Vortex of Craziness
I am not certain if it was because I was a bit overwhelmed by the responsibility of raising triplets or because my love of the outdoors and sports and recreation led me to want to spend time with my children outdoors and playing sports but I refused, as one mother described it in an e-mail to MomsTeam, to "get sucked into a vortex of craziness" that is today's youth sports. I did not sign my sons up for too many activities at one time. I didn't view parenting as a competitive sport. In order to survive, I knew I needed to emphasize cooperation and collaboration among and between my kids over competition. They usually only played one sport per season, and while they were busy during the season with practices and games on weekends and tournaments on holiday weekends, their lives were not overscheduled. They all took summers off, which not only gave them a chance to just be kids and to unwind from the pressures of school and sports but freed up time for the family to go on a yearly summer vacation.
We almost always ate dinner together, even when the boys were in high school. My sons had free time for hobbies, reading, listening to music, collecting cards, hanging out with their friends; to build forts in the woods, throw around a football, kick a soccer ball, toss a Frisbee, play badminton or shoot hoops. They are still physically active and in good shape: rock climbing, snow boarding, hiking and biking are an important part of their daily lives.
Family Activities
When I was growing up on the ocean the only sport that my mother - a former world-class synchronized swimmer - demanded that my sisters and I learn was swimming because it was the only one that could potentially save our lives. She never had to push us into playing any other sports - our interest in other sports came naturally. It was a different story when I visited my father and stepmother in Vermont. Sports were paramount and always a family activity. My father and stepmother were the ultimate outdoors folk. From sunrise to sunset they had us skiing, horseback riding, sailing, canoeing, hiking, fishing, ice skating, golfing, and playing tennis or paddle tennis. We learned to love - and I still enjoy - every single one of those sports. The sports and outdoor activities we did together as a family kept us close.
Playing as a Family
The balance between family time and sports time is different for each family, of course, but when my husband and I were raising our sons, we made a point of exposing them to a lot of different sports. At one point or another, they took fencing lessons, were members of a swim team, played youth basketball and lacrosse, learned how to ice skate, played squash with me or their father, played badminton and tennis, ran track, went on family skiing and snowboarding trips, played football, soccer, and baseball, went fishing and on bicycling trips, and engaged in mountain and rock climbing. You name it-they played it.
We enjoyed being with our kids, spending time with them, not just turning them over to coaches. We wanted their character to be developed at home and to be revealed on the fields and courts. They enjoyed spending time with us. They played select soccer, but only when they got to the U-12 level. Before that they played recreational soccer and Little League baseball. Spencer and Hunter tried Babe Ruth baseball for one season, but as the youngest players by almost a year, they got tired of the politics and sitting on the bench, and switched to track and lacrosse.
One summer, my husband and I took them and a team of boys to Scotland for a soccer tournament, but the goal was to have fun, not to win. We lost every game - some by lopsided scores - but it didn't matter a bit: we had fun and got to see and play against some superb youth soccer teams (one from San Paolo, Brazil was affiliated with the famous Italian professional soccer team, Juventus).
My experience showed that it is possible to balance sports and family. My kids are proof that loving relationships with parents contribute far more to success as adults than do awards.
Achievement Badges
Unfortunately, the balance that I was able to find for my family is all too often lacking in the lives of many parents and their children. Parents are under increasing pressure in 21st century America to help their kids succeed and to keep up with other parents (It is ironic that parents worry about the effect of peer pressure on their kids but fail to appreciate the effect peer pressure is having on them). We have become a nation of "helicopter" parents, hovering over our kids, trying to "enrich" every second of their lives with activities and feeling guilty if we don't.
Too many parents these days seem to take pride in how busy, how stressed, their lives and the lives of their kids, are, as if that is a measure of how successful they are, and how successful they must be in raising their kids. On the one hand, a recent Self magazine survey reported that women, while they "see their lives as very full and busy," don't see their lives as "disjointed or unmanageable," that they "move easily among their roles," and that they say they "don't feel exceptionally stressed out ... and are pleased with how well they are coping."
On the other, as my friend and parenting guru Mimi Doe observes, "It's almost a badge of achievement for some parents to breathlessly describe their ‘on the run' lives - as if they're giving their kids a leg up by being on two travel sports teams, the school's team and a little strength training on the side. Describing their busy schedules seems to validate parent's efforts and suggest that they are giving their children stellar advantages."
Hyper-Parents
The over scheduling of children mirrors their parents' lives: what one expert called "hyper-parents" raising kids stuck in a "rug-rat race." A spate of recent books, like Judith Warner's Perfect Madness, address the stressed-out lives of today's mothers and describe lives completely out of balance; what one reviewer described as an "endless sea of child-enriching activities, a soul-sucking swirl that leads many mothers into a well of despair," and another termed the "modern American mommy rat race."
Not surprisingly, studies show that the time families spend together has declined in direct proportion to the increased time children are playing organized sports. A study by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research found that between 1981 and 1997:
structured sports time doubled;
kids lost 12 hours a week of free time, from 40% of the day in 1981 to 25% two decades later,
unstructured outdoor activities declined 50%;
household conversations became far less frequent;
family dinners declined by one third; and
Extreme Commitment
Such research is supported by plenty of anecdotal evidence of an unhealthy imbalance as well. As one journalist, writing about youth hockey in Canada, put it, most "teams now demand commitment worthy of the Marine Corps. Nothing short of a death in the family can justify missing a game or practice. Christmases are often taken over by tournaments. Weekends are swallowed whole. Family dinners are disrupted. It can be an all-consuming commitment."
Consider just a few examples of how far things have gotten out of kilter:
A child was benched because he skipped the team's practice to be with his family on Christmas Eve.
When one mom, fed up with the grueling schedule her son's football coach set for her son (including weekends), asked him "What about church?" He replied, "Football is church." (Indeed, one church in Michigan has begun holding worship services on a soccer field on Sundays before games).
A 12 year old hockey player trained 300 days a year, attended seven summer hockey camps, and traveled 4,500 miles a year to compete, while his parents spent $6,000 per year on equipment, ice time, and hotels.
A survey of participants at an elite youth tennis tournament in Miami, Florida found that seven in ten of the parents were spending more than $5,000 per year on tennis practices, and a third were spending over $10,000 per year;
One Texas mother spent $15,000 annually on cheerleading training for her 8-year old daughter; and
Is this the kind of life our kids want? Not surprisingly, the answer is no:
A 1997 survey in The Boston Globe found that seven out of ten girls between the ages of 9 and 16 said they preferred playing sports with friends on the playground to organized sports. A slight majority of boys felt the same way.
From 1965 to the late 1980's, the time the average American child spent with his or her parents dropped by 43%. Other studies show that parents spend eleven hours less a week (about 90 minutes a day) with their teenagers, that the average mother spends less than a half hour per day talking with her teens.
It isn't even the kind of life we want: More than eight in ten of mothers in one recent national survey said they wanted more time to spend on personal and family relationships.
The bottom line is that there is plenty of reasons to find a balance between sports and family: it's what kids want and it's what parents want.
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Links:
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Home-Team-Advantage-Critical-Mothers/dp/0060881631/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215016645&sr=8-1
[2] https://momsteam.com/forums
[3] https://momsteam.com/successful-parenting/balancing-sports-and-family-13-tips-for-parents
[4] https://momsteam.com/successful-parenting/balancing-sports-and-family-learning-to-say-no