Selecting A Sport, Part 5

Think About Physical Health

Each year over 4 million kids visit emergency rooms as a result of sports injuries—a fourfold increase since 1995! As kids’ sports have hit “the fast lane” with longer seasons, more sports, harder training, young bodies have suffered.

Children’s hearts cause only minor concern since they can withstand nearly any test of endurance. But the overuse of joints (e.g., shoulders and knees) can cause serious damage because the bones of pre-teen kids are still growing. The problem with overuse injuries is that some are hard to detect: no blood, no bruises, no broken bones. Even x-rays or MRI’s may not reveal anything. As a result, parents have to depend on their child’s self-report. “But what if my child is faking it?” Even if he is, he may be telling you something important—for some reason he doesn’t want to compete.

In former days, children often played sports without adults present. If a child hurt his arm throwing a baseball, he probably went home and rested it. But now he has multiple coaches and his parents to please. He hears them say foolish things like: “You just need to learn how to play through the pain.”

Some sports are more likely to cause injuries. A boy who played high school football in 2006 in South Dakota was seven times more likely to receive a season-ending injury than a boy playing basketball! In a recent season, the University of Georgia lost 19 football players to season-ending injuries.

A chief concern in football is the potential for concussions. One survey found that 61% of NFL players had experienced at least one concussion and one-fourth of them had had three or more. Those who had concussions reported increased problems with memory, concentration, speech impediments, and headaches. Another study reported that Alzheimer's appeared far more often among retired NFL players than the national average—19 times the rate for men ages 30 through 49!

Fortunately, football officials are listening to these statistics. High school referees now commonly remove players who show any sign of a concussion, not just when an athlete loses consciousness. If trainers even suspect a concussion, the player may not return to the game. Unfortunately, many high schools don’t have a doctor or athletic trainer present to evaluate athletes. Some schools claim they can’t afford a trainer. But one expert believes “that means you can't afford to have a program. The presence of a certified athletic trainer makes your program safer by every measure, and if you can't afford to make the program safe, then you should be closing it up.”

Sports injuries can be avoided if parents understand how a particular sport stresses children’s bodies. For example:

• Pre-teen runners should run no more than 3 miles a day because the growth plates at the end of bones are vulnerable to injury.
• Soccer and basketball players may need extra support for their ankles with all their stopping, starting and cutting.
• Baseball pitchers, especially in the pre-teen years, should have their innings strictly limited. I know a father who keeps a pitch count for his son and won't let him pitch when he reaches the limit.
• Some medical experts believe that young female runners who over train are more vulnerable to injury than boys because their bodies mature differently.
• Don’t let your young child specialize. She should play a variety of sports because each sport will stress different body parts.

Finally, Dr. Stuart Brown, who directs the National Institute for Play, believes that risk is an important part of children’s play: “I don’t want to foster broken bones and concussions. But an inherent part of being playful is taking risk. What you don’t want to do is have the risks be excessive.” He is concerned about parents who hover over their kids, thus limiting their freedom to explore, to risk. He observes that children’s playgrounds demonstrate this over-concern: “There are no teeter totters and most of the swings don’t really go very high, and the monkey bars can only be three feet high. You know, it’s reasonable to have safe playgrounds, but it’s also reasonable to have challenging playgrounds.” When we are overly protective of our kids, we may  be “keeping their bodies safe while we are endangering their souls.”

Selecting A Sport, Part 4

WHICH SPORT? 

The specific choice of a sport can be difficult because kids have a rainbow of choices. Some issues to consider:

Think About a Child’s Need for Success

Before you decide whether to sign your child up for baseball or basketball, remember what is primary: young children need to succeed. Sports psychologist, William Beausay explains:

All children need a series of happy, victorious experiences. The normal defeats will come in the routine give-and-take of their own play. But they must learn to succeed before they can accept defeat. After thirteen, they then must be defeated to instigate further growth.

Success is important for a young child because he can’t reason that if he fails, he will be good at some other sport or other activity.

A child’s success will be greater in a sport that fits his talents. As a child athlete, our son Andrew had the endurance of a South Dakota winter—even his brothers were impressed with his stamina on bike rides. Soccer was a perfect fit for him.

I recently saw an e-mail address that included the words: raisingswimmers. Is someone forcing an identity on the whole family? Would a child be allowed to pursue golf or soccer? One psychologist has written that girls who are allowed to pursue “their true interests are two steps ahead of the game. Teens who believe their parents have hopes for them that are in line with their actual talents and passions—feel most equipped” for the future.

