This month our high school’s PTA book club is reading Revolution in the Bleachers by Regan McMahon. The cover’s tag line is “How Parents Can Take Back Family Life in a World Gone Crazy Over Youth Sports”. We’ve all been there, done that and got the t-shirts from 15 different teams. Some try explain away the phenomenon as parents wanting their kids to get a scholarship to college. But NCAA reports that fewer than 1% of all high school athletes get college scholarships. Is all that’s necessary then to send the parents to the NCAA website? There’s more to it than paying for college.

Sports are much more than simply opportunities for kids to have fun with other kids as in the past. Forty years ago kids walked to a vacant lot found some abandoned cardboard for bases, divided into teams and played a game of baseball lasting all afternoon with neighborhood kids dropping in and out throughout the game. I remember going on bike rides with no particular destination in mind exploring new places. I’m quick to admit my kids (aged 26, 24, 21) didn’t have time to do much of that kind of thing. They were busy with sports, art, music and scouts..oh yes and school work and school activities.

Upon reflection, I would say publicly that I wanted them to have a chance to try all these different things, but really I did it because I didn’t like the alternative. In a world with 90% of the kids scheduled to the hilt who would be left to go on a bike ride with my kid or where would he find enough kids to play baseball if there even were a vacant lot not already reserved for little league. Maybe my problem is I really believed “idle hands are the hands of the devil”. In our town the devil was “hanging out on Foothill Blvd”. Think of the comfort I had knowing every scheduled activity had adult supervision, rules for safety and lots of parents watching–what a relief!

But if its true that 70% of all kids quit sports by 13, we now have a neighborhood full of 13 year olds who have all sorts of idle time and no experience with filling it! [The mean age of pedestrians on Foothill Blvd. is  13.] They may know how to throw a split-finger fast ball or score on a free kick, but they have no idea what they want to do for three hours on a quiet Saturday afternoon.

The lesson here is so obvious. Encourage your kids to explore interests outside of organized activities. The easiest way to encourage them is for you to enjoy hobbies yourself. If they like to be outside teach them about trails in the area and show them how they explore them safely. Loan them a camera and let them spend the afternoon taking photos of whatever they want. When my kids were small for a few years we spent an hour every Sunday night coloring.Twenty years later on family vacations, my kids still expect me to pack the crayons and coloring books.
I realize I’ve just added another “duty” to your already long list as parents. Teach your kids to enjoy and be comfortable with Idle Time…it should be the best of times for the rest of their lives. Step one is to create some idle time.