"How Too Keep the Stress of Sports Participation from Affecting Your Kids"

Athletics is a big part of growing up. Kids get to play in all sorts of sports from kick ball and dodge ball to tag, hopscotch, four corners and jump rope to more traditional and competitive sports like football, soccer, hockey and baseball. No matter the sport, there always remains a constant: fun.

However, in today’s society there is a problem. More and more emphasis is being put on athletics then there was ten or twenty years ago. This is due, in part, by big money contracts as well as the decline in jobs and income. (If you read the article that I recently wrote on steroids right here on Hubpages, Steroids---A-closer-Look, I go into this issue more in detail.) Families in poverty-stricken areas of the country rely on their children’s athletic prowess to bring them up from the ghetto. This way of thinking makes children spend more time worrying about their performance than education – athletics being more of a “quick fix” solution.

Coaches sometimes push student-athletes because winning games means they get to keep their jobs and feed their families. Sports bring more money into the school than any other curriculum. A good coach will try to maintain a proper balance between pressure and the challenge of the sport. People need challenge in order to push themselves to improve upon the tools they already possess. Parents and Coaches can push their kids too far though by setting unrealistic expectations. After all, if it was easy – everyone would be playing in the NFL or the NBA.

Unfortunately, winning is not within the grasp of every player. The only thing that the player has any real control over is how hard they play. Parents and coaches neglect this aspect of sports and fail to reward hard work.

Another stress factor is trying to juggle a busy athletic season with school. If you are a parent who likes that your child is active in a sport that is great unless their school work suffers. This can cause a tremendous amount of stress and both school and sports will both suffer in the end.

Being able to manage the stress of school and sports is not very easy to do. The best thing that one can do is to realize again that sports are not as important as schooling. You can go to college, get a degree and a great job. The likelihood of someone making it in professional sports is very slim and should not be an emphasis over education.

The participation in various sports by young people growing up can have very positive long term effect. Self-esteem and discipline can all benefit greatly. However, sports have to be taken for exactly what they are "an extra-curricular activity". If the child excels at sports, then support the important aspects of it such as fair play and hard work. Too many kids are lost in today's world because they placed or had placed on them a higher value towards sports than education.