Choices: Do youth sports programs help or hurt our kids?

The debate, as to whether youth sports stress children, probably goes on in every family. Busy parents want to know where their children are every minute of the day. That is understandable. A kid is not safe anymore walking home from school or playing pick-up basketball at the park without adult supervision. Yet, how can busy parents be around to supervise their children’s sports activities?

Organized sports appear to be the perfect solution. Are they? Until now, participation in sports has been viewed as a positive thing, but the fact is, there are major problems and issues surrounding youth sports that participants, coaches and parents need to address.

More than 20 million girls and boys participate in organized youth sports in America: soccer, ice-hockey, baseball, basketball, football, gymnastics, swimming, figure skating, riding, wrestling, tennis, skiing and more. Today’s kids are being organized into school and parent-sponsored leagues that demand intense preparation and foster cut-throat competition.

“Sports can cause numerous harmful affects on kids,” says Shane Murphy, a sports psychologist for the U.S. Olympic Committee, and author of a book, “The Cheers and the Tears: A Healthy Alternative to the Dark Side of Youth Sports Today.”

According to Murphy, “Children are often bullied by coaches or harassed by parents who project their own unfulfilled sports ambitions.” Kids can be injured by over-training and unsafe competition techniques and rejected if they can not achieve increasingly difficult goals.

“More and more kids are being treated like mini-professionals in a big business, high pressure atmosphere,” says Murphy. Yet some kids have a great deal of talent and appear to love the sport they have chosen. That makes it difficult for a parent not to develop illusions of grandeur, projecting the possibility of his son or daughter making a six-figure income through some professional sport.

Think twice. It is up to parents to protect their children from overzealous ambitions, and to deal with coaches who may be ego driven. Salary increases for coaches depends on the number of games his team wins. Murphy says that a majority of parents do not know how to begin to have an impact within youth sports. They prefer to stay in their comfort zone, cheering or booing appropriately from the sidelines.

The goal of youth sports programs should be having fun, developing character, building accomplished athletes, and encouraging a life-long dedication to recreational exercise rather than focusing on competition. Parents and their child should get involved in the sports decisions.

• Evaluate the sports program that your youth may be considering.

• Develop alternatives to that sport if the one the child has chosen is inappropriate.

• Establish the philosophy and goals of the program so that you can prevent inevitable conflicts early.

• Examine your child’s attitude toward a sport. How realistic is his/her sports aspirations?

• Teach sports skills and life lessons, using teachable moments to illustrate important sports lessons.

• Get involved in a resources support group of parents committed to observing, discussing and participating in local sports goals for children.

A well organized and implemented sport can indeed teach children responsibility, leadership and fair play. Healthy challenges can build character. Dog-eat-dog competitiveness can lead to negative behavior, long-term depression, and lose your child friends. Join together as a community to change children’s sports programs to meet the needs of the children rather than the needs of the adults.

- - -

Jaine M. Carter, Ph.D., is the author of the book “He Works She Works: Successful Strategies for Working Couples” and wrote a column for the Scripps Howard News Service by the same name.

© 2010 Naples Daily News. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.