A simple shift in perspective for sports parents can go a long way toward supporting young athletes today and into the future.

Perspective isn’t always a given when it comes to the most important aspects of our lives.  Our family, friends, health, and careers are all places where passions can get the best of us.  Parenting is right at the top of that list, and “sports parenting” in particular, can often a trigger our strongest emotional reactions.

We’ve all been at games where a fellow parent has expressed their strong – and vocal – assessment of the action on the field.  Commentary about which kids are playing, the officials calls, or even how a particular kid could make such a bad play.

As uncomfortable as it is to hear, those reactions don’t typically come from a bad place.  We all care about how our kids perform on the field.  It impacts their emotional wellbeing and status amongst their peer group.  But placing such emphasis on singular outcomes misses the point, leading only to anxiety and a narrowing view of the bigger picture..

To be certain, something primal stirs deep inside as we watch our kids run out onto the field.  We can’t help but live vicariously through their sports lives because we want them to achieve more than we did in sports.

Achieving more might mean playing high school sports, earning a college scholarship, or (dare I say it) playing professional sports one day.  Despite their promise, however, the reality of playing sports at an elite level is quite the long shot.

According to the NCAA, less than 6% of high school football players will go on to play at any level of college competition, and a mere .08% will ever be drafted into the NFL.

The odds for boys high school basketball players are even longer with less than 3% playing college ball and .03% playing in the NBA.

The director of my son’s little league program once began a parent meeting noting that the league had been in operation since the 1950’s and tens of thousands of kids had come through the program since its inception.  He asked if anyone knew how many of those kids ever made it to the big leagues or even the higher ranks of the minor leagues.  While the answer was just a handful, he jokingly concluded by saying he was certain “our kids would be the next.”  It got a good laugh but put our role as sports parents, as well as the ultimate purpose of youth sports, into a new perspective.

The fact of the matter is, our kids aren’t going pro.

Not in sports, anyway.  Which beckons a shift of focus away from future athletic prowess toward a greater opportunity – namely, using youth sports as the centerpiece to prepare kids for challenges outside the bright lights of the sports arena.

Youth sports can be viewed as a true microcosm of life, offering an incredibly rich backdrop from which to identify, teach and reinforce life lessons.  A simple change in perspective presents an endless array of teachable moments to be knocked down one by one.

A kid’s lack of playing time becomes a lesson on perseverance.  The bad call made by an official becomes a real-time example of overcoming adversity.  And that error on the field instills the work ethic to improve and do better the next time.

Those scenarios just scratch the surface of what’s available to parents – handling success and failure, setting goals, building confidence, rewarding effort; instilling determination, consistency, dedication, resiliency, humility, respect, teamwork, sportsmanship – you name it and you can find it out on your local ball field.

This shift in perspective offers an additional benefit as well – it all eliminates the stress and emotions of gameday.  Every play on the field, whether good or bad (or even ugly), becomes an opportunity to teach rather than a setback to a kid’s future.

The time young athletes have to play sports is finite.  For most, it will be over seemingly before it even begins.  By entrusting the play-by-play to the participants on the field, parents can better appreciate the joy kids have in playing and maximize their own enjoyment of this fleeting time.

And in doing so, take comfort in the knowledge that those experiences will prepare kids for their future endeavors, even if it happens to be outside of professional sports.