All Articles by Brooke de Lench

An athlete who specializes early or plays on an ultra-competitive select team is at increased risk of burnout or withdrawal from sport as a result of chronic stress or burnout.

Early specialization and playing on a select or travel team take their toll on a child's growing bones, joints, and muscles. Prior to high school, most children are simply not physically mature enough to handle the stress that playing a single sport on a year-round or nearly year-round basis places on their bodies.

One of the reasons often cited for early specialization in a single sport is that it promotes the development of the skills a player is going to need to be a successful athlete as a high school player and beyond. The problem is that the emphasis of select teams on winning games and tournaments (the myth that "the more we win, the better we are") may actually deter your child's athletic development.

A failure to be organized can negatively affect the sports experience for everyone in the family - parent and child.

Mothers can play an important role in parenting male athletes, Moms can avoid reinforcing unhealthy gender stereotypes while providing their sons with healthy ways through sports to channel his aggressive impulses. Here are some steps mothers can take to help their sons have an enjoyable sports experience.

Boys, given the way they hard-wired, need sports and competition. But while sports for boys have enormous benefits, they also can create problems, including pressure to conform to macho gender stereotypes.

One of the worst by-products of the select (travel) youth sports team system is that it fosters elitism by creating groups of haves and have-nots, especially before sixth grade, when predicting whether an athlete will turn into elite high school or college athlete is almost impossible.

Sports are critical to a boy's social and emotional development.  Many of the ways boys behave - particularly their love of sports and rough and tumble play - are rooted in the distant past. Boys are hard-wired to form large social groups in which to compete against other boys and sort out winners and losers.

As a mother you can have an enormous influence on your daughter's lifelong pursuit of physical fitness or sports. Here are some tips on how to help your daughter develop a love of sports and get the most of her sports experience.

While participation by girls in sports has increased at all levels, Olympic, professional, college and high school, and society is now more accepting than ever of female athleticism, the fact that girls continue to drop out of sports at six times the rate of boys is an indication that we still have a long way to go as a society in reaching the goal of gender equality in sports.