A Balanced Approach to Youth Sport

I was reminded by a colleague a few days ago how 'intense' the youth soccer games can be the summer, because "its qualifiers, parents go nuts". All I could think was how the sidelines are often way over the top all year round, and could it really be much worse?

The environment we have created at many youth sports events is unhealthy, toxic, and overwhelming for children. Certainly not an environment where they can thrive and explore the game, where they can fail and try again, and most of all where they can continue to grow their love for their chosen sport.

We have selfishly made it about us, about our wants and desires as adults. The desire for our child to be on the 'best' team, to be in the first division, to make HS, to make college. And until we recognize and admit that, the problem continues.

We also see incredible envy and resentment when another child achieves, and this fuels more of the unhealthy push that parents give. The fear that your child is left behind because the neighbors or kid in school is playing his sport at a much higher level!

We simply have to give the game back to the kids, to get out of the way, and to focus as parents on the life skills, the challenges, and to simply guide our children through these challenges. Communication, teamwork, problem solving, leadership and interaction are the main benefits for most children involved in sport, not one parent out there knows if their child will play at the top (or even college for that matter), scholarships are so hard to come by these days but so many parents are pushing for that instead of focusing on whats much more important.

Even if you listen to parents of athletes who made it to the top, who are at an elite level, you often hear how they didn't 'push', didn't try to coach their child, and instead you hear them talk about how it was fun, and how they had a natural drive to achieve. Of course, these parents played a role, but the talent and inner drive are what matter, not one high level athlete gets there because the parent pushed and pushed until it happened. It HAS to come from within!

To summarize, we need to see parents focusing on the lessons from sport, to help guide their athletes. Get out of the habits, for example, of constantly switching teams/coaches and instead asking the question "what can you do for this team?", "how can you help improve this experience?", the lessons from that will be invaluable because these are the types of challenges that will come up later in life, and we know they won't always be able to simply walk away.