Raising sports active kids
is difficult, perhaps never more so than today. Parents feel pressure
to help their kids succeed and to keep up with other parents in an
increasingly winner-take-all society. Too often, parents feel that if
they don't do everything for their child, they are bad parents. Some
parents seem to take pride in how busy and stressed are their lives and
those of their kids, as if it is a measure of how successful they are
and how successful they must be as parents.
Research shows that parents
intuitively know how to balance their child's development. Yet more and
more parents seem to be ignoring their own intuition by over-scheduling
and over-stressing their child.
A University of Michigan
study showed that only 30 percent of the days of school-age youngsters
are "free" time, to use as they wish. The other 70 percent is packed
with classes, part-time jobs after school, homework, and
extracurricular activities, like sports. Structured sports time doubled
between 1981 and 1997. At the same time, unstructured outdoor
activities declined 50 percent.
Today's parents spend
eleven hours less a week (about 90 minutes a day) with their teenagers
than they did two decades ago. The average mother spends less than a
half hour per day talking with her teens. Only six in ten fifteen- and
sixteen-year olds regularly eat dinner with their parents. Family
vacations are down by 28 percent. Sports have replaced church on Sunday
for many families. Children are being benched for missing practice to
be with their families on Christmas Eve.
Yet in survey after survey
adolescents lament the lack of parental attention and say they want to
spend more time with their parents, not less; more free time, not less.
One recent poll of children between ages 9 and 13 found that more than
four in 10 feel stressed most of the time or always. The main reason:
they had too much to do. More than three fourths said they longed for
more free time.
If you feel like sports are
taking too much of your and family's time and money, if your child is
feeling stressed, it is time to restore some sanity by finding a better
balance. Creating balance in child's life is important because, if you
don't, you send your child the message that unstructured, un-pressured
free time, fun for fun's sake and family time aren't important.
Here are some tips on finding balance.
- Have the courage to say no.
Be honest with yourself and your children and, if you and/or your child
are overextended, recognize the toll sports and other activities are
taking on you and on your family instead of worrying that if you don't
go the extra mile your kids will somehow suffer or will fall behind his
peers. All too often kids seem to get the message from society and
their parents that they can have it all. Setting priorities and
understanding that you only have so many hours in the day and only so
much money is something every child has to learn, sooner or later. It
might as well be sooner. Sometimes the best thing a parent can do for a
child is nothing.
- Balance sports and family life.
Parents in the United States spend less time with their children than
those in almost any nation on the planet. Set aside some family time.
Research has shown that teenagers who eat dinner with their parents
five times per week or more are the least likely to be on drugs, to be
depressed, or in trouble with the law, and the most likely to be doing
well in school and to have a supportive circle of friends. Set aside
one night a week or month as Family Game Night, when you choose a board
game, play card games, make tacos, and just be together. Make it sacred
time. Before you allow your child to play a particular sport, or on a
particular team, consider the amount of travel time to practices and
games, your work schedule and your spouse's, your child's school
schedule and homework demands, carpool availability, and the needs of
other family members. Consider what you and your family will have to
give up (Friday night pizza, family vacations, church on Sunday, etc)
and whether those experiences are so important that you need to find
time for them in your family's schedule. The irony is that weekends,
the time families used to spend relaxing from the work/school week, are
now filled to brim with sports activities. Try to set aside some time
on the weekends to rest and recharge your batteries and those of your
children for the week ahead.
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Set limits that fit your family.
Find the level of sports and extracurricular participation that works
for your child and your family. Take your cues from your child and
trust your intuition. For some, one sport, one team per season may be
right. Some children thrive on more intense involvement. Make sure that
the limits that are set are ones that everyone in the family can agree
on. Help your child learn to structure her own schedule and find
personal balance between activities and downtime.
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Look for balanced sports programs.
Look for leagues and clubs that balance sports, family, school and
emphasize just having fun as much as winning. A child shouldn't be
penalized for missing practice on Christmas Eve to be with his family.
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Find a balance between sports:
Introduce your child to a sport such as golf, tennis, squash,
racquetball, cycling, sailing, windsurfing, rock climbing, jogging,
kayaking, rowing, or canoeing that she can enjoy after her competitive
career is over. Encourage him or her to keep engaging in sports and
activities with you as long as he or she enjoys them, like bike riding,
hiking, skating, sailing, running etc. Encourage her to play different
sports and avoid early specialization. Not only will it help your child
to develop a variety of transferable motor skills such as jumping,
running, twisting, which will ultimately help him to become better at
sport in which he ultimately chooses to specialize, but it will reduce
the risk of overuse injuries that too often result from early
specialization and playing on a select team.
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Balance sports and academics.
Schoolwork should always come first. Remember that there are thirty
times more dollars available for financial aid based on academics than
for athletics.
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Allow for a social life outside of sports.
Being on a select team often requires a year-round or near year-round
commitment and extensive travel. If you allow your child to participate
she can end up socially isolated from her family, peers and the larger
community. The athletic role can become so consuming and controlling
that childhood essentially disappears. Early specialization can thus
interfere with normal identity development, increasing the risk that a
child will develop what psychologists call a one-dimensional
self-concept in which she sees herself solely as an athlete instead of
just a part of who she is. Many experts believe that if your child
waits to play on a select team until seventh grade or later and waits
until high school to specialize in a sport he is likely to be better
adjusted and happier, have a more balanced identity, and less likely to
have an identity crisis when his competitive sports career finally
ends, as it is likely to do after high school.
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Make sure your child gets enough sleep.
"Parents spend so much time and money optimizing their children's
success yet the one thing they are not doing is making sure their kids
get enough sleep," says Judith Owens, M.D., past chair of the Pediatric
Section for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, and co-author of
Take Charge of Your Child's Sleep: The All-In-One Resource for Solving
Sleep Problems in Kids and Teens." "The greatest challenge for parents
is the balance between homework, sports, music and sleep - don't over
program your kids so that they give up their much needed sleep,"
advises Dr. Owens.
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Provide for unstructured free time.
Play is, as Williams College professor Susan Engel notes in her book,
Real Kids, "a central and vital process during childhood. It is not
merely that children need time to unwind or have fun. Rather, without
play they will be much less likely to develop just the kinds of
thinking we feel are so vital to a productive and intelligent adult
life." Believe it or not, boredom is actually good, stimulating kids to
think and be creative and providing opportunities for real parent-child
communication. That our culture seems to increasingly devalue free time
doesn't mean you should. Kids need to grow up feeling comfortable with
silence.
It is possible to create balance within your family's
everyday life, even with children who participate in sports. But it is
up to you as the parent to make certain that your kids don't over
schedule and establish the right priorities.