Kids are not young adults. Although we like to think that when kids make mistakes that they knew that was going to happen. But as a parent myself, I know that kids don't mean to make a mistake. Myself and all the parents out there have gone through life and made some mistakes and learnt from them.
Kids are younger people, less experienced than all of us. So when they're out there and they make a mistake, then come off the court and you tell them that you...
"knew that was going to happen, that you knew you were going to make that mistake or you were going to do this. Why did you do it?"
The kids don't know that. They're kids. They need experience and we need to teach them, we need to guide them, we need to keep them on the rails when they're slightly veering off. We don't need to tell them. We don't need to berate them. We don't need to make them feel like they've done something wrong. If they've played a bad shot or a poor match they just need to be taught.
We send our kids to school and the teacher teaches them. They come home, they show us what they learnt, that they made some mistakes in class but they get better. Like we all did. Like we've all developed. We've improved, why? Because experience improves us.
So if you're out watching your kids at any stage, whether it be on the practice or match court, allow them to be kids. Allow them to make a mistake but then teach them. Obviously we don't want them to make serious mistakes in any part of their life, but a mistake isn't a bad thing and those errors, whether it be on the court or off the court are a great opportunity for us to teach and it's a great opportunity for those kids to learn.