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Stumble It!Sports Team Burnout: When It’s Time to Cut Back on the Lessons and Leagues
Stealing family time
As you help your child navigate his athletic participation, ask yourself, how much is too much for her? For you? For your family? Consider the havoc sports participation has on family life and your child with games every weekend, on holidays, and practices and games in the evening. Children eat meals, attempt to do homework, and fight exhaustion in cars on the way to practices —all of which affect their general health and academics. Parents are exhausted, too, and family members are often divided—mom at one child’s game; dad at another and siblings tag along, often reluctantly. Vacations get built into tournament schedules and Thanksgiving dinner is eaten in a diner on the road, sometimes hundreds of miles from home.
What happened to playing outside with friends? For all their many benefits, organized sports, if not carefully monitored by parents not only put children at risk for injury and burnout, but also jeopardize your family’s unity. Next time you sign your child up take the “Caution: Children at Play” sign seriously. Today there’s much more at stake than just the outcome of the game.
The full report, “Overuse Injuries, Overtraining, and Burnout in Child and Adolescent Athletes” is available at: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/119/6/1242
Social psychologist and parenting expert, Susan Newman, specializes in issues impacting family life. She is the author of 13 books in the parenting and family fields including The Book of NO: 250 Ways to Say It—and Mean It and Stop People-Pleasing Forever (McGraw-Hill), Nobody’s Baby Now: Reinventing Your Adult Relationship with Your Mother and Father (Walker), Little Things Long Remembered: Making Your Children Feel Special Every Day and Little Things Mean a Lot: Creating Happy Memories with Your Grandchildren (Random House/Crown); Parenting an Only Child: The Joys and Challenges of Raising Your One and Only (Doubleday/Broadway) and three books on preventing alcohol and drug abuse among children and young adults. For details, go to www.thebookofno.com or www.susannewmanphd.com
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I just came to this realization 2 days ago! And it was all MY fault! In my zest to keep my son busy during the winter months, I signed him up for back-to-back soccer. He’s only 5. This second soccer team, he wasn’t focusing (as much as a 5 year old can), wasn’t really playing like before and all that. Definitely not listening to me or his coach about things he was doing on and off the field that wasn’t good. The night I saw this happening, I tried to figure out what was going on with him. He is such a great kid and good listener usually. I figured out it was several things. He has a cold, his coach isn’t as pro-active with the kids like his last coach… AND I was keeping him to busy, and not giving him the normal routine and structure he was used to. I felt horrible for this, but so glad I realized this early on in his childhood. He has PLENTY of time in life to keep busy. He is only 5 and it’s okay!