What kind of mental picture do the words “club sports” conjure for you? If you’re a parent of a teenager playing sports at the competitive level, you might think of a family calendar packed with games, practices, and tournaments. Maybe you envision the hours spent driving. Or perhaps you picture your money, sprouting wings and flying away.
For whatever reasons families choose to go deep into the world of high-level sports, we can be sure that the many benefits of sports for adolescents are a major factor. But at what point do athletics become more of a taskmaster than a gift for the family?
Drawing boundaries around where to spend time and resources on sports and extracurriculars is a part of discipling our kids to know and grow in Jesus. Here are a few thoughts to help parents prayerfully discern the lines for our families.
Consider the Value of All God’s Gifts
Sports and other extracurriculars are an incredible gift from God. Our bodies, and the amazing ways they can move, are a gift of God’s design. Work itself is a gift of being made in God’s image. Our kids participate in work by way of their school learning. Through sports and extracurriculars, they learn to be team players, to cultivate a set of skills, and to stick with a project even when it’s hard. And high-level extracurriculars celebrate and reward discipline and dedication, which is wise and honorable (Prov. 14:23, 6:6-8, etc).
Of course, we parents desire all this good for our children. But in the life of the family, there are other beneficial and valuable gifts that parents should not discount.
One is time together as a family. I am a fan of the family vacation. It’s a dedicated stretch of time where everyone is away from regular routines. But there is something to be said for having a routine of regular, unclaimed, unscheduled time where rest and connection happen organically. Rather than allowing extracurriculars and other commitments to have first pick of the family calendar, we might protect parts of it as spaces the family needs for connection.
The other important gift is deep participation in the life of the church. We give our children a gift when we regularly gather together as one body, to slowly and ordinarily put down roots at our churches by showing up consistently, week after week. It’s a gift for your kids to interact with their peers and adults often enough to see how others walk with the Lord. And it’s a gift for your teens to experience love from church members simply because they are present and available. Deep church participation is the gift that yields incalculably valuable spiritual benefits for all the days of our kids’ lives.
Counteract the Tendency to Place Identity In Performance
In addition to the demand on the family calendar, high-level sports demand your child’s undivided attention and allegiance. This can inadvertently translate into a demand for your teen’s identity.
Adolescence is a time for our teenagers to figure out who they are. Given that comparison and evaluation are the bread and butter of the social media-dominated world we live in, our teenagers are especially susceptible to being pulled into the false notion that says, “you are what you excel at.” Parents, we should be aware that teens who are quite serious about their extracurriculars will undoubtedly have to fight against the pull to place their identity in their performance.
The good news is that by God’s grace, we parents can stand as a buffer between our teens and the lie that their identity or worth comes from their ranking in sports or academics.
When we make a conscious decision not to allow the extracurricular schedule to dictate the family calendar, we are saying to our teens that their achievements are not paramount. Spending time together unrelated to extracurriculars and talking about anything else shows them that we’re interested in all of who they are. When we don’t make every game or test about how they can improve, we can celebrate the work they’ve done and focus on them—not the outcomes.
Trust God’s Faithfulness As We Seek His Wisdom In Parenting
As parents of teenagers in high-level extracurriculars, we need to be a buffer for them against this false identity. They also need our help to protect time and make room for other good gifts for our families. We must discern what valuing church life and family time looks like for our households.
We demonstrate to our kids the supreme value of knowing Jesus when we make Sunday mornings at church the default calendar item that extracurriculars cannot displace. Beyond that, we need to prayerfully seek wisdom for how to respond to the demands of our kids’ sports. These choices will affect how church leaders can minister to our children and our kids’ experience of the church body. Very simply, if our kids are not at youth group, it’s hard for the youth minister to disciple them.
Drawing these lines is a tricky exercise. Being a parent to a club soccer teen, we have drawn some of these lines with less certainty than we’d like. But I have yet to find parents of grown children who are certain that they made all the best decisions for their kids regarding extracurriculars. Older, wiser parents have assured me that in all things we aim to seek the Lord, and he will take care of the rest (Matt. 6:33).
So parents, let’s pray that our children and we would learn to enjoy their sports or extracurriculars as a gift from God who redeems us (not our achievements!). Let’s point our kids to their sufficiency in Jesus (Eph. 2:8-9). Remind them that he is the hero of our stories—stories that are more than earning accolades from extracurriculars. By faith, we trust that the Lord will honor our efforts to seek him, to the great spiritual benefit of our children.
Parenting is hard, but you don’t have to do it alone. Tune in to the Asian American Parenting podcast and our Rooted Parent podcast for regular encouragement and help from God’s word about how to be a gospel-centered parent.