Think About Exercise

Medical experts report an alarming increase in heart problems for the young—a problem lessened by vigorous exercise. If your child is interested in a sport like bowling, you might encourage her to swim or bike also. Since the benefits of exercise are temporary, my wife and I wanted to establish the habit of exercise in our kids. Thus, our routines included physical activity—vacations included hiking and swimming; we biked to restaurants; we kicked a soccer ball or threw a Frisbee while dinner was being prepared; we walked our cocker spaniel--whose idea of fetching a stick was to run away from us and see if we could catch him!

Parents, turn in your chauffeur license and let your child bike or walk herself to school, to ball practice, to a friend’s house. (The media’s fixation on the rare child abduction has led many parents to be overly protective of their children. Your child has a 100 times greater chance of dying in an auto accident than being abducted!)

    

Selecting A Sport, Part 3

Busy Kids

I rush in the front door from work and find my son enjoying a cookie and a glass of milk. I pull up a chair and announce: “Hey, I don’t have much time—I’ve got to leave for a church meeting in 5 minutes. But let’s talk. You tell me all about your hopes and dreams and problems and I’ll share with you some wisdom to help you grow up to be a man of integrity. But talk fast—we only have four minutes left.” Ridiculous? Obviously. Kids desperately need to bond with their parents, but it won’t happen in five minute bursts or while sitting on the sidelines of their athletic contests. It can happen, though, at mealtime or bedtime, on family vacations, while working together on a household project. When our boys were young, we tucked them in bed with the invitation to “talk-about-the-day”. Talking about the highlights of the day was an unhurried, satisfying way to end our days and helped us connect in significant ways. 

Mary, the mother of Jesus, was an ordinary young woman with an extraordinary faith. What was the source of that faith? The Bible tells us that she pondered what was happening to her and treasured all these things in her heart. But what child today has time to ponder anything?! A recent cartoon showed two young girls clutching personal planners while they waited for the  school bus. One of the girls suggested: "Okay, I’ll move ballet back an hour, reschedule gymnastics, and cancel piano ... you shift your violin lesson to Thursday and skip piano ... that gives us from 3:15-3:45 on Wednesday the 16^th to play.” We laugh, but what has happened to childhood? How have even kids become such time paupers? All children need time to play, to daydream, to draw a picture, to read a book, to pray. The only way to give this to your child is to limit his activities. Otherwise he may come to look and act like a tired businessman.

Can families limit a child to one sport per athletic season? Some worry that a child’s talent may go untapped: “My son is already playing soccer but I better sign him up for golf lessons, too. Who knows, he may be the next Tiger Woods!” But would it have been a tragedy if Tiger Woods’ parents had missed his golf talent? John Rosemond commented on that possibility: “Maybe Tiger would have grown up to become a virologist, and maybe he would have discovered a cure for [a major disease].” We need parents who have a larger vision for their child than the next championship trophy.

Children's True Needs

Family vacations at Lake Okoboji were the highpoint of my childhood summers. We swam and fished; played ping pong and pinball; ate gobs of sweet corn and peaches; and even competed in a talent show! My baseball coach didn’t like it, but he understood-family vacations came first. But during the last two decades of the 20^th century, family vacations declined by nearly 30%. And one of the main deterrents? Children’s sports.

When I was in high school I played on a city league baseball team and an all-star team. I played a combined total of 30-35 games each summer. But a high school player today will play two or three times that many. The benefits? Maybe kids become better ball players. But at what cost? One study compared the SAT scores of two groups of high school athletes. One group’s extracurricular activities were sports only. The other participated in a diversity of activities. The SAT scores were lower for kids involved in sports only. A child who narrowly focuses on sports may be weakened in other ways.

Our children have important skills to acquire—they must learn how to care for others, to connect with God, to manage money, to think critically. To help our kids meet these needs, we made sure they were involved in a broad mix of activities: household chores, church camp, mission trips, family gatherings, gardening (at home and with grandpa), growing and selling produce, helping neighbors, and more.

Psychologist John Rosemond has reported that when he speaks to parent groups, he asks them to raise a hand if they did chores as a child. Almost all of them raise a hand. But when he asks them to raise a hand if they require their kids to do regular chores, only a few raise a hand. Chores help train a child for the future. As an adult he will need to know how to wash clothes, clean a bathroom, fix a meal, care for a lawn, budget money, etc. When our boys complained about household chores—“Why do we have to weed the garden? Our friends aren’t their parents’ slaves!”—we would try to calmly explain: “Family life is a joint effort. If you don’t help out then some other member of this family will be unfairly burdened.” Parents, if you don’t treat your child like a privileged house guest, your future son- or daughter-in-law will shower you with praise!

