Why are we pushing kids so hard today? And what is the cost to the hyper-achievement expectations we have come to expect from kids? For example, signing your child up for multiple sport teams in one season may give your child more games to play, but what is the trade-off? While you might assume that your child will automatically have more fun and develop better sport skills by playing more, you might be surprised to learn that in a growing number of cases the exact opposite is occurring. When kids feel that sport participation is like a job because of the requirements, expectations, and dedication needed, the “fun” that should be experienced is quickly replaced with mental health concerns including anxiety, depression, poor coping, self-esteem issues, and sport burnout. Similarly, if you assume more sport participation leads to faster sport skill acquisition, you might be surprised to learn that there is a psychological threshold where kids begin to lose interest when pushed too hard, and this can lead to poor focus, disinterest, and sometimes even self-sabotaging and/or passive-aggressive behaviors with the hopes that mom and dad will re-visit the child’s intense sport schedule. The reality is more is not always better when it comes to pushing youth sports, and in fact more sports can lead to a host of serious negative circumstances and outcomes.
Fortunately, not everyone is on-board with this approach to pushing kids — check out what one youth sports coach had to say about the current state of youth sports.
It’s not just sport burnout, it’s bigger than that…
I have written for years about the impact of sport burnout on kids, primarily framing my concerns around how sport burnout can lead to kids prematurely quitting sports. What I have spent less time looking at is the long-term effect sport burnout has on kids beyond quitting — in other words, what other consequences do kids experience well after their playing days have ended? Some of the bigger, chronic issues I have witnessed at my practice include the following:
- Anxieties around future long-term commitments (i.e. signing up for another sport or similar activity) that might steal from their time to do other things in life.
- Challenges relating to poor coping used during the distress of youth sports that carry on well after the games have ended, including substance abuse and other maladaptive ways of handling life stress.
- Questions (and possibly resentment) around why they were pushed so hard in sports, and how something supposedly meant to be fun could change so quickly into something not really fun at all?
- Negative views about youth sports that carry into their adult years, and possibly how they eventually parent their own kids.
- Disappointment looking back at how a more balanced sport schedule would have allowed time for the development of other life interests by means of different experiences beyond sports.
We are learning in real-time that pushing kids hard can lead to countless future mental health issues and concerns, many of which are not successfully worked through for years — if at all.
Is the push for the kids, or parents?
So why all the sport intensity? Do we have evidence that more is better when it comes to youth sports? Are we really focusing on helping kids develop holistically through sports, or are there other factors impacting how we are viewing youth sports today?
Many parents continue to sign their kids up for sports for the following primary reasons:
- Some believe this will give their child a better chance at a D1 athletic scholarship, and maybe even professional sports.
- Some parents simply believe that “more is better” when it comes to youth sports and exercise, giving no consideration to exhausting their child both physically and mentally.
- For some parents the goal is simply to “keep up with the Jones’s” and haphazardly sign their kids up for whatever sport/league all their child’s friends are doing.
Travel leagues and clubs are accommodating the demand
As increasingly more families sign up for hyper-intense youth sport experiences, clubs and travel teams are eagerly capitalizing on what parents will pay for exclusive, premier coaching. I have had parents in my company rave about their child’s club soccer coach, and if you didn’t know any better you would think they are talking about Pelè! I have learned that some premier travel baseball experiences can cost over $5,000 for a single summer of games (even before additional travel costs), with a good portion of the money going to the coaches. Don’t get me wrong, the adults coaching in these examples put in a lot of time, but is it odd to you to see so many of them now making a nice living doing the same work that they did just a few years ago as a volunteer? Cynics argue that these elite clubs are taking advantage of gullible parents, many of who did not play sports and immediately equate good coaching = better chances of making it in sports. Yes, good coaching is never a bad thing, but thinking that a youth coach is going to catapult your kid into the 2-3% of all high school athletes who earn a full-ride D1 athletic scholarship might be a stretch.
Final thoughts
The first litmus test when sizing up sport options for your kid shouldn’t be what program will give my child the best chance of making it, but instead what is the most fun, safest (physically and mentally), educational experience my child can experience in sports? What league allows for growth without pressure, emphasis on fun, and teaches skills that can be used beyond sports? Play an active role in your child’s youth sport experience and enjoy the benefits for a lifetime, but this only occurs when parents take time out to investigate all sport options and ultimately make decisions best for their child.
drstankovich.com
