Are kids still doing it all? Rise of travel sports and scheduled kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not travel, but I can't believe the 6th school basketball team plays three games per week during the season. If you add practices, how does a 6th grader have the time or energy to do another activity (like music or math) and still get homework done? With all these activities, when do kids even have the time to get addicted to phones and video games?

My kids had to learn to plan ahead. Usually in middle school, kids know when tests are coming up, or large projects will be due. They get as much as possible done on off nights or weekends. Things like music lessons can be moved to another day or take a break until the season is over. If all else fails, they are up quite late once in awhile to finish homework but is not a regular thing.

They all still have plenty of time for electronics…car or bus rides, weekend afternoons if nothing is planned etc.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I don't get why so many parents are signing their youth kids up for travel. Are rec and local teams terrible from 2nd grade and on? Does every halfway decent kid have to join a travel team if they want to play?

As a parent heavily involved in our rec league and with 3 kids playing rec, the answer is yes. When everyone good leaves for travel, it's hard on the kids who legitimately care and want to play who stay in rec for whatever reason. You find a unicorn team where the players are really working and the coaching is good, but so often it's something parents seem to view as extra babysitting. They aren't fun to sit on the sidelines with because they aren't even there, they don't help out with much (leading to burnout for the few volunteers who do step up), and they don't care if their kids don't care and take the whole team down with a bad attitude. Joy.

This is true.

DD is "pretty good" at basketball. But we keep her in rec because of other activities (band & theater).

This is exactly the child who should be in rec basketball.
But for a kid that wants to play at a higher level, who plays year round, who lives and breathes the sport with a passion - no offense, but she doesn’t want to play with your daughter. She wants to play with other kids who feel the same about basketball.

Totally agree. But honestly, those kids are pretty rare. Instead, the kids who are average, get pulled into the travel world. And those kids would often be better served on rec. "Travel" used to mean elite. Now, it means whatever parent is willing to cut the check

And even though my daughter plays rec, she's probably better than 30-50% of the travel players we've seen. That's not to say that she should be playing travel; its that those other girls should be playing rec.

Or, some sort of level in between.

Rec is often a disaster and parents are willing to pay more to avoid it.

Right, but its a chicken and egg / Catch-22 thing.

IMO, probably 25-35% of kids on travel don't have the skills to be there.

If those kids played rec, rec would be less of a disaster. So they returned to rec, they'd get more playing time, have more fun, spend less money, travel less, and potentially even grow more as a player.

Essentially, rec would be less of a disaster, if "okay" kids didn't try to move up to travel.

BTW, my daughter, who I said is "pretty good" at basketball, is also on an B-level softball team. So I see both sides of it. She probably couldn't even do travel basketball bc of her softball committments. But I see it that sport too. You watch some C-level teams and think "half of these girls would be better served in rec", but the families won't do rec because the only ones left in rec and the true beginners.

Sorry but for us the parents ruined rec. It’s not the skills of the kids it’s the coaching and politics of the adults.

Totally agree. Rec was fine until 10ish and then the adults (ahem…dads) all seemed to go completely crazy. Moved to travel with paid non parent coaches. Far less drama.

I’m sure there’s no politics with travel 🙄

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I don't get why so many parents are signing their youth kids up for travel. Are rec and local teams terrible from 2nd grade and on? Does every halfway decent kid have to join a travel team if they want to play?

As a parent heavily involved in our rec league and with 3 kids playing rec, the answer is yes. When everyone good leaves for travel, it's hard on the kids who legitimately care and want to play who stay in rec for whatever reason. You find a unicorn team where the players are really working and the coaching is good, but so often it's something parents seem to view as extra babysitting. They aren't fun to sit on the sidelines with because they aren't even there, they don't help out with much (leading to burnout for the few volunteers who do step up), and they don't care if their kids don't care and take the whole team down with a bad attitude. Joy.

This is true.

DD is "pretty good" at basketball. But we keep her in rec because of other activities (band & theater).

This is exactly the child who should be in rec basketball.
But for a kid that wants to play at a higher level, who plays year round, who lives and breathes the sport with a passion - no offense, but she doesn’t want to play with your daughter. She wants to play with other kids who feel the same about basketball.

