How Parents Are Hurting Their Child Athletes
Over the last several years, I’ve had an opportunity to observe several child athletes. With the Winter Olympics having come and gone, and NCAA March Madness just around the corner, I’ve been considering the effect parents are having on their child athletes. I can’t help but think that, as parents, we’re doing our kids a disservice.
Child Athletes – How Parents Are Overdoing it
I’ll start by admitting I’m a sports fan. There was a time when I steadfastly refused to miss a chance to watch my favorite college basketball team play, and would get quite upset when they lost. While nowhere as rabid as I once was, I can still enjoy watching a good basketball game or tennis match.
But, truth be told, now that I’m a parent, and had the opportunity to watch the behavior of other parents over their child athletes, I’m less enamored with the entire system.
Why?
The truth is that there are 30-40 million kids in the U.S. that play sports. Of that group, only a fraction will go on to play high school athletics of some sort, and only about 5% of the high school athletes will be competitive college athletes. Only a small fraction of those will go on scholarship. The rest will be walk-on athletes.
Consider this. Only about 1.5% of college athletes will go on to play professional athletics, and the average professional baseball career only lasts a grand total of 4 years. What happens at the end of that four years?
Parents And Their Child Athletes
A friend of mine and I went to a local gym a few weeks ago to play tennis, and observed that one of the courts was isolated for training child athletes. They had two batting cages and two pitching nets set up, and four kids under the age of 10 were receiving private instruction. A tennis court was also cordoned off for private tennis lessons for a kid who looked to be about 12 years old.
It just seemed over the top to me.
Want more evidence that parents are “over the top” with their child athletes?
Orthopaedic surgeons are reporting a dramatic rise in the occurrence of pediatric sports injuries. Kids are playing year-round sports, or participating in multiple sports simultaneously. It’s a recipe for disaster, and the American Association for Orthopaedic Surgeons has described the problem as a “silent epidemic.”
What’s the Solution?
Having said all this, I’ll admit that I’m a fan of athletics. I believe that team sports provides kids with an opportunity to get exercise, stay fit, and develop a sense of teamwork and belonging with their peers. And, to be honest, if my kids want to take tennis lessons, or attend basketball camp, I’m not adverse to that, either.
But there’s a limit.
The reality is that kids need even more rest than adults to avoid injuries, and pushing our children to achieve college or professional level athletic prowess, does them a disservice. Not only are the odds exceptionally slim that they will ever achieve that status, the odds are even smaller that they will make their living as athletes. So, pushing them to achieve in athletics at such a high level forces them to focus on that, rather than on developing their education and other skills.
So go out and support your child in athletics. Encourage them to succeed. But don’t live vicariously though them. Take sports for what they are. A game.
Truth be told, that’s probably all your child wants anyway.
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Thank you for speaking up.
Youth sports have gotten crazy. In addition to the problems you mention, all of the structured activity takes away time for free play, time that kids need to use their imagination and decide their own course – an essential part of growing up with a healthy mind.
@D – Yeah. When parents are getting into fist fights over pee wee football, priorities are out of whack. I’m all for a good game, but it needs to be kept in perspective.
Parents are not aware that they are forcing their sports aspirations to their children, leaving their child without a choice. Let us remember that being parents, we should look at the benefits of our children rather than ourselves.
Hi, I followed your post from AndrewNZ’s blog post … having followed a few “child athletes” in my time
Hear hear! As a mother of 5 – oldest is 18yo – and lots of sport involvement, I’ve watched a lot of parents, and a lot of kids, through the years. I can say that those that are pushed to the extreme very rarely make it anyway, by the time they get to 15/16yo they’ve had enough of being pushed, have no idea what to do with themselves because every minute has been monitored, and those are the kids that fall off the rails. Not all the time, sometimes it works, but from what I’ve seen – that is usually what happens, and sadly you can see it happening but can’t intervene (because then you’re a jealous parent).
My youngest does competitive gym – her coach coaches her daughter (8yo) as well, that poor child does 3 dance classes, performance (elite) dance, swimming as well and full on competitive gymnastics … and her mother wonders why the poor child is grumpy sometimes?
