“The parents and coaches who have ruined youth sports.” That headline appeared last month at the top of a letter to the editor in the Washington Post. Contrast that with the words that appeared in the same paper about ten years ago above an article that used a bold-faced headline to pose this question: “Are parents ruining youth sports?” Looks like that question’s been answered! There’s no question that parents are pressuring their kids through spending exorbitant amounts of time, money, and effort to set the table for their kids to climb to the top of the athletic ladder.

Let’s be honest with ourselves. We live in a parenting world that’s shifted from creating a home where kids can find sanctuary and solace from the pressures of growing up, to a parenting world where all-too-often the greatest source of pressure is coming from the parents who set the climate in the home. Sadly, it’s not until we step back out of the fast-moving stream of our own parenting peer culture that our eyes may be opened to the fact that yes, we’ve gotten caught up in the rat race ourselves. In an effort to keep up with everyone else, we too put way too much pressure on our kids.

Over our years of listening to kids and tracking the research, we’ve seen several “hot-points” where we are expected and encouraged by our culture to put way too much pressure on our kids. Here are three. . .

First, there’s the academic pressure. Nobody wants to have an average kid anymore. Consequently, the home, the school, and even kids themselves put on tremendous pressure to achieve high grades, climb the class-rank ladder, and get into “the right college.” Resume-building begins at the moment a child emerges from the womb, with parents pushing kids not to do their best, but to achieve above and beyond what’s reasonable based on their gifts and abilities. Sadly, we hear kids lamenting an “A” or a 97% as less than perfect, and disappointing to dad and mom.

Second, there’s the appearance pressure. We spend inordinate amounts of time, money, and anxiety in an effort to measure up to the unreasonable and not-even-remotely-realistic digitally-altered standards of beauty we’re being fed 24/7. There’s the clothing, the make-up, the hair care, the diet and exercise, and the plastic surgery. Yes, we’re called to care for and steward our God-given bodies. But we worship and idolize our physical selves. And when mom and dad fall prey to these temptations in their own lives, kids will learn what’s most important. Sadly, many parents send verbal messages that combine with society’s 24/7 social media pressure to reach unattainable standards.

Finally, there’s the athletic pressure. Have you ever stepped back from the sidelines to watch what’s happening outside the white lines?!? Do your kids play on fields bordered by sidelines made up of screaming and yelling parents? Are those parents spewing pressures onto the field that push away the fun element that should be central to play? Are we teaching our kids that winning trumps character development? Does our spending of time, money, and effort on youth sports reveal that we’ve made an idol out of youth sports? Do we realize that the idol of youth sports will crush our kids? Are we, in fact, undermining the healthy spiritual growth and development of our kids on the altar of skills, scholarships, and victory? Are we living vicariously through our kids?

Forty-five years ago developmental expert Dr. David Elkind sounded a powerful warning that was true then and is even more true now. In his book, The Hurried Child: Growing Up Too Fast Too Soon, Elkind said that what kids need is a time to grow. They need to be kids who are buffered from pressure. Instead, what we give them is way too much pressure. Then, Elkind says, what results is stress and its aftermath. In the over four decades since, Elkind’s words have played out way too many times. We are raising a generation of kids entering adulthood crushed, anxious, and angry.

Are you setting the table for your child to face pressures that could cause them to buckle under, fall apart, and even pursue idolatrous ends? Or are you nurturing them with love, mercy, and grace into a life-time of trusting God for their salvation, pursuing God, and endeavoring to live in obedience to His will and His way? May we be parents who embrace the unmistakable parental imperative of Ephesians 6:4 – “Do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”