I’ve been sitting with this one for a while. It’s the kind of topic that comes up at school pickup, at the rink, in the parking lot after practice. Everyone has something to say about it, everyone has a version of the same story. And yet somehow, in the middle of all that talking, nothing really changes.

Youth sports has changed. Dramatically. And not entirely for the better.

If you’ve been following this blog, you know I’ve got four kids. The eldest are well into their school years, and my youngest is five. Which means I’m both looking back at how this has unfolded with my older ones, and staring straight down the barrel of it all over again. And I can already feel it starting.

I grew up playing basketball on Sunday mornings at the JCC. It was just what kids did. You showed up, you played, you went home. Nobody was tracking your stats or discussing your potential. It was casual in the best possible way. And I think about that a lot now, because that version of kids and sports has almost completely disappeared. Not just in basketball. In everything. Hockey, soccer, dance, gymnastics, you name it. The relaxed middle ground that most of us grew up in is just gone.

To be fair, elite competitive programs have always existed. Rep hockey, competitive dance, travel teams, kids who were clearly gifted and pursued their sport seriously. That was always there. What’s changed is how far that culture has expanded, until it has basically swallowed everything else. House league used to just be hockey. A rec dance class used to just be dance. Now there’s this pervasive, unspoken sense that those things are where you end up if you’re not serious, rather than perfectly wonderful ways for a child to move their body and have fun with friends. The middle has disappeared, and with it the idea that your kid can just do a sport or an activity. No stream, no level, no implication attached.

And in that vacuum, a whole social ecosystem has taken root that nobody really talks about openly. It’s “who you know.” Which coach has connections to the right rep team. Which private trainer gets kids noticed. Which dance studio has the director who actually matters. Which parent has the inside track on audition or tryout information that somehow never makes it to the public email list. It feels a little like trying to get your kid into a good school, except it starts at age five (or younger?!) and it involves skates or ballet shoes or a ball.

I’ve heard from so many parents who feel like they’re already behind simply because they didn’t know they were supposed to be playing this game. And the guilt that comes with that, am I holding my child back?, is real and it is heavy.

The thing is, in the circles I’m seeing this play out in, it’s not really about chasing some far-off dream. Nobody is banking on a scholarship. Nobody is expecting their nine-year-old to go pro. The pressure is much more immediate than that, and in some ways much harder to resist. It’s simply about not wanting your kid to be the one who’s behind. It’s the parent beside you who casually mentions their child has been doing private lessons twice a week since they were five. It’s the sense that everyone else already knows something you don’t. It’s keeping up, not with some elite ideal, but with the family right next to you doing exactly the same thing for exactly the same reason.

The financial numbers alone are staggering. Families are now spending an average of over $1,000 per year on their child’s primary sport or activity, and that’s the average. For families with kids in competitive travel or rep programs, that figure can climb to $7,000 or more (probably a lot more!) annually. Some researchers have compared it to taking on a second mortgage. And beyond the money, I also think about the logistical weight of it all. The sheer coordination of getting kids to practices and games multiple times a week, the early morning ice times, the siblings dragged along, the family dinners that don’t happen because everyone is in different directions. When you have more than one child in activities at this level, it stops feeling like a schedule and starts feeling like a second job.

I want to be clear about something though, because I don’t want this to read as a knock on the experience itself. Being part of a team is genuinely one of the greatest gifts you can give a child. Tournament weekends are some of the best memories our family has. The responsibility that comes with being part of a team, showing up for your teammates, doing your part, is so good for kids in ways that go far beyond the sport itself. And honestly, keeping them off screens and physically moving their bodies? That alone feels like a win most days. That stuff is real and it matters. The friendships formed on a team at that age can last a lifetime. I am not discounting any of it for a second.

What I’m questioning is the pressure that surrounds it all before kids are even old enough to know whether they love it.

I want to say clearly that I’m not writing this from the outside. We have hired private coaches. I have been that parent making the calls, asking around, trying to figure out who knows who. We participate in this world too, to a degree. I understand exactly why we all do it, because I have done it too. This isn’t judgment. It’s more of a collective exhale, a moment to step back and ask whether the culture we’ve all quietly agreed to is actually serving our kids, or just serving our anxiety.

I’m not going to pretend there’s a clean answer. The culture is what it is, and opting out entirely comes with its own social costs for families and kids. But there are some things worth holding onto. Your child is watching you. I wrote about this a while back in a post on consistency and modeling, and I keep coming back to it. If we are visibly stressed about their performance, if we’re analyzing every moment on the drive home, if our mood at dinner depends on how practice went, they feel all of that. Kids do better, and enjoy it more, when they feel that their parents’ love is completely untied from any scoreboard or recital result.

Enjoyment is not a nice-to-have. It is the whole point at this age. And you don’t have to do everything. If your child plays one sport one season and runs around outside the rest of the time, that is not falling behind. That is childhood.

I think what’s happening here is a reflection of something broader in our parenting culture. A kind of ambient anxiety that if we’re not doing more, we’re somehow failing our kids. It’s the same energy that has us fretting about enrichment activities before kindergarten, and now apparently deciding whether our six-year-old needs a private coach. We are a generation of parents who care deeply. That is genuinely beautiful. But care can tip into pressure without us ever noticing, and our kids are absorbing all of it.

The goal was always for them to love what they do. To learn teamwork and resilience. To figure out how to lose gracefully and win with humility. To move their bodies and feel strong. To have fun with their friends.

None of that requires a private coach at age six.