Active Play and Healthy Sports Parents: How to Keep Youth Sports Fun and Prevent Burnout - Episode 7

Written By Arleigh Greenwald

In Episode 7 of the Active Play, Every Day podcast, Dr. Emily Greenwald sits down with Jonathan Carone, host of the Healthy Sports Parents podcast, to tackle one of the most stressful environments for modern families: the hyper-competitive world of youth sports.

Many parents (including Dr. Emily!) feel lost when navigating travel tournaments, intense coaching, and early sports specialization. They desperately want their children to succeed, but often accidentally end up contributing to the very pressure that drives kids away from the game. 

Jonathan’s expertise offers a sustainable, child-centered approach to athletics, along with a few helpful tools parents can implement immediately in their interactions with their kids about sports.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

The main takeaway of this episode is this: the goal of youth sports shouldn’t be to create a Division I athlete; it should be to help your child foster a lifelong love of movement.

Dr. Emily and Jonathan unpack why the current sports system is burning kids out and how adults can change the narrative. 

Inside this episode, listeners will learn:

  • Why kids quit sports and how parents can support their experience 

  • Why the car ride home can be the most dreaded part of youth sports (and how to turn this around) 

  • How the 5-to-1 positivity ratio changes a child’s attitude, perception, and psyche

  • Why winning actually ranks surprisingly low on the list of what makes sports fun for kids

  • How to keep kids, especially girls, supported and safely engaged in sports as they navigate puberty and body image challenges

Why Do Kids Quit Sports?

Statistics show that a shocking percentage of kids (recent research suggests around 50%) drop out of organized sports by age 13. While some of this is due to children specializing in a single sport, puberty, or loss of interest, a significant portion is simply due to burnout. 

Jonathan notes that now more than ever, we are formalizing sports and competition at such a young age that kids become mentally and emotionally exhausted before ever really getting the chance to develop a love for them.

What Should Parents Say on the Car Ride Home After a Game?

According to recent surveys of Division 1 athletes, the absolute worst part of playing youth sports was the car ride home. This was typically when well-meaning parents delivered unwanted feedback while the child was physically and emotionally exhausted.

Have you been there before? 

While this is a common practice many parents use to relate to their children and offer tips or pointers, it’s best to wait until the next day for those conversations.

After your child finishes playing a sport, they’re mentally, emotionally, and socially exhausted. They’ve just actually played the game, right?

If they want to talk about it, they can ask you—and the kids who want a critique will. However, the kid who doesn’t want critique or isn’t ready for it yet, won’t ask for it.

Jonathan recommends that parents who want to preserve the parent-child relationship and keep sports fun should only ask three questions on the car ride home:

  1. Did you have fun?

  2. Where/what do you want to eat?

  3. What do you want to listen to?

Save the critiques for the next day, when the child’s brain is rested and actually receptive to feedback—because giving feedback when they’re not receptive is often more about the parent than about the child.

How Can Parents Keep Youth Sports Fun?

One way to keep sports fun for your child is to practice the 5-1 rule: give your child five compliments, pieces of praise, or positive feedback for every one critique. 

Why so many? 

As humans, old and young, our brains are biologically wired to hold onto one negative comment more than five or ten pieces of praise. So, if children are given a 1:1 ratio of praise to critique, they may feel they are being picked on. This negatively impacts their experience not just with the sport but also with their parent.

To help combat the fear-of-failure mentality that is so prevalent in our younger generations due to this over-reliance on criticism, we need to practice being overwhelmingly positive. Celebrate their effort, experience, and growth rather than the scoreboard (in fact, studies show that winning actually ranks surprisingly low on the list of what makes sports fun for kids). 

This is especially vital for young girls, who drop out of sports at twice the rate of boys, largely due to puberty, perception, and body image issues. 

By framing conversations around strength, fun, and health, rather than weight, appearance, or ability, we can help our children build the confidence that leads not only to a love for sports and movement but also to future leadership and life experiences that will stay with them long past their time in youth sports.

