Why sports for kids are good for our social lives

As part of my research for Until It Hurts, I spent a blustery December morning in Boston locating the office of Lyle Micheli. My hands were numb and my ears about frozen when I arrived but it was worth it to see Micheli, one of the nation's top docs for injured youth athletes.

Micheli has been treating such patients for decades. In 1974, he and several associates started the first sports injury clinic for kids in the U.S. at Children's Hospital. He's still there. And on a hectic day, he might see dozens of patients.

Micheli also has a reputation for straight talk, especially about the problems percolating in youth sports. That was true the day I visited.

I asked Micheli why parents are emotionally invested in the sports lives of children. He explained that there is a lot at stake for the adults, more than many admit or appreciate themselves.

And it's not all about winning and losing, he said.

"In a mobile society, if your child is on a travel team, you suddenly have 30 new people who are your best friends," Micheli told me. "You’re going to barbecues with the soccer team and so on. Participation on the team gives the family social entrees, social prerogatives, it would not have."

Micheli spoke of parents so emotionally involved in their kids' sports lives that they'd seemingly forgotten why they signed up their sons and daughters in the first place.

"I had a physician's family come in," Micheli said. "The mother was an emergency-room doctor. Her son had Little League elbow, which I operated on. The first question out of her mouth in the recovery room was, 'When do you think he can play again?' Not, 'How did the surgery go?' Or, 'How's the elbow going to be?' The loss of perspective was amazing."

I was intrigued with the idea that kids' sports can hold such power over adults and made it a major part of my book.

Then this month, sport researchers at Purdue University published a study in the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology that examines how youth sports changes the lives of adults. It was exploring the same issue, yet from a side that seemed kinder, gentler.

Here's some of what the Purdue researchers reported:

-Spouses with kids in youth sports became better communicators (with one another) and better organized. This was attributed to the coordination needed to make it on time to practices, games, private lessons and the rest.

-Some parents explained that watching their children excel in sports motivated them to pick up a sport themselves. One said that when her child took up tennis, she followed.

-Friendships among parents often outlasted the careers of their kid players. Even so, moms and dads said that they went through an emotional letdown when their kids' playing days ended and the adults lost their "play dates."

In a Purdue press release, one of the researchers, Alan Smith explained: "I don't think it's terribly surprising that parents connect with one another, but what was surprising is the intensity of that connection. Many view themselves differently, as well as their children differently, after exposure to youth sports."

That intensity can be channeled in constructive ways. (See Purdue study).

Or not. (Consult Dr. Micheli).

A child's sports injury and the blame game

One question I'm getting a lot as I do the book-talk thing around the country in support of Until It Hurts is: Why do you blame yourself? It's a reference to Ben's elbow injury, a classic case of overuse, and our family decision for him to undergo Tommy John surgery so that he could return to baseball.

I do flog myself a bit in Until It Hurts, mostly for falling in like with his pitching arm when he was a rec league phenom (I was his coach). I also point a finger at myself in a piece about a father's pride and a kid's injury that I wrote last month for the New York Times.

The last thing I want is to turn this into a pity party for the author. The hope is for our family story to be seen as a cautionary tale, one that might alert parents to the real and present danger of overuse injuries. Many of us are pretty clueless when it comes to connecting the dots between a child who's overdoing it and the serious injuries - stress fractures, growth-plate injuries, in my son's case, ruptured tendons - that occur three to five years down the road.

I remember chatting about this with Lyle Micheli, a prominent sports doc who started the first clinic for kids with sports injuries at Children's Hospital in Boston. I asked Dr. Micheli if parents generally understood the role they played in a child's overuse injury.

"In the majority of the cases, the parents do not feel responsible. In retrospect, some will say, 'Maybe he was doing too much.' But it is very rare for parents to say, "It was our fault. We pushed too hard."

So, once a kid is injured, do parents accept Micheli's advice to dial down the intensity?

"To the extent they think it will make the kid better and get him back to his sport, yes," he told me. "And by the way, they want the right answer from me. Which is [one that returns a child] to playing as soon as possible."

Sure. Yet most of us wouldn't think of letting our kids ride a bike without a helmet. Go figure.