Letting Kids Be Kids

We are pushing our youngsters to be professional athletes at incredibly young rates.

I've seen it. You've seen it. Really young kids being pushed into focusing on one sport. Then they are encouraged, or demanded, to give it their all and train to become the best they can be at that one particular sport for . . . well, we're not sure.

The reality is many parents push their kiddos so hard, so young to hopefully give them a shot to go pro . . . or get a college scholarship . . . or to start as a high schooler. It's done in the name of help the kid reach their potential. But many times, it seems as if their potential is, deep down inside, the least of the parents' worries.

Travel teams are becoming more and more popular. I'm sure they were around when I was young. But I don't remember them. Travel teams go beyond the dedication of a rec league or a Little League team. Kids on travel teams are normally from towns all around an area. So they pick a central location to come to practice at for much of the week, then spend their weekends traveling around the state, or country, with their team playing in all sorts of tournaments.

I heard Tom Grieve on a radio show yesterday talk about this. Tom would know, better than just about any parent out there. Tom, himself, was a major league baseball player. Then he was General Manager of the Texas Rangers for over a decade. Now he's been a broadcaster for almost two decades. His boys have both played baseball at high levels, one at the Major League level. In other words, the guy knows what he's talking about.

Grieve said he believes getting your child onto a travel team as a youngster has no bearing upon their talent level as a twenty or twenty-one year old. Sure, things like travel teams, which go beyond the scope of rec league or Little League-type teams, give the kids more opportunities to play and get better. And there are times and places for these things, he said. But, as Grieve noted, eight year-old kids is not the time for it.

The fact is that sometimes things like travel teams can do more damage than harm. Youngsters on these teams live and breath baseball. Nothing wrong with good ol' baseball. But you start doing that too young to a kid and burnout is almost inevitable.

No doubt I have never had a kid. So I do not know what it is like to raise one. But it seems to me that we need to encourage our kids to be the best they can be. And we should do what we can to help them harness and improve their talents.

But we also need to let them be who they are . . . kids.