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Is This the Best Version of Childhood We Can Give Our Kids? by Regan McMahon

Wed, 09/26/2007

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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.

I held a mirror up to the culture and reported what I saw in an article for the San Francisco Chronicle, where I am an editor and writer, titled “How Much Is Too Much?” What I saw were stressed-out families and kids at risk of burnout and overuse injuries from specializing in one sport and playing it all year long, which is the dominant trend. I had to ask, is this the best version of childhood we can give our kids?

My article drew an overwhelming response and I got impassioned letters from parents and coaches saying how glad they were that someone was finally talking about this issue. I knew I had struck a nerve. And with my book deal, I was able to expand my focus nationally.

I was surprised to learn how universal the problem is, in communities large and small. Parents are anguished over the choices they face. They want to give their kids every opportunity to succeed, but they fell pressured to put kids on expensive travel teams from a very early age.

I got a letter the other day form a woman in South Carolina who said half her daughter’s soccer team moved up to the elite club team and she didn’t think her daughter was ready for that time and travel commitment, so she kept her on the rec team but feared her daughter’s soccer career was over – at age 10! She said my book reaffirmed her gut feeling that there’s still time.

To learn more about me and my book, check out my web site.

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