How to Know a Parent is Pushing Too Hard for a Child to Play Youth Sports
The majority of parents push their kids pretty hard to play youth sports. How do I know this? Youth sports is roughly a $17 billion industry. Nearly 20% of U.S. families spend more than $12,000 a year on youth sports, per child. As a result, youth sports is not just a game, it’s a high stakes game with financial consequences. Pushing hard is the name of the game.
So who am I to tell any parent that they shouldn’t push their kid not to waste their money. You will never here that come from me. If a parent is “investing” $12,000 a year for their child to play sports, then I expect that parent to manage that “investment” wisely.
Pushing Too Hard is a Bad Investment
As you may have noticed I put “invest” in quotes, and I did that for a reason. When you invest in something, the goal is to get a material return. By definition there are no guarantees either, as investments have risk. Therefore, any good investor must be a good steward of their investment if they want to keep their odds of getting a material return in their favor.
Now let’s circle back to the “investment” parents make in their children playing sports. Pushing your child to the point where playing sports isn’t fun is a terrible way to manage your “investment”. It’s a fact that 70% of kids who participate in youth sports quit by the time their 13 years old. Research shows the overarching reason for this is that by age 13 kids burn out because sports are no longer fun.
With this in mind, it’s easy to know when a parent goes too far pushing a child to play youth sports. When a child is on the verge of not having fun playing sports any longer, the parent has gone too far. In addition, it’s likely that the parent isn’t having fun either. Unquestionably, this sad combination will sabotage that $12,000 per year “investment” for sure.