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Message: [QUOTE="Forza Azzurri, post: 2133370, member: 1452"] It is awful - and it is getting worse. I am thrilled that my daughter is in high school and my son is almost there so that it is done with. But that doesn't mean it has to be awful for your kids. [B]Don't push.[/B] This one is really hard, especially with your first and especially if your first is a talented athlete. There are going to be plenty of other parents who do constantly look to get their kid on the next best thing (and they will be thrilled to tell all about it so you end up feeling that your kid will be left behind if you don't keep up). Combine that with the fact that there are plenty of coaches and trainers who are more than willing to sell you whatever dream you want to be sold so they can separate you from as much of your hard-earned money as possible. I have treated my son and daughter completely differently as youth athletes based upon what I learned from my daughter. My daughter was an extremely talented soccer player from a really young age. Lefty, righty, ball glued to her feet from the time she was five years old. Cannon for a shot; good field vision... I got caught up with her. Lots of type A - gotta be playing all the time for the best possible team-type parents on her first team. Got her onto a really top team at U-11 and then, thankfully, eased off...She was all soccer all the time from the age of five on up...she played lacrosse and hoops, but only if it didn't interfere with soccer - which it almost always did... The more time she spent on this team, the less she liked it - and the more she started liking hoops and lacrosse and the less she wanted soccer to interfere with them. At U-13, she was done. She dropped down to a lower-level club team where she could dedicate Winter to hoops and Spring to lacrosse. In high school, she dropped soccer altogether and now just plays hoops and lax. [B]Diversify. Have them try everything and then let them tell you what they want to do. [/B]With my son, it has been completely different. I had him try everything and I let him tell me what he wanted to do. He still plays everything. He plays club-everything with baseball being the most serious but he doesn't play for any club team that is serious enough that it givers him grief for playing other sports. Article after article, and I've probably read them all, says the worst possible thing you can with your kid is have them specialize. It increases the serious injury rate by 70%. Torn ACLs are an epidemic these days for girls. - not just at our high school but all over. Most of those kids specialize and have only been playing one sport for years. The hardest part of all this for me, with my son, has been finding teams that are reasonably competitive without being over the top. The bifurcation seems to be getting worse in that teams are either super-serious and super-committed or the play is rec-level. Finding that middle ground team that doesn't demand top priority all year long is what is getting harder and harder. Take the advice, or leave it. It is a sample size of two. Good Luck. Enjoy the journey. Your kids are only young once and coaching them and watching them play has been awesome for me. Hopefully, it turns out the same for you. [/QUOTE]

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