Parents should let kids be kids
By Amy Donaldson
Deseret Morning News

     Shaun White loved soccer, but there was a moment when he learned it
wasn’t for him.
     "I showed up at the field late one time, and it was intense," he said. "I’m
playing on this lower, recreation level, just so I could have fun. Someone
else’s mom came over and yelled at me, ’You better get out there and you
better score!’ There is something about someone else’s mom yelling at
you."
     White said he did as he was told and shortly thereafter he quit. Instead of
traditional organized sports, he gravitated to nontraditional activities like
snowboarding and skateboarding. The 21-year-old, who won an Olympic
gold medal in snowboarding in 2006 and an X Games gold medal this
summer in skateboarding, said the decision changed his life and his
relationship with his parents.
     "Instead of my dad yelling at me from the sideline, we were out riding
together," he said. "(Snowboarding) really drew our family together."
The professional skateboarder who was in Salt Lake City this week to
compete in the AST Dew Tour said he believes a lot of young athletes turn
to nontraditional sports because they have more freedom.
     "Normally, there are no moms allowed in the parks," he laughed. "It’s brutal
when you have people always telling you what to do. ... My attraction to
skateboarding was that you didn’t have that. You could just ask your
friends, learn tricks from each other or just figure it out on your own."
That’s how all play begins.
     Most of us have those memories. Just some neighborhood kids in a field,
dividing into teams, making up games and having a good time. We learned
to negotiate, cooperate, to employ strategy and to have fun. We rode our
bikes everywhere, and on the way we invented tricks, we made up games,
we had races and we fed our imaginations.
Then adults got involved.
     At some point, our parents set up leagues, they instituted rules and
regulations and they stole some of our freedom. In order to develop at a
higher level, we had to forfeit some of what drew us to those games in the
first place.
     Organization isn’t always a bad thing, but it does cost us something. And in
this age of super development, accelerated leagues and club sports, I am
afraid that many of our children don’t know anything BUT organized sports.
And that, my fellow sports lovers, is a dangerous thing.
     Too much structure is as crippling as not enough. Organized sports teach
us many valuable lessons, but they can’t teach us everything. I think when
children always look to adults for instruction, direction and motivation, they
lack what we learned on those sandlots.
     We learned to improvise and to run faster because we didn’t want to let our
friends down. We learned that having fun was every bit as important as
winning and that we could find ways to do both.
     The lessons we learned from unstructured, random goofing off is easier to
feel than it is to describe, but I saw some of it this weekend during the Dew
Tour.
     The buzzer sounded, but that didn’t matter to BMX rider Morgan Lloyd,
who was competing in the preliminary round of the BMX Park competition
Saturday.
     He fell trying to land a breathtaking trick that thrilled the crowd. His time
was up, and he’d likely failed to qualify for the finals. But at the urging of
the crowd, he tried three more times before landing the trick and bringing
the crowd and his fellow competitors to their feet.
     "This is what BMX is about," exclaimed one of the announcers. "Not
awards, not points. It’s about having a good time on your bicycle."
In any other professional arena, he’d have been whistled for delay of
game, tagged with a celebration penalty or told to exit quietly so the
winners could square off.
     But much of action sports still belongs to the riders, which is why it still
feels a little unorganized, unofficial and always unpredictable.
It still feels like a bunch of neighborhood kids having a good time while
they challenge each other to do what they thought was impossible just last
week. Corporate sponsorships and financial success may eventually
change action sports. I’m not sure what the future holds for any individual
sport.
     But after this weekend, I am more certain of one thing: If we continue to
micromanage the lives of our children, that future won’t be as creative,
exciting or joyous.