Are pushy parents ruining sports for kids?

Are over-zealous and pushy parents ruining sports for their kids?

A new report by the Sports and Fitness Industry Association finds team sports participation was down almost 4 percent last year compared to 2009, and 70 percent of youngsters quit organized sports by the time they’re 13 years old.

Some experts attribute the drop to a rise in more elite competition — where the best child athletes are put onto travel teams by their parents so they can get specialized and sometimes year-round training and attention for one particular sport.

According to Dr. Steven Tobias, a psychologist and director of the Center for Child and Family Development in Morristown, the trend is not healthy.

“Sports play a very important role in kids' development, not just in terms of their physical well-being and being part of a team, but learning how to cooperate and get along well with others,” he said.

He said when kids stop participating in sports they’re missing out on having fun.

“Sports used to be done for relaxation and it used to reduce stress in kids.” he said. “But now stress is increasing.

Tobias said all parents want their kids to do well, “but there’s a big difference between wanting your kid to succeed and feel good about themselves and really pushing them to a point that’s not healthy for them.”

He said unfortunately, many parents get their kids involved in sports so they can get scholarships to college and then become a great pro athletes.

“For every Tiger Woods, I’m sure there are hundreds of thousands of kids who don’t respond to that kind of young training program,” he said. “If parents push and try to groom their kids to become the next great pro athlete, we’re really doing them a disservice. We’re not allowing them to develop their own interests, we’re not allowing them to really be who they are.”

Tobias said kids know early on if the teams they’re on are the “good” or elite teams — or if they're not.

"So a lot of kids are feeling rejected, a lot of kids are feeling not good enough, and I think unfortunately a lot of kids are being discouraged from engaging in physical activity," he said.

He also said that in terms of child development, it’s very difficult to know who is going to wind up being a great athlete and who isn’t.

“Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team,” Tobias said. “Its’ rare for kids to be very good and then continue on that trajectory.”

The bottom line, Tobias said, is that when kids are pushed too strongly to specialize in one sport “to a large degree we’re depriving them of a very important aspect of childhood, and that part of childhood is play.”

His recommendation to kids is simple and straightforward: “Go outside and run around and to just hang out with your friends and to make up your own games and resolve your own conflicts on the field. By having kids in highly structured after-school sporting activities, we’re adding to their stress rather than reducing their stress, and we’re not allowing them to learn very important social and emotional skills which come through unstructured free play.”

In the long run he said, these kinds of skills are going to be much more necessary for their success in life than the skills they learn on the athletic fields.

Tobias also said some parents argue their kids want to hyper-focus on a particular sport, but “I always remind parents that kids don’t know what’s good for them, that’s why they have parents. The parent has to take control here.”