How to Balance Youth Sports with Family Life

Find a balance between sports: Introduce your child to a sport such as golf, tennis, squash, racquetball, cycling, sailing, windsurfing, rock climbing, jogging, kayaking, rowing, or canoeing that she can enjoy after her competitive career is over. Encourage him or her to keep engaging in sports and activities with you as long as he or she enjoys them, like bike riding, hiking, skating, sailing, running etc. Encourage her to play different sports and avoid early specialization. Not only will it help your child to develop a variety of transferable motor skills such as jumping, running, twisting, which will ultimately help him to become better at sport in which he ultimately chooses to specialize, but it will reduce the risk of overuse injuries that too often result from early specialization and playing on a select team.

Balance sports and academics. Schoolwork should always come first. Remember that there are thirty times more dollars available for financial aid based on academics than for athletics.

Allow for a social life outside of sports. Being on a select team often requires a year-round or near year-round commitment and extensive travel. If you allow your child to participate she can end up socially isolated from her family, peers and the larger community. The athletic role can become so consuming and controlling that childhood essentially disappears. Early specialization can thus interfere with normal identity development, increasing the risk that a child will develop what psychologists call a one-dimensional self-concept in which she sees herself solely as an athlete instead of just a part of who she is. Many experts believe that if your child waits to play on a select team until seventh grade or later and waits until high school to specialize in a sport he is likely to be better adjusted and happier, have a more balanced identity, and less likely to have an identity crisis when his competitive sports career finally ends, as it is likely to do after high school.

Make sure your child gets enough sleep. "Parents spend so much time and money optimizing their children's success yet the one thing they are not doing is making sure their kids get enough sleep," says Judith Owens, M.D., past chair of the Pediatric Section for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, and co-author of Take Charge of Your Child's Sleep: The All-In-One Resource for Solving Sleep Problems in Kids and Teens." "The greatest challenge for parents is the balance between homework, sports, music and sleep - don't over program your kids so that they give up their much needed sleep," advises Dr. Owens.

Provide for unstructured free time. Play is, as Williams College professor Susan Engel notes in her book, Real Kids, "a central and vital process during childhood. It is not merely that children need time to unwind or have fun. Rather, without play they will be much less likely to develop just the kinds of thinking we feel are so vital to a productive and intelligent adult life." Believe it or not, boredom is actually good, stimulating kids to think and be creative and providing opportunities for real parent-child communication. That our culture seems to increasingly devalue free time doesn't mean you should. Kids need to grow up feeling comfortable with silence.