccer success, at least in part, to her time playing basketball. (In fact, the members of the 2015 U.S. national women’s soccer team played at least 14 different sports besides soccer — and all believed participating in other sports enhanced rather than hindered their soccer careers.)

The authors of the study feel developing general physical skills helps people learn new skills in the future. Research backs that up as well; a study published in Sports Science found that athletes with more diverse athletic backgrounds appear to gain skills more quickly than those who do not over the same amount of practice time. (In simple terms, a broader background helps people learn how to learn.)

All of which sounds good, but possibly not relevant. In basketball terms, Caitlin Clark is a one-of-one.

Except for the fact the same premise holds true for career success.

As Epstein writes in Bounce:

One study showed that early career specializers jumped out to an earnings lead after college, but that later specializers made up for the head start by finding work that better fit their skills and personalities.

That research — as with most findings that are actually useful — also makes intuitive sense. Encourage your kids to focus on one path or pursuit, to the exclusion of nearly all others, and they will develop specific skills. They will gain specific experiences.

They will likely burst out of the (high school or college) gate at a higher speed.

But they won’t know whether they might have found greater joy, purpose, and fulfillment in another pursuit. They won’t bring a broader variety of skills and experiences to their work. And they won’t be what Epstein calls slow bakers: people who bounce from pursuit to pursuit, from interest to interest, developing a wide range of experiences and a wide range of skills.

Succeeding at some things. Failing at others. But always learning.

The same premise holds true when someone takes a first job — or launches a business — that might not make sense to their parents.

According to Epstein:

The expression “young and foolish” describes the tendency of young adults to gravitate to risky jobs, but it is not foolish at all. It is ideal.

They have less experience than older workers, and so the first avenues they should try are those with high risk and reward, and that have high informational value.

If they aren’t (succcessful), they can test something else, and continue to gain information about their options and themselves.

So don’t try to force your kids to find their ultimate path. Caitlin Clark’s parents didn’t. Nor did Federer’s. Nor did a whole bunch of parents of elite soccer players.

Nor should you worry if they haven’t found their ultimate path as adults. (Or if you still haven’t.) A study of 2.7 million startups found that the average age of the founder of the most successful tech startups is 45; that a 50-year-old startup founder is almost three times as likely to found a successful startup as a 25-year-old founder; and that a 60-year-old startup founder is at least three times more likely to found a successful startup than a 30-year-old startup founder — and is nearly twice as likely to found a startup that winds up in the top 0.1 percent of all companies.

Because, as Epstein writes, informational value matters: information about work, and life, and people — and, most important, about yourself.

Because success is, for most of us, a winding path with occasional crossroads.

Not a single destination.

This post originally appeared at inc.com.

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