Totally agree. But honestly, those kids are pretty rare. Instead, the kids who are average, get pulled into the travel world. And those kids would often be better served on rec. "Travel" used to mean elite. Now, it means whatever parent is willing to cut the check

And even though my daughter plays rec, she's probably better than 30-50% of the travel players we've seen. That's not to say that she should be playing travel; its that those other girls should be playing rec.

Or, some sort of level in between.

Rec is often a disaster and parents are willing to pay more to avoid it.

Right, but its a chicken and egg / Catch-22 thing.

IMO, probably 25-35% of kids on travel don't have the skills to be there.

If those kids played rec, rec would be less of a disaster. So they returned to rec, they'd get more playing time, have more fun, spend less money, travel less, and potentially even grow more as a player.

Essentially, rec would be less of a disaster, if "okay" kids didn't try to move up to travel.

BTW, my daughter, who I said is "pretty good" at basketball, is also on an B-level softball team. So I see both sides of it. She probably couldn't even do travel basketball bc of her softball committments. But I see it that sport too. You watch some C-level teams and think "half of these girls would be better served in rec", but the families won't do rec because the only ones left in rec and the true beginners.

Sorry but for us the parents ruined rec. It’s not the skills of the kids it’s the coaching and politics of the adults.

Totally agree. Rec was fine until 10ish and then the adults (ahem…dads) all seemed to go completely crazy. Moved to travel with paid non parent coaches. Far less drama.

I’m sure there’s no politics with travel 🙄

But it’s easy to change teams. Way too much drama with the dads especially if it’s a neighborhood or school team. My kid plays on a club team with no one from our neighborhood or school, very easy to cut ties if we need to. We don’t need or want the BS of the rec team and their boards on power trips.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I don't get why so many parents are signing their youth kids up for travel. Are rec and local teams terrible from 2nd grade and on? Does every halfway decent kid have to join a travel team if they want to play?

As a parent heavily involved in our rec league and with 3 kids playing rec, the answer is yes. When everyone good leaves for travel, it's hard on the kids who legitimately care and want to play who stay in rec for whatever reason. You find a unicorn team where the players are really working and the coaching is good, but so often it's something parents seem to view as extra babysitting. They aren't fun to sit on the sidelines with because they aren't even there, they don't help out with much (leading to burnout for the few volunteers who do step up), and they don't care if their kids don't care and take the whole team down with a bad attitude. Joy.

This is true.

DD is "pretty good" at basketball. But we keep her in rec because of other activities (band & theater).

This is exactly the child who should be in rec basketball.
But for a kid that wants to play at a higher level, who plays year round, who lives and breathes the sport with a passion - no offense, but she doesn’t want to play with your daughter. She wants to play with other kids who feel the same about basketball.

Totally agree. But honestly, those kids are pretty rare. Instead, the kids who are average, get pulled into the travel world. And those kids would often be better served on rec. "Travel" used to mean elite. Now, it means whatever parent is willing to cut the check

And even though my daughter plays rec, she's probably better than 30-50% of the travel players we've seen. That's not to say that she should be playing travel; its that those other girls should be playing rec.

Or, some sort of level in between.

Rec is often a disaster and parents are willing to pay more to avoid it.

Right, but its a chicken and egg / Catch-22 thing.

IMO, probably 25-35% of kids on travel don't have the skills to be there.

If those kids played rec, rec would be less of a disaster. So they returned to rec, they'd get more playing time, have more fun, spend less money, travel less, and potentially even grow more as a player.

Essentially, rec would be less of a disaster, if "okay" kids didn't try to move up to travel.

BTW, my daughter, who I said is "pretty good" at basketball, is also on an B-level softball team. So I see both sides of it. She probably couldn't even do travel basketball bc of her softball committments. But I see it that sport too. You watch some C-level teams and think "half of these girls would be better served in rec", but the families won't do rec because the only ones left in rec and the true beginners.

You’re missing the quality of the instruction in all of this, which matters to kids who want to develop as a player. Rec varies a ton depending on where you live and the sport in question, but usually it’s coached by parents or other volunteers and that’s simply not what you are getting when you pay for club or travel. It’s night and day. In addition, those dedicated players aren’t improving in their sport by playing the best other players, and that matters and yes, even in the younger years. So sure, in your scenario you’d get your good players back at rec, but they won’t improve as much AS PLAYERS.

