The following is an editorial submitted by reader William Lalor.
Now that soccer season is coming to a close – wait! – Soccer isn’t over? What’s this? Winter soccer clinic? Spring soccer? Soccer birthdays?
My son is 6, and my daughter is 4. Maybe both of them are nascent soccer prodigies. Yes, this. I can see it …the beloved Kristine Lilly, on hand to name Allens Meadows after…My. Two. Kids, class of 2026 or so Wilton Soccer Heroes, fresh off of international FIFA glory. We will definitely need substantial stadium lighting for the occasion…Anyway, where was I?
Winter soccer.
But they are just 6 and 4, and they might be awful at soccer. That would be fine; they want to do swimming and basketball, anyway. And tennis, hockey, jujitsu, and bowling. And tae kwon do or art and, soon enough, I’m guessing, some Rainbow Loom clinics. Or, archery. Plus Cub Scouts and Brownies. (But dad, archery: You get to use a bow and arrow.)
Each month our calendar fills out like those projection screen maps in films like Outbreak. A few red dots here, some blips there, then some troubling crimson blobs, and soon enough the whole month is alarmingly consumed in horrifying purpley-blue and lost altogether, with Dustin Hoffman nowhere to be found. In fact, by the time “winter soccer clinic” got within a whisper of the Lalor household, Wolfgang Petersen was already writing off my December. It’s martial law!
But forget the monthly calendar virus. As any parental car service knows, if it’s not winter soccer clinic, it will be something else. We’re all careening around town, up early and down late. It’s a giant, endless child enrichment vortex, and that’s fine I suppose.
What bugs me is the idea of kids becoming sports specialists at the age of 6.
Make no mistake. I love seeing my kids work at something and excel. Plainly, I’d also love to see my kids take part in rigorous, all-season indoor/outdoor soccer and then dominate the part-timer chumps next fall, turn heads with bicycle kicks, juggling, etc.
Still, I get the feeling these early little doses of specialization aren’t an end, but the start of something that’s bad for kids. ESPN writer Gregg Easterbrook’s flawed but thought-provoking football book, The King of Sports, exposes among other things the machinery behind youth football in the U.S., exposing its impact from the NFL, through the endemically corrupt NCAA, into high school sports, and finally down to youth football. Year-round training is fast becoming a norm, even for kids who are far too young to be playing football year-round at the expense of other pursuits. It can certainly be profitable for some, but does it benefit kids?
Easterbrook shines his light on football rather than sports in general, but he makes a convincing case that young kids are better off trying new things than focusing on one sport or another, especially before they’re in junior high.
This isn’t meant as parenting advice. But I do think that focused attention on single sports to the exclusion of other pursuits is a trend worth a hard look now, lest it become another bit of conventional parenting wisdom that no one seems to agree with.
Bill Lalor is an attorney living in Wilton with his wife, Jennifer, and two children, Katelyn and Evan.