The Active Play Prescription

At the end of every episode, Dr. Emily asks her guest to help her come up with an Active Play Prescription. To keep kids engaged in sports and moving joyfully, Dr. Emily and Jonathan recommend a simple three-step approach:

  1. Keep it positive: Focus on effort over performance.

  2. Keep it at the level they desire: Do not push them into intense leagues out of fear of falling behind.

  3. Let it be child-driven: Support their unique passions, even if you don’t like it or aren’t familiar with it, whether that is something as traditional as soccer, as adventurous as BMX biking, or as niche as competitive jump rope.

Ultimately, they recommend that parents help their children find and develop something they could be passionate about, and then foster that passion as much as possible in a healthy way.

Find Us

Where to find Jonathan:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/healthysportsparents/

Website: https://healthysportsparents.com/

Where to find Dr. Emily:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dremilygreenwald/

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Episode Sponsor

This podcast is sponsored byNex Playground, an active-play gaming system that helps kids move indoors through full-body games that support learning, coordination, and joy!

Resources

Transcript:

Jonathan (00:00.172)

The number one reason kids quit sports is because they stop being fun.

Dr. Emily (00:03.202)

Welcome to the Active Play Everyday podcast powered by Nex Playground. I'm your host, Dr. Emily, pediatrician, mom of three, and childhood wellness advocate. This show is about one simple goal, helping your family find a realistic path to 60 minutes of active play every day. No guilt, no pressure, just finding what works in real life. The information shared here is for education and inspiration. It's not medical advice.

Always consult your healthcare provider for guidance specific to your family. All right, let's get moving. Dr. Emily (00:30)Today, I am joined by Jonathan Carone who runs the Healthy Sports Parents podcast. 70 % of kids drop out of organized sports by age 13. Jonathan, what the heck is going on and what advice can you give around this?

Jonathan (00:56.078)

What's happening is we're formalizing sports and competition at such a young age that then the kids burn out. Let's say it's at that 13 to 15 year old range, because what we're also seeing a lot of is you'll see kids play, play a sport up through junior varsity. And then they get to varsity. It's like, I'm not going to get any play in time. don't care. And so, so they built on it at that point, but they walk away from the sport with a bad taste in their mouth. So instead of.

Dr. Emily (01:24.366)

And they never come back. Yeah.

Jonathan (01:25.698)

Yeah. Instead of getting to the end of high school, I'm know what? Like maybe I can't play baseball in college, but you know, it sounds really fun. Slow pitch softball with my friends and intramurals. But one of the goals of youth sports should be to help our kids develop a love of human movement. Shouldn't be to create the greatest athlete in the world. It should be to create kids who love movement and create the habits that will last them for their entire lives.

Dr. Emily (01:52.75)

You've got a big thing to do to get kids active and then that activity leads to your longevity for life. I always quote the statistic that only one in four kids gets the 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity, which I call active play every day. One in four in this country only. What if I have the kid who hits the varsity team, you know, in ninth grade and they're like, this is too intense.

Maybe they even quit soccer at that point. How do I steer them to another sport? How do I keep them going with the varsity team? What do you tell parents they should be doing?

Jonathan (02:31.446)

I actually extend it out and say, let's take it out of just the narrowness of sport. What's the physical activity they can do that they enjoy. And so in our house, we have a one physical activity per season rule. You have to be doing some type of physical activity. Like this summer, my kids don't want to do swim team, but they've never done it before. We did a track club last year. They didn't love that. So.

I don't love forcing kids to do things, but we're going to be a part of the swim team this year because I've talked to enough parents and what I have heard from this club. It's very laid back and the kids don't have to compete, but it gets my kids in a physical environment, swimming, not just play swimming, but swimming with movement and intention for two or three nights a week at our own, at our own pace. You can come when you want. could not come when you like, it's not super organized.

But it's going to allow them to experience something I think they're going to enjoy. They're just third and fifth graders who haven't experienced it yet, so they don't think they're gonna like it. I don't love the idea of pushing kids, but sometimes we do have to lead them places where they might not wanna go if it's what we believe is good for them.

Dr. Emily (03:47.874)

There are kids out there whose passion is art or music or something where there's not a bunch of movement involved, right? But still, I really think for health and longevity, and what we know about how to raise healthy kids, we've got to as parents reframe that you've got to pick one movement per season that your kid is going to do and encourage that. 

