This NPR story about young kids suffering severe back injuries is yet another glaring reminder that today’s youth sports culture exposes children to too much, too soon. Dr. Neeru Jayanthi, an associate professor of orthopedic surgery at Loyola Medicine in Maywood, Ill. studied more than 1200 young athletes and found that lower back injuries are the third most common injury in athletes under 18. What’s more, these injuries—half of which forced kids to stop being active for one to six months—were most often caused by a combination of repetitive bending and hyper involvement in competitive sports.
Our children are just not ready for all this physical intensity and competition. That’s why their little bodies are breaking down. At Whole Child Sports we want to apply the brakes a bit and give kids time to develop and grow at a more appropriate physical and emotional pace. In our book Beyond Winning: Smart Parenting in a Toxic Sports Environment, we emphasize free play and loosely structured skill-building activities for younger kids. We also recommend that kids not be matriculated in intense, organized team sports until they are at least twelve years old. Dr. Jayanthi agrees. His advice: Don’t specialize in one sport before late adolescence.
Luis Fernando Llosa is an investigative reporter, writer, editor, speaker, youth sports consultant, and a co-founder of Whole Child Sports, along with Scott Lancaster and Kim John Payne.