Youth Sports: Perspective Needed!

There’s a fire in her belly. . . and it comes from being an athlete, being a coach, and being a parent who kept an aggressive schedule of sports activities for her own kids. And the fire in her belly that fueled all of that has now been replaced by a fire bent on warning other parents about the extensive damage that fueling that former fire can do.

Her name is Linda Flanagan, and she’s written a sobering yet practical and helpful book, Take Back the Game: How Money And Mania Are Ruining Kids’ Sports – And Why It Matters. It’s a book for such a time as this. . . a time when parents are idolizing youth sports and everything that goes with it. Flanagan speaks to my own experience, seasoned by the passing of years and reevaluation of some of the past functional parenting priorities of my generation, along with looking at what’s happening in the world around us now as it relates to youth sports. . . and how it ramped up exponentially!

While Flanagan doesn’t write from the perspective of the Christian faith, her common-sense approach to what’s happening, the damage we’re doing, and how to put an end to it mesh well with what we know is the kind of prioritization that clearly shows the idols we serve, along with the misplaced hope for redemption that only leads to a dead-end and no ultimate peace, joy, and satisfaction. Could it be that youth sports and sports in general have become “the unknown God” littering the landscape of North American culture in the 21st century? And, could it be that this idol is one on which we sacrifice the lives and futures of our kids. . . all with a sad and sorry combination of good intentions combined with ignorance? We know that ultimately it is our high calling and high privilege to nurture our children in the Christian faith, pointing them to only One, Jesus Christ, who can fill the God-shaped vacuum which exits inside us all. That should give us all pause so that we might consider this issue.

As I was reading Flanagan’s book, I came to her list of very wise recommendations for parents, a series of marching orders that could change the narrative in both our larger culture and in our homes, one of which keeps bouncing around in my brain. It’s a simple message to parents: “Strive to keep perspective.” Isn’t that what we are called to as the people of God? We are commanded to have no other Gods before the One true God because we are prone to erect and worship idols of all kinds. God knows our default, sinful setting to do so. . . and so we are warned all through the Scriptures. As Tim Keller has said, an idol is a good created thing given to us for our enjoyment which we allow to become an ultimate thing. We do that with all kinds of things, don’t we? Now, there’s a youth sports industrial complex that is sucking up all our time, money, allegiance, families, and kids.

While I recommend Flanagan’s Take Back the Game as reading for all parents, youth workers, and pastors, let me give you a little taste from this excerpt in her section, “Strive to keep perspective”. . .

When asked how they handled their children’s sports, nearly every older parent I interviewed wished they knew then what they know now: that sports really don’t matter. They way your kids play when they’re young, whether they score or foul or get named captain or awarded MVP. Their performance doesn’t make any real difference. Their athletic success is unimportant. “My regret now,” one mother of two said, “is that we didn’t just do shit together like go hiking, camping, wading in a river, and other stuff as a family instead of all piling in a car on Saturday to go to some idiotic soccer match.”

Psychologist Madeline Levine put it like this: “We lose our own compass because we let this get so important. All the things that seem so life-altering when they’re younger, when they get older, you think, That didn’t make much difference.”

But keeping perspective can be hard to come by, especially in kids’ sports. Look at that ten-year-old who can dribble with his left hand, eye’s closed, while your giraffe-like child trips over his shoelaces and scores for the wrong team. How do you keep perspective when he looks so inept next to the boy who dashes off to AAU practice after recreation-league games? How do you take the long view when doing so seems to handicap him now?

It might help to consider how this fascination with youthful achievement, a distinctly American obsession, harms nearly everyone. According to Rich Karlgaard, author of “Late Bloomers: The Power of Patience in a World Obsessed with Early Achievement”, the fixation on early, visible excellence – academic, athletic, and otherwise – blunts kids’ different strengths. Young achievers who’ve felt the pressure to excel right from the womb often feel brittle and exhausted from their relentless striving. Parents become easy prey for “the child-enhancement industry” – tutoring services, specialized coaching, “educational ” games for infants – that erode the family unit.

And among the multitudes of kids who haven’t acquired flawless credentials in their teens, the failure to shine early can have more lasting consequences: feelings of inferiority, recurring self-doubt, and the suspicion that their inability to stand out at a young age puts them at a permanent disadvantage. “We’re stunting their development, closing their pathways to discovery, and making them more fragile,” Karlgaard wrote. “Just when we should be encouraging kids to dream big, take risks, and learn from life’s inevitable failures, we’re teaching them to live in terror of making the slightest mistake.” . . . .

Catch yourself. Step away from the crowd on the bleachers, change the subject when youth basketball camp comes up, and remind yourself what’s important.

Parents. . . we do have a responsibility. It’s to nurture our kids. Is our top priority to nurture them in the Lord? Or, is it to nurture them into something else? You see, nurture we will. . . whether consciously, unconsciously, intentionally, or by default.

Many of us have been down this road. And if you think that taking the same road will yield different results than those that come from where the road eventually leads, think again. Keep perspective.

Want to know more about the relationship between youth sports, the Christian faith, and church involvement, check out this CPYU Parent Prompt, “Youth Sports and Church Participation”, from CPYU Research Fellow, Jason Engle.