As I sat on the sideline of my son’s youth soccer tournament this past weekend I yelled some words of encouragement, but equally spit out corrections and criticism. A fellow parent said to me after the game, “You are intense!”

This is not the first time I have been told this while watching my son’s youth sports experiences. In fact, the consensus is that I am probably lumped into the category of “crazy mom” — and rightfully so.

As a former coach myself, I guess I felt like I could always offer him more — albeit by being the loudest one on the sideline. How did I lose my way? Why did it take me so long to stop and think about the impact this may have on my son?

As parents, we all want what is best for our children, and over 80% of us have our sons and daughters in some sort of youth sport. Our intentions are solid. We want them to learn the valuable life lessons that sports provide … hard work, discipline, dedication, perseverance and the concept of teamwork.

So why do well-meaning parents get caught up in the emotional roller coaster of their child’s sporting events?

1. Because we are invested:

We have spent our money on registration fees, equipment, tournaments and travel expenses — and we have spent our time — carting them to and from practices and games. This high price tag equals high pressure. When parents have spent a small fortune and sacrificed their time to boot, they want to feel the reward. We want the perceived notion of the value of our investment.

2. Pressure:

Like it or not, we have created a youth sports craze in our society. The social pressure to have your son or daughter play more, train more and to keep up, has caused even the best intentioned parents to make decisions based on this pressure, instead of making the decision that is best for their family.

3. Fear:

We are worried that if we don’t keep up, our child will get left behind. We start our kids earlier and we create “select” teams reserved for only the best. We also seem to make sports practices and games our children’s top priority once we enroll them. We all want our children to learn the value of commitment, but are we prioritizing sports over other things that are maybe more important at the time? We choose to miss birthday parties, family dinners and outings with friends — for sports. We rearrange our calendars and run ourselves ragged just to keep up. What are we afraid of that causes this? And what is the cost of that fear?

4. It’s enticing:

Sports are emotional, and emotional experiences imprint in our minds most acutely.

Most of us will never forget that in 1966, Al Bundy scored four touchdowns in a single game while playing for Polk High School, including the game-winning touchdown in the final seconds against his old nemesis, Bubba — winning and the dopamine benefits that come with it are life’s natural high. We want to give that feeling to our children because we have experienced that amazing feeling ourselves.

5. It’s entertaining:

We all love watching our children perform. We get a thrill when our son or daughter wins a race, makes a basket, scores a goal, or makes an amazing defensive play. If youth sports ended tomorrow, we need to ask ourselves who would be more upset — us or our children? If we are being honest, it is probably us. Our children would most likely return to a youth more like our own, where they would have much more time for “free play.” Our children would find the fun, but would we?

Benefits of sports

So how do we reap the known benefits of youth sports, recognize our motivations for encouraging participation, yet at the same time, begin to police ourselves and the lives of our children from a youth sports culture that we know can be unhealthy?

For starters, we must recognize the controllables and the uncontrollables. We can only control our own investment, our child’s commitment, and the emotions that tag along for the ride.

We can recognize that social pressure and the need to keep up exists and that missing a practice or not participating at the highest level when they are young will not hurt them in any way in the long run, and in turn, might actually help them.

We can do everything possible to make sure that our children are learning the valuable life lessons that sports offer, without sacrificing our finances, our family life and our sanity. Take it from someone who knows, that despite wanting what is best for my child, I have not been behaving that way, and instead have fallen into the many social traps that surround the sports culture.

In a perfect world, I would get rid of all travel teams and bring back the in-house teams for all sports — hence reducing my driving time, my child’s time in the car and my pocketbook expenses.

The youth athletic myth that you need to drive two hours to play a team in order to find competition is false. There is plenty of competition right in your backyard. I would drop my son off at practice and leave and then come pick him up and let the coach — coach.

I would limit competing and would encourage more games. Competition showcases talent, but games develop everyone — not just the gifted kids. Plus games are fun, and after a 7-hour school day and homework, don’t we want our kids to be able to be … well, kids?

This is not to undermine the value of practice and training, but there are ways to do that which are healthy for the development of our children and healthy for us as parents.

If we take away the huge investment of time and money, and eliminate the social pressure to keep up that surrounds youth sports, we just might chip away at this youth sports monster we’ve created and find that we have happier and more motivated children, and definitely happier parents.