[Anonymous]

The lower teams of travel sports are basically rec but with better coaches and more opportunities to play and learn. Travel for young ones is pretty local so not that huge of a commitment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not travel, but I can't believe the 6th school basketball team plays three games per week during the season. If you add practices, how does a 6th grader have the time or energy to do another activity (like music or math) and still get homework done? With all these activities, when do kids even have the time to get addicted to phones and video games?

The kids I know who do it all (including my own, frankly) go to private schools where things like extra study periods and music are built into their school day so it’s really athletics that are the primary after school activity. Very hard in a public environment with a more regimented school day. I have kids in both public and private and this is a huge difference.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I don't get why so many parents are signing their youth kids up for travel. Are rec and local teams terrible from 2nd grade and on? Does every halfway decent kid have to join a travel team if they want to play?

As a parent heavily involved in our rec league and with 3 kids playing rec, the answer is yes. When everyone good leaves for travel, it's hard on the kids who legitimately care and want to play who stay in rec for whatever reason. You find a unicorn team where the players are really working and the coaching is good, but so often it's something parents seem to view as extra babysitting. They aren't fun to sit on the sidelines with because they aren't even there, they don't help out with much (leading to burnout for the few volunteers who do step up), and they don't care if their kids don't care and take the whole team down with a bad attitude. Joy.

This is true.

DD is "pretty good" at basketball. But we keep her in rec because of other activities (band & theater).

This is exactly the child who should be in rec basketball.
But for a kid that wants to play at a higher level, who plays year round, who lives and breathes the sport with a passion - no offense, but she doesn’t want to play with your daughter. She wants to play with other kids who feel the same about basketball.

Totally agree. But honestly, those kids are pretty rare. Instead, the kids who are average, get pulled into the travel world. And those kids would often be better served on rec. "Travel" used to mean elite. Now, it means whatever parent is willing to cut the check

And even though my daughter plays rec, she's probably better than 30-50% of the travel players we've seen. That's not to say that she should be playing travel; its that those other girls should be playing rec.

Or, some sort of level in between.

Rec is often a disaster and parents are willing to pay more to avoid it.

Right, but its a chicken and egg / Catch-22 thing.

IMO, probably 25-35% of kids on travel don't have the skills to be there.

If those kids played rec, rec would be less of a disaster. So they returned to rec, they'd get more playing time, have more fun, spend less money, travel less, and potentially even grow more as a player.

Essentially, rec would be less of a disaster, if "okay" kids didn't try to move up to travel.

BTW, my daughter, who I said is "pretty good" at basketball, is also on an B-level softball team. So I see both sides of it. She probably couldn't even do travel basketball bc of her softball committments. But I see it that sport too. You watch some C-level teams and think "half of these girls would be better served in rec", but the families won't do rec because the only ones left in rec and the true beginners.

Sorry but for us the parents ruined rec. It’s not the skills of the kids it’s the coaching and politics of the adults.

Totally agree. Rec was fine until 10ish and then the adults (ahem…dads) all seemed to go completely crazy. Moved to travel with paid non parent coaches. Far less drama.

I’m sure there’s no politics with travel 🙄

I’m not the PP, but as a parent with kids in both for many years, the politics of travel is nothing like the nastiness of the politics for rec. It doesn’t even compare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not travel, but I can't believe the 6th school basketball team plays three games per week during the season. If you add practices, how does a 6th grader have the time or energy to do another activity (like music or math) and still get homework done? With all these activities, when do kids even have the time to get addicted to phones and video games?

I don’t think you’re doing the math right. There are 168 hours in a week. Hopefully your child is getting 10 hours a night so that leaves you with 98 hours. If they spend 10 hours a day at school and aftercare (and hopefull they’re not) that leaves you with 48 hours (of course this doesn’t apply to summer, school breaks and random school holidays). Even if you did sports for 2 hours a day (and few kids are doing that much) that leaves you with 35 free hours a week.

Another way to look at that is a very active team practices no more than 4 times a week with practices being 1.5 hours throw in 2 games at approximately an hour you’re looking at total practice and game time at 8 hours of physical activity. Or less than 10% of total waking time.

If you have an active family (hiking 5ks etc) maybe you don’t need that much to get your kids in good shape but a lot of people do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not travel, but I can't believe the 6th school basketball team plays three games per week during the season. If you add practices, how does a 6th grader have the time or energy to do another activity (like music or math) and still get homework done? With all these activities, when do kids even have the time to get addicted to phones and video games?

