PEARL 37

Sports

As parents, most of us want our kids involved in sports from the time

they are very young for a number of reasons: the exercise, socialization,
character-building, learning to be a team player, sportsmanship, and so
on. Because of this, it is not uncommon to see toddlers out battling over a
soccer ball or whacking a baseball off a tee before they even understand
what game they are playing.
Recent studies have also shown that our kids today have half the
unstructured play time kids did only a generation ago, because we are
running between school, dance, baseball, basketball, or other practice and
parents don’t feel as comfortable as they once did about letting little
Jimmy or Sharon walk down the street to play at a friend’s house more
than a block or two away. Families also eat dinner together a third less
than they used to.^11 These facts have led to the age of the soccer mom and
coach dad we live in today, and kids who rarely get out of the house
unless it is for some planned event, which is generally sports-related.
Another issue that has evolved from this shift in how we spend our
time is the fact that sports have always battled between two philosophies:
(1) It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game; and (2)
Winning isn’t everything — it is the only thing. Throw in with that the
dream of many parents that their kids will someday play in the big
leagues (even though less than 5 percent of our kids will go on to do so)
and this cultural shift has created some incredible new pressures on our
kids — pressures that, in the end, have many of our kids dropping out of
sports before they reach high school age.