Publisher's Synopsis
Sports can be the best part of growing up: for health, to make friends, to learn teamwork, to learn about success and failure, to learn perserverance needed to succeed. But sports can be very expensive, they can lead to injury, obsession with winning, over-competitiveness, or giving up when one isn't the best right away.
Barnes uses research and statistics to help parents maximize the positives of sports for a enriching experience. Parents need to give some thought and planning to what sport will work best for the child and the family. On average, parents pay nearly one-thousand dollars a year for one child in one sport. Running seems free but shoes, team fees, match fees and uniforms, it can earliy cost $500 a year. Or competitive dance tends to run $16,000 a year. Over-avid parents can put a three-year-old in daily tennis lessons, that that child will be injured out for life with tennis elbox by aged five. Poolside parents can scream at their child to perfect the Australian crawl, but most children cannot coordinate a good crawl until eight. Some body types will make some sports hard and that cannot be overcome. Hiring the Olympic fencing team to train your high school sophomore new to the sport, will not get them on the Olympic Team (the purpose being to get them into Harvard.) And kids in adult-managed teams will not learn as many teamwork skills or sportsmanship traits as neighborhood kids who try to put together an afterschool game. Barnes help parents clarify the goals they want for their child's particiation in sports and how to achieve mentally and physically healthy kids through sports.
