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Jillian's avatar

Thank you for this! I’ve avoided organized sports for our family (my kids are 10, 7, 3, & 1) because of exactly what you describe. It’s so sad to me how many families lay down their lives to the sports schedule. No family dinners, missing church, parents tag teaming all week with no time for each other.

My kids know the basics to a few sports thanks to the neighbor kids’ sacrifice to youth sports. They play games with the neighbor kids (when the neighbor kids aren’t at practices or games) either in our combined yards or the empty lot. No adults, conflicts managed internally by kids, little siblings watching on the sidelines and everyone goes home for dinner and start back up again after dinner.

I’ve had a little guilt that I was selfishly keeping them out of youth sports just because I don’t want to deal with the schedule and the crazy parents. I’ll just let that guilt go.

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BuffaloNYgal's avatar

I can’t agree with this more. By age 7, some sports, like Hockey, are too late to get into- how is this possible? Parents have lost all sense of higher purpose and instead focus on worshipping children’s sports on Sundays. What’s worse, organized sports have made my 9 year old hate sports. Too much pressure and too many expectations. He likes golf much better as well!

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