Dangerous dreams

Talented singers in the 17th and 18th centuries probably had it even worse. Back then, male singers with a certain type of voice enjoyed fame, and their families, fortune. It came with a price, though: castration before puberty. Sadly, not all castrati made it to the highest ranks, just as today, not all promising young athletes go on to have professional careers.

Still, it's hard in a world where athletes become not only super-famous, but extraordinarily wealthy. We dream of that for our own kids, especially if they show some talent. This dream can be dangerous. Having outsized expectations and applying too much pressure are two big mistakes parents can make. Most kids won't grow up to be professional athletes. Most won't even earn college sports scholarships.

The San Jose Mercury News reported that there are about 41 million kids who play organized sports. A fraction of those--6.9 million--are varsity high school athletes. Compare that to the 360,000 student-athletes who play in one of the three divisions of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Among those elite athletes, 126,000 earn a share of the $1 billion in scholarships available.

And while $1 billion sounds like a lot of money, it works out to less than $8,000 per athlete, which wouldn't cover even half a year of tuition at a private college. By comparison, there is $22 billion available in academic scholarships, making the brain the body part most likely to earn a kid a college education.

So what's a parent to do? Experts say the real opportunity for kids in sports is philosophical. "Children should be taught to embrace the journey, not the destination," says Dave Czesniuk of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society. "Some of the biggest mistakes I've seen involve parents and coaches focusing too much on trophies, ribbons, and scholarships.

The sad thing is, if they focused more on the fun and the skill-development aspects of the sport and let go of the pressure to win, then [the kids] are much more likely to do that." As baseball great Cal Ripken, Jr., wrote in his book Parenting Young Athletes the Ripken Way, "A very small percentage of kids who participate in youth sports will ever go on to play their sport professionally, but they can all love sports their entire lives."

How can parents make this happen? Ripken has a number of recommendations:

Parents can tell their kid is old enough to be serious about a sport if he or she is playing for love of the game, is physically capable of performing the skills it requires, and is well supported by parents and coaches, says Czesniuk.

How can you tell if the coach is good? 

"Listen to [your child's] feedback regarding their sport," Czesniuk says. "If it is energetic and full of positive self-talk, then they are probably being well coached. If they are constantly down on themselves and feeling hopeless about the sport, their coach may not be mixing the right amounts of positive and critical feedback." In any case, Czesniuk says, it's more important for your kid to be involved in athletics than it is to actually be athletic. The lifelong benefits come from participating.