Basically the kids these days don’t know how to be bored. They’re either in their structured activities or on screens.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not travel, but I can't believe the 6th school basketball team plays three games per week during the season. If you add practices, how does a 6th grader have the time or energy to do another activity (like music or math) and still get homework done? With all these activities, when do kids even have the time to get addicted to phones and video games?

I don’t think you’re doing the math right. There are 168 hours in a week. Hopefully your child is getting 10 hours a night so that leaves you with 98 hours. If they spend 10 hours a day at school and aftercare (and hopefull they’re not) that leaves you with 48 hours (of course this doesn’t apply to summer, school breaks and random school holidays). Even if you did sports for 2 hours a day (and few kids are doing that much) that leaves you with 35 free hours a week.

Another way to look at that is a very active team practices no more than 4 times a week with practices being 1.5 hours throw in 2 games at approximately an hour you’re looking at total practice and game time at 8 hours of physical activity. Or less than 10% of total waking time.

If you have an active family (hiking 5ks etc) maybe you don’t need that much to get your kids in good shape but a lot of people do.

The real time suck is the commute to/from practice 3-4x per week, especially if you’re playing on a competitive team rather than something more local.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not travel, but I can't believe the 6th school basketball team plays three games per week during the season. If you add practices, how does a 6th grader have the time or energy to do another activity (like music or math) and still get homework done? With all these activities, when do kids even have the time to get addicted to phones and video games?

Basically the kids these days don’t know how to be bored. They’re either in their structured activities or on screens.

Yes this is very true. Parents know it, but usually won't do much about or. Of course not all parents, but many do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not travel, but I can't believe the 6th school basketball team plays three games per week during the season. If you add practices, how does a 6th grader have the time or energy to do another activity (like music or math) and still get homework done? With all these activities, when do kids even have the time to get addicted to phones and video games?

Basically the kids these days don’t know how to be bored. They’re either in their structured activities or on screens.

Actually it’s the other way around screens changed childhood if they are not in an activity they are on screens even if you are one of the families that limits screen time all of the families around you don’t. Therefore, you have three choices one let your kid be on screens all day, 2 be the parent that takes one for the whole neighborhood and gets the kids together for activities that you run or three drop your kid off at an activity for an hour or two (I guess there is a forth option to allow your kid the wander around the house for hours). I’ve done option 2&3 and I can tell you 3 is a hell of a lot easier.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not travel, but I can't believe the 6th school basketball team plays three games per week during the season. If you add practices, how does a 6th grader have the time or energy to do another activity (like music or math) and still get homework done? With all these activities, when do kids even have the time to get addicted to phones and video games?

Basically the kids these days don’t know how to be bored. They’re either in their structured activities or on screens.

Yes this is very true. Parents know it, but usually won't do much about or. Of course not all parents, but many do.

The only people I know who complain that the "kids don't know how to be bored" are the ones who refuse to sign their kids up for activities. They don't want to pay for them, don't like to be on a schedule, want to travel on weekends, or it "just doesn't work for our family". Then they are mad that there aren't any other kids around for their "bored" kids to play with.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not travel, but I can't believe the 6th school basketball team plays three games per week during the season. If you add practices, how does a 6th grader have the time or energy to do another activity (like music or math) and still get homework done? With all these activities, when do kids even have the time to get addicted to phones and video games?

Basically the kids these days don’t know how to be bored. They’re either in their structured activities or on screens.

Actually it’s the other way around screens changed childhood if they are not in an activity they are on screens even if you are one of the families that limits screen time all of the families around you don’t. Therefore, you have three choices one let your kid be on screens all day, 2 be the parent that takes one for the whole neighborhood and gets the kids together for activities that you run or three drop your kid off at an activity for an hour or two (I guess there is a forth option to allow your kid the wander around the house for hours). I’ve done option 2&3 and I can tell you 3 is a hell of a lot easier.

Screens have changed childhood, and not for the better. But, it's the parents who allow it that I don't get. I'm not anti screen, but I wouldn't let that be so dominant in my kids life

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't get why so many parents are signing their youth kids up for travel. Are rec and local teams terrible from 2nd grade and on? Does every halfway decent kid have to join a travel team if they want to play?

We had our kid in rec soccer for years and it became painful. Like just a clown show of games and our kid wasn't learning anything. We moved to travel so she could get real coaching and not just volunteer parents who couldn't manage basic behaviors.