Why Kids Are Becoming Burned Out From Athletics and The Reasons It is Happening
Playing little league baseball or joining your first soccer team when you were 9 years old used to be fun, beginner level experiences for kids to be exposed to the fun of learning how to play a particular sport. You used to join a rec league for a season and then if you wished, could try another sport the following season. Youth sports have changed quite a bit in the past 20-30 years and now children are beginning to play organized team sports as young as 3 or 4 years old and picking a sport to specialize in and play year round by the ages of only 10 with special private coaching and using the best pitching machines and batting cages during the winter, for example. The level of intensity for youth sports is the same as it was for high school and even some college athletes 25 years ago and this is leading to a host of new problems.
One of the biggest changes is the age at which children are now signed up for sports. Not long ago, the youngest age usually, was around seven or eight years old to try soccer and ten or eleven years old to start basketball. Now it is sometimes still in diapers for soccer and kindergarten for basketball. Most of the kids at these young ages don’t have neither the physical coordination nor the mental capacity to be able to get through an hour long sports practice. Because of this, kids give up on a sport very young because it was too dificult for them.
Children are also being told that they have to specialize and focus on one sport by the time they are 10 years old to be able to get an athletic scholarship for college. This has increased stress related injuries in much younger kids as a result of overuse on their growing bodies. The overuse on the kids physically and mentally has caused a whole generation of youth to completely burn out by the time they are teenagers which is a real shame.
This increased intensity of athletics at a younger age is also seen by the coaches and the parents too. There have been several incidents when parents become unruly at their children’s games or competitions that they cause problems with their inappropriate behaviors and must be told to leave. Because of this, the majority of schools and youth leagues now require parents to sign a contract for acting in a well mannered way. Coaching has also become much more intense for kids. In the past a parent would volunteer to coach and that would be it. Now parents are hiring private coaches and personal trainers to have their kid to be the best athlete ever. The Financial investment parents put into their children’s athletic endeavors is huge.
Perhaps, people will realize that kids need to be kids and don’t need the physical or mental stress that is being placed upon them athletically by their coaches and parents.