Jonathan (04:12.354)

I'll use my personal story. I stopped playing baseball in ninth grade, stopped playing basketball in eighth grade in ninth grade. I went all in on music. I was in band in high school, 10th grade. I was able to join marching band. was in the jazz band. was in the pet. I went, I was in my garage bands as well. So I went all in on music and my sporting activity.

Completely went off like completely dropped. I was still involved with the baseball team, but it was on the coaching side at that point. But I stopped playing, wasn't good enough and started learning how to coach. So I wasn't moving. So from my sophomore year of high school through college, I was around sports, but I wasn't playing. And I was involved in these other things that I was passionate about, but I wasn't moving. And in that time I gained probably a hundred pounds from 15 to 25 probably.

Um, it wasn't until my mid to late twenties that I started getting a little bit active again. And at that point I was so overweight that it hindered it. hard. so early thirties, I started getting more. so I'm 39 now, probably the last five to six years is, well, I say since 2020 is the most active I've been and relearning that and, realizing how hard it was to relearn the love of movement when things hurt because of the size.

I think back to what did I miss from 15, 16 to 25 that had I had this different perspective that it didn't have to be highly competitive. I didn't have to be good at it. I could just go out and play for the sake of playing. Had I had that mindset at 15, 16, 17 years old, how different would my life had been in my twenties and early thirties.

And how different would some of the health long-term impacts that I'm dealing with now, how different would that have been?

Dr. Emily (06:12.072)

Now, knowing what you know about how to keep kids in sports from like a parenting perspective, a coaching perspective, all this, what would you have advised or what could have made a difference for you looking back on your high school days? Could someone have intervened in some way? Would there have been an opportunity that you might have been interested in a weightlifting course? And I don't know, like what what would it have been? Can you think of anything? What advice would you give the past people around you? Yeah.

Jonathan (06:39.846)

This one's hard. I want to acknowledge system first because systems play into this. A lot of high schools are on the block system now, meaning four classes per semester. As a band kid, band took up two classes per year for me. then you had the required stuff. So I didn't have the opportunity to take very many true electives. And so outside of my freshman PE class,

That's required by the state. I only took one other PE class the following three years. I didn't have room for it in my schedule. So depending on the other things kids are into, the PE class might not be an option, whether that's weightlifting, body toning, team sports, individual, whatever the class that is offered might not be able to fit in the schedule. So systemically, that's an issue that we're fighting against. I loved the team sports class I took, but I only had one room.

one spot for one class. So that, was an issue. When I was in college, I worked for the football team on the administrative side. So I'm on the second floor of the building. The first floor of the building was locker room. The basement was the weight room. I worked two floors above one of the best strength coaches in the country. A man who is an incredible coach, like would push the players hard, but was his name is Bill Gillespie. I to give him credit. He, one of the kindest.

like incredible people in the world. One of my biggest regrets is that I worked in that building for two and a half years and I never asked coach Bill to teach me how to weight lift or how to lift weights because I was scared that I wouldn't be able to do it. I was scared that I would fail or that he would look down on me because I wasn't this division one athlete. I was scared that coach Bill would, would have a different opinion of me looking back with mature eyes.

Coach Bill would have encouraged me at my, he would have pushed me, but he would encourage me at my level and taught me the proper way to do this. He wouldn't have pushed me like he would have a division one athlete. And I think I tell that story because I think it's the fear of failure that keeps kids from trying things.

Dr. Emily (08:55.32)

How do we approach that as parents and coaches?

Jonathan (08:58.808)

think that's the beauty of sports when we're younger because one of the things that I have soccer practice tomorrow night, I'm coaching a U-12 soccer team. I will say multiple times, you have to be bad at this before you can get good at it.

