Many parents today enroll their children in a wide range of activities from a young age.
In a sports-loving city like Rye, that often means youth sports leagues.
While youth sports provide social, mental, and physical benefits, these leagues — originally intended for fun and exercise — often now are sources of heavy pressure on kids to compete and specialize on costly, high-level travel teams.
Those are the overarching themes that freelance journalist and author Linda Flanagan addresses in her 2022 book, “Take Back the Game: How Money and Mania Are Ruining Kids’ Sports — and Why It Matters.”
The Summit, N.J., native discussed her book in a “Heard in Rye” event Thursday at the Rye Free Reading Room.
She’s a former athlete and cross-country coach — who also used to coach her own daughter — and doesn’t preach against putting children in organized sports. She doesn’t discount the benefits that sports provide.
But her book aims to shed light on how the system has changed and make parents aware of the potential impact of their choices. For parents who are comfortable saying “no,” it’s still possible to shift the goal back to fun, not strictly performance.
“Kids’ sports are for kids, we have to remind ourselves of this,” Flanagan said. “They are not playing for our entertainment. Even if watching them is fun … Are you shrieking at the ref? Are you bad-mouthing the coach on the car ride home? Sports can bring out the child in the grown-up.”
Her advice: don’t feel obligated to do what other families are doing. Instead, “let your child drive the bus.” Pay attention to your child’s needs and interests; don’t underestimate coaches’ ability to lead, and resist the pressure to say “yes” to everything. Your child doesn’t have to play multiple sports all year with no offseason or free time between them.
Professional athletes are high-status figures who kids often look up to. Parents have been conditioned to believe youth sports can be important for their child’s development and possibly a ticket into college.
While that may be true in some cases, that kind of pressure can be a negative.
“One sports psychologist told me that he and his colleagues believe that depression and anxiety among high-school athletes have increased during the last 10 to 15 years,” Flanagan said.
She also cited 2015 data from the National Athletic Trainers Association showing high school athletes have higher rates of “sleep disturbances, loss of appetite, mood disturbances, short tempers, decreased interest in training in competition, decreased self-confidence, and inability to concentrate.”
Every child is different. Many enjoy playing multiple sports nearly year-round, and that’s OK, she said. The key is remembering that it should be the child’s choice, and they should be playing for the reasons they grew attached to the game in the first place.
Flanagan recently surveyed 300 middle- and high-school boys at a private school in Boston, asking what they liked most about their sports experiences.
“You might be surprised to know that a mere handful said winning,” Flanagan said. “The overwhelming majority said variants of these: good break from school, mental reset, and friends, my teammates, great community — the connection to building teammates. That’s what kids like most about sports.”