Selecting A Sport

Part 1

When I was a boy, I had no opportunity to participate in organized sports until I reached the age of nine. Today, many children begin at the age of three or four—and some even younger! Is that wise? When should kids begin organized sports?  

At one exhausted point when our three boys were playing both spring and fall soccer, I estimated that their yearly commitments to games and practices totaled more than 100! And they were also playing other sports. William Doherty asks: “How did children’s sports come to consume so much of family life?”

Before you register your child for any organized sports, consider the larger picture: How will this effect the whole family? Sports choices should consider the needs of non-participating siblings. How will a brother feel if he is either dragged along or forced to stay with relatives while his sister travels 10-15 weekends a year to play soccer? No child should be required to do that year after year.

Furthermore, Christian psychologist John Rosemond believes that “no other relationship or enterprise of any sort should come before [the parents] relationship with each other.” In many homes, couples pour all of their energy into their kids, leaving each other the dregs. Is it any wonder that second highest divorce rate is found in the years immediately after children leave the nest? Cathy and I maintained a weekly date night, we occasionally vacationed without our kids, and we didn’t let their athletic schedule trump all other commitments. Did we miss some of their contests? Of course. But we were committed to putting God and each other ahead of our boys’ athletic commitments.

"Happy Days"

Over the holidays, the young men that I coached for seven years on a club soccer team—our youngest son included—organized a reunion. Cathy and I hadn’t seen most of them for the past 15 years and for more than two hours we reminisced and laughed about one of the more positive experiences in their growing up years.

Their favorite memory was a championship victory over their perennial nemesis—whom they had never defeated. They won that overtime game on a long throw-in that was headed in the goal by a boy who had just entered the game. We remembered the tears of the losers--they were inexperienced losers! One of their parents told me after the game that he thought the loss was good for that team because of their inflating ego.

But there were painful memories also. They remembered the tournament they were swindled out of a spot in a championship game by a coach who secretly lobbied tournament officials to bend the rules in his team’s favor. And one of the young men agonized over being tossed out of a game for leveling a referee he had not seen because he was chasing a high kick. The referee thought he intentionally bowled him over.

Another young man remembered joining our team after playing for a ragtag team in a nearby city. His former team seldom won and each boy on that team had a lone jersey for a uniform. He was overjoyed when he came to his first tournament with us and received two full uniforms plus warm-ups. He thought he had arrived in the big leagues!

But many of the memories had little to do with soccer and a lot to do with relationships. They remembered staying at a mountain cabin during one tournament. The cabin sat by a raging creek that one of the boys fell in and another one yanked him out after he was sucked under. Had he saved him from drowning? We will never know. And there were other less dramatic memories:

• They remembered—and sang!—a popular song that they played again and again during pre-game warm-ups.
• They laughed at the memory of an agitated goalkeeper for another team who was dubbed “psycho goalie”.
• I recalled a boy throwing up in an elevator after boasting about how much pizza he could eat!
• Several remembered one boy sliding through a muddy puddle at the end of the game, just for the fun sliding through a muddy puddle—and then being denied access to his car until he stripped down.

When sports are dominated by news about drugs, domestic violence, greed, and immorality, it is good to remember that sports can be a source of great joy for many children.

Weathering Life’s Storms

The past two blogs I have been writing about the weather—the weather in a child’s life. Weatherman Jesus has warned us that storms are on the way. These are not gentle April showers, but downpours that have the potential to capsize a life: The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against the house, and it fell with a great crash.

The child I described was one who is a talented basketball player but whose coach thinks otherwise. His talent has been affirmed by many others, just not his coach. The temptation for the child and the parent (the two are usually in sync!) is to complain about the injustice, railing against the “brain-dead” coach! Jesus announced that the only way this boy won’t be blown down by this test is to hear these words of mine and put them into practice. This young man needs to hear and act on God’s truth.

But what truth does he need to incorporate into his life? In the previous post he was challenged by James to view these storms as a test from God: count it pure joy whenever you face trials! God wants to build character in this son so that he becomes mature and complete. This young man needs to know that trials are one of God’s primary ways in shaping his life for good.

But there are other Scriptures that can help this young man persevere through his trial. For an example:

• The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong. (Ecclesiastes 9:11). Knowing and being reminded that we live in a world where injustice happens frequently, may help him hold on. He is not suffering alone.
• Now that you have a sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart. (1 Pet.1:22f) One of the challenges for this son will be to love his teammates wholeheartedly--even the ones playing ahead of him! Can he be genuinely enthused about their successes? Is it possible that these boys need affirmation more than he does?
• Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:31) Though it may be difficult for a teenager to grasp this, he has the opportunity to begin learning that there are more important things than being on the first team of his basketball team.