Jonathan (09:17.208)

nine, 10, 11 year olds that it's okay to not get it right the first time. I will tell them, slow, go slow so you can go fast. Let's slow it down. Let's learn it. And then we'll pick it up. Like I am trying to teach them that you're not supposed to have this figured out right away. So that at nine, 10, 11 years old, they're learning failures. Okay. On we had our first practice a couple of days ago and

I asked them, I was like, do you guys think I care if you mess up? was like, I don't care. If you are trying and you mess up because you're trying, I will cheer you on because you're trying and you're learning. If you mess up because you're not trying, that's what I'm going to get onto you. How can we teach kids it's worth it to go out there and try and fail and that failing is okay. Because what we know about this generation, you probably see this in your world.

The current generation of kids is more scared of failing than I think any generation ever. I think that's a product of their environment. had Steve Magnus on my show last spring, who is, if you don't follow Steve Magnus, you need to. But he made this point that the comparison circles for kids are so much bigger than they used to be. When we were growing up, our comparison circle was just our elementary school. Now it's social media and travel.Your failures look much bigger than compared to the couple hundred kids you go to school with.

Dr. Emily (10:47.392)

and they are so focused on winning so many of those comparison circles, right? And then we've got parents who... Exactly.

Jonathan (10:54.712)

Parents are so focused on winning. There have been multiple studies that have shown us winning is not what makes sports fun for kids. Winning.

Dr. Emily (11:02.764)

That's right. Say that again. Winning is not what makes sports fun.

Jonathan (11:08.59)

I'm going to point to two different studies. One's the fun map studies by Dr. Amanda Vissick. The other one I can get to the title of it. It's a thousand characters long. That's why I can't remember it. But the fun map study found that the four things that make sports fun for kids are competing, not winning, competing, learning new things, playing with their friends and having parents and coaches who support them as they try and learn new things. The winning ranked

below 40th on a set of 80 things. The other study found that environment influences fun more than results. An environment where coaches and parents praise effort and growth leads to more fun, even while losing, an environment that is focused on performance and ego.

What they found is that winning was sometimes less fun than losing when winning became focused on performance. Losing was actually more enjoyable when the focus was on growth, effort, and the learning process and getting better. When we rush to competitive arenas too early before kids can emotionally handle that. Yes, kids want to win.

Everyone wants to win. Kids are keeping score in their heads. Even if we're not keeping on score, this doesn't mean we don't try to win. It means that winning is not our primary focus. Growth and human development is our primary focus. If we win, great. Let's celebrate that. Yeah. Celebrate growth and human development more than results because whether we want to admit it or not,

Dr. Emily (12:49.056)

sure.

Jonathan (12:56.95)

We are not in control of the scoreboard.

Dr. Emily (12:59.096)

For every pediatrician listening, know, when you've got parents coming in with their children, I feel like this is the anticipatory guidance we need to be saying is, look, how do you frame up your sort of response to your kids practice, to their games, you know, all these things, because there's so many parents who focus on the winning. It's hard not to, right? We need to be coached as parents to know the right questions to ask, the timing of those questions to

sort of help kids develop this inner dialogue about, well, we lost, but I did all these things well. We improved on these things. The team really did great with this that we were working on so that they can see that positive, so they can keep having fun. And ultimately, the reason why pediatricians need to be talking to parents about this is to keep kids moving. Because we know they drop out of that sport, it may not be replaced by another one.

And there's also studies to show which we'll put in the show notes that then they stop moving altogether.

Jonathan (14:00.51)

And sports parents get a lot of crap because we see the toxic ones. The toxic ones are the loud ones are the ones who are heard from more. But I have this core belief that most parents want to do better. They just haven't been taught how. so every everything that I that I'm trying to do. Yes, I have to speak to the toxicity at times because that's it's a real issue. And what I've heard from parents is most just want to do better. They just don't know how because there's emotions, there's insecurity.

Jonathan (14:30.584)

there are like most people didn't play this game and if they did play it they didn't play it in this environment so how how do we handle it all and you talk about what questions to ask

Last night, my daughter got in, we had our first soccer practice and she started to catch the bug and want to get better. She wants to play in middle school next year. And so over the break between like a month leading up to this, to the season, we did, she asked for some lessons. So we went and did some private lessons for four weeks, once a week, just to work on some stuff that she wanted to work on.

