re: How parents are ruining youth sports

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Sports don't teach these things, coaches do. Having a shitty coach won't teach you any of these things

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Sure it can. It can teach you that you still work hard, persevere, and do your best...even when you boss is an a-hole.

Parents can use what ever method they choose to help their kid develop into a productive citizen. Sports are just another tool.

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The children who learn teamwork, practice, achieving goals, and using failure as motivation.

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did you just say they learn "practice?" What does that even mean?

Children who spend 5 days a week practicing for a particular sport and know how to do nothing else benefit by learning "practice?"

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Dad wants to find another sport that the kid could possibly earn a scholly

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Seen this many times. I never pushed sports on my kid. I pushed academics. You can get a scholarship for grades just as much as sports.

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I am 48 years old, I had to have a grandpa arrested when I was umpiring a t ball game when I was 15.

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You should have been arrested for being a shitty umpire.

A few years back I was umpiring in one game and there was a game going on right next to us and I hear some shouting going on and there's a kid in cather's gear chasing down an umpire, chased him into the concession stand and was threatening him and there's dad right behind him cheering on this 16 year old kid who's threatening to beat up an umpire.

I of course, told the father and son that they needed to leave, the father starts in on this and that and they aren't leaving until "they get a piece of that lousy umpire" After some negotiating the father decided that leaving standing rather than lying in the back of an ambulance was probably a better choice and gathered up his equally stupid family and left.

Excellent parenting skills there...

What happened to the “special thread@

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I agree with the premise. But sports does teach them about hard work, perseverance, and hustle. How to handle success and failure. The importance of working as a team. All things that will benefit them as adults.

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Yes, those things can be learned playing sports. But let's not conflate playing sports to a child's life being consumed by the playing of one sport to the detriment of that child's development in other areas.

I can tell you in Monroe, the rich parents kids all play baseball and those parents are horrible parents and will ruin their kids. For one, they dump so much money into their kids to play travel ball all year around which is just too much baseball. Two, a lot of them get drunk at their kids games and start yelling at their kids in league ball or travel ball games about how much they suck and always bringing up the negative things they do.

It drives me crazy because if they knew anything about baseball they’d understand that it’s impossible to be perfect in baseball and that mistakes happen. Gotta teach their kids how to get through adversity of having slumps and other things because it happens instead of yelling at them about how much they suck when they hit a groundout or something.

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I use this approach as well.

It got so bad two years ago about one particular mom and dad really wanting their boy to play first base that I eventually just said "if your son plays first he will get his teeth knocked out, are you ok with that?" the Dad said hell yeah.

The boy was crying after the first round of infield, scared to death. I felt terrible for doing that to him, but damn I had had enough.

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The damn shame of it is that EVERY time it's some kid who's father puts ZERO effort into teaching their kid anything about sports. I'm there to teach your child how to play baseball, not to teach them how to catch. They should know that by age 11.

It aggravates the shite out of me that in a town of about 5500 people the same 6 fathers are in charge of every fricking youth group. Boy Scouts (not me any more though I'm done with them) baseball, youth football, soccer, you name it. Not to mention of course, I'm also on the school board, the city council, blah here's an idea if you don't like the way I do things, fricking volunteer once in awhile. Much as I enjoy working with kids, that doesn't mean I want to be the one doing EVERYTHING I do it because I want the kids to HAVE everything.

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I just came in here to remind the OT to look for the bat signal tonight... we are mounting up, and we are riding


If you have to ask what I’m talking about, then you aren’t invited, and you WILL miss out

I love (ex) teachers

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Let's ride

In response to OP: hbo documentary Trophy Kids is a good watch showing delusional parents of kids who play sports.