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People always ask how I came to write a book that examines the over-the-top youth sports culture and how it’s affecting kids and families. They wonder if I or my kids had some bad experience so I had an axe to grind. Some assume I’ve yanked my kids out of sports.

In fact, my kids have had almost entirely good experiences and they’re still playing and enjoying multiple sports as teenagers. And I was a youth athlete myself: a competitive figure skater from second through 10th grade, when I quit partially because I wanted to join my high school basketball and swim teams. I know intimately all the good things to be gained from participating in sports: focus, discipline, healthy exercise, learning to work as part of a team, learning to work hard for a goal (literally and figuratively).

But as I looked around me, I noticed the things kids were losing amid all those gains: downtime, unstructured play, time to hang out at home with parents and siblings, holidays at home with relatives, family vacations and even family dinners.

And as hectic as things were for my family, driving two kids around to practices and games, zooming from the soccer field to the volleyball gym for those few weeks when the seasons overlap, I knew it was nothing compared with how it was for families with kids playing on elite travel teams, who were spending weekends and holidays at tournaments. I wondered how we got here, and if it had to be this way or if there was room for change.