Your child’s travel sport should never be the center of…

“Your child’s travel sport should never be the center of your family’s universe. Period.

Yes, a child needs to be physically active, but they also need to be taught healthy boundaries.”

@johndelony from the Dr. John Delany show. I’d hunt this episode down and listen to this part; it’s a great discussion about the intensity of travel sports and what boundaries should look like.

I have two posts on kids sports; this is the first another coming soon-ish.

Just to lay it out; here’s my experience with sports:

I didn’t play much youth sports as a kid. I tried out multiple times for volleyball and basketball in high school and never made it because the coach said “what the hell am I going to do with a 6’ 2” kid that can’t jump?” He was right. Him AND Wesley Snipes. I made the swim team because they took everyone and enjoyed it but realized pretty quickly that I was too late in the game to do anything with swimming. Then I joined the Army and developed a long habit of running which I still do to this day.

My kids are *way* more focused and talented than I ever was. They took to basketball early and we’ve been involved in various rec, travel, and school ball teams. We enjoy it. For the most part we’re all together, we’ve developed friendships with other parents and feel like our kids have had realistic perspectives about they can get out of playing sports and understanding that there are boundaries to what we can do.

I’ve definitely seen the tension online between church and youth sports. Like most things I don’t think it’s 100% binary in that ALL youth sports are a problem for ALL families ALL the time.

However, it can be. Like Dr. John says, it ranks right behind social media as being a potential problem for families as kids head into their teenage years. It’ll soak up a lot of time and money and it’ll literally destroy some kids bodies.

It’s a hard line to tow for parents. How do we develop the spiritual component of our children AND also the athletic component with having to sacrifice one or the other?