Anyway – big soapbox subject for me … but your last two paragraphs say it all
@Lisa — Thanks for stopping by!
I’ve coached a handful of my kids sports teams, and its quite a sight to watch two mothers get into a hair-pulling fight over a 7-year old baseball game.
Sports can be great for kids, but for some reason, it seems all too easy for parents to lose their perspective… And you’re right about stepping in, too. Making a comment would only be construed as “jealousy.”
Great post, and good topic! I am also a big sports fan, though like you it seems that age brings with it a lessening of this obsession.
As far as parenting and sports goes, and having two boys one of which is a HIGE baseball fan and a decently talented player making all the top teams in his age group I am very concerned with the whole too much pressure thing.
My approach, for what it’s worth, is always to reinforce to him that the process is much more important than the end result. I tell my kids my story to help them understand: I was a competitive swimmer for many years, and swimming ruled my life. My goals were lofty, I wanted to make the Olympic team. I fell well short of that goal, but found a great deal of satisfaction in the process. I know that I trained just as hard, and was just as dedicated to the sport as any Olympic athlete. I knew this because I had the opportunity to train with a few and saw that they didn’t put in any more effort that I did, and in some cases they actually didn’t put in nearly as much. In the end I cannot have any regrets because I know that I maximized my talent, and that is all I can ever ask of my boys in whatever they pursue. If it’s worth doing, do it as best as you can and learn from your mistakes. Equally, balance is very imortant and I totally agree with you when it comes to letting kids just “play”, no matter what form that takes. As soon as my little guy stops dragging ME out the door to get to practices and games I will know that the balance is out of whack.
That perspective also gives me the background to coach and cheer on all of the kids that I interact with (including those on the other team) and leave the pressure of winning and such nonsense alone. It also gives me the confidence to stand up to parents who are not as accomodating to these principles – they simply have no counter argument and know it.
Good topic with good responses! As an educator, I spent the majority of my 20+ years coaching (football, basketball, baseball). What I began seeing in the early 90′s was a rash of middle and high school kids “specializing” in one sport and a proliferation of personal instructors. Many of these kids were good all-around athletes who droppped other sports that they were not only good at, but also seemed to enjoy playing in defference of one sport (usually baseball among the males). Sadly, most of these kids usually got sick of the sport after 3-4 intense years (invloving year round instruction and practice) and stopped participating. Then there were those who weren’t as good as the personal instructor or the time spent led them to believe and they became disillusioned when the team didn’t revolve around them and/or the college offer they expected wasn’t forthcoming. This isn’t a slam on the personal instructors, as I know several that are really good professionals; rather, it is a finger pointed squarely at the parents who, as was mentioned above, are living vicariously through their children’s athletic “careers!”
A related phenomenon I have seen far too much of is a parental jealously that can develop when their child is not the star the parent expects them to be. It usually turns into a wild display of accusations directed at the coach, who is unfair and doesn’t give the child a fair shake and other parents/players who are obviously “kissing-up” to get their children an advantage. Nobody ever wins in a situation like this and the biggest loser is always the child of jealous parent. Lost is the opportunity to work smarter and harder to get better and to develop a “team first” mentality that is vital to success both in the particular sport and, usually, in a job/career or social setting. Whatever happened to “there’s no ‘I’ in team?”
Sports are competitive and there are great individual and team lessons to be learned with participation. They are also fun, for the most part. It is very sad when the adults rob the fun from them.
Some parents can’t handle their child being discussed as a team member. My daughter was playing in a lacrosse game when my husband started discussing with me the last play made by another girl on the team that missed a shot. He was discussing to me how it could have been played differently. The father overheard our conversation and accused my husband of personally critisizing his daughter and how we thought only our daughter was perfect. Then his wife chimed in and lectured us on how you never discuss other people’s children. They were screaming and getting so emotional, we were appauled at how “juvenille” they sounded. We are still watching a spectator sport and like to discuss it. if we are sitting in the stands should we whisper to eachother? We never called out the child’s name (nor did we know it). When did commenting on plays become taboo?