And so last night was her first practice with her team and I'm not coaching her this year. We have an incredible mom who is an phenomenal coach. so I'm just sitting on the sidelines, getting to watch a little bit, getting to talk to parents a little bit. Um, so I, I wasn't super paying attention to everything. So we got in the car and it's like, live, how you think you did? I think I did good. I was like, you, you proud of yourself? Yeah. I was like, you feel like you've gotten better? Yeah. I was like, you feel confident? Yeah. So I'm asking like,

effort. And like, I didn't ask that she went a drill. I didn't ask like, it was like, are you proud of yourself? Are you feeling confident? Like, it was those growth based questions, because that that's what she needs. She doesn't she doesn't need me to coach her when she gets in the car. It's Yeah, did you have fun? Like, and then she's like, what's for dinner? I was like, what do want for dinner? We go to dinner when you know we don't talk about dinner. Practice.

putting this in its proper context of like, I'm going to cheer you on, I'm going to be your biggest fan. I'm going to praise your effort because at the end of the day, that's what matters the sports going to the sports going to come and go. But yeah, efforts and feeling proud of yourself is the emotion that will be attached to an action. And the action is what we want long

Dr. Emily (16:22.182)

I'm thinking of how I can even do better as a parent, right?  I pick my kids do competitive jump rope. I've started to allow for some silence when they get into the car. And it for me is very hard. And so I count to 10 and just see what they say. Right. And then we can sort of coach and follow rather than asking a question right away. It's hard as a parent. You know, you're so invested. You so desperately want your kid to be successful.

But I think to your point, need to reframe that as we desperately should want them to be having fun. Because that is what will keep them in the sport. That is what will keep them moving their body. That's what's going to keep them playing soccer with their club friends all the way till they're in their 60s, right?

Jonathan (17:09.889)

The number one reason kids quit sports is because they stopped being fun. There's a survey done of division one athletes a few years ago that asked them all about their youth sports experience growing up. And one of the questions was, what was the worst part about growing up playing sports? And the number one answer was the car ride home. And it was because of parents having unregulated emotions, wanting to get out what they just, all the feelings and thoughts and critiques that they have. And that's what the car ride home became.

I tell people that the car ride home is the worst place for unrequested feedback for your kids performance after they play. That's right. They are exhausted. They are mentally, emotionally, socially exhausted. They've just played the game and if they want to talk about it, they can ask you about it. And they will like the kid who wants critique will ask for critique. The kid who doesn't want it or isn't ready for it. They're not going to ask for it. What I advise people.

The only three questions you should ask is, did you have fun? Where do you want to eat? And what do you want to listen to? Those are the three questions you should ask every car at home.

Dr. Emily (18:17.142)

Love it. But did you have fun? Where do you want to eat? And what do you want to listen to? questions. All right, I'm gonna do those that those are very good questions.

Jonathan (18:22.211)

To the three.

Jonathan (18:26.038)

I get this pushback all the time that right after the games, like when it's fresh, well, professional athletes wait until the next day to watch video. The coach doesn't say a ton of correction right after he's like, we got some work to do. We need to work on this. need to work on this, but we'll talk about that tomorrow at practice. And so the coach has already told your kid that.

Dr. Emily (18:46.658)

Can you imagine you have your disc golf game and you walk off and whether you won or lost, you know, your wife or someone else comes up to you and says, you know, how did it go? And, know, I noticed that on, you know, when you were throwing or, you know, starts giving you advice, I mean, like, what? I come off the pickleball court and someone starts giving me advice. I would be annoyed to the 10th degree, know, and that's we do. Yeah.

Jonathan (19:08.206)

Give you an example of this past summer. were playing a course. was 8,000 degrees outside. I lost three and a half pounds of sweat that I weighed myself before. I weighed myself after I lost three and a half pounds of sweat. And this course we were playing is super hilly. You go up and down hills. It's on the side of a mountain and we're on like hole 14. I am playing like dog doo doo, like absolute garbage. And

We had another guy there with us that day who I didn't know was a friend of mine, a friend of a friend, kinesiology professor at the university level, like teaches people how to move. He's like, Hey, I give you a tip? was like, you could, but I'm not going to hear it right now. Like I'm so frustrated that like, I know I'm playing badly. I know I'm doing these things, but I just, I'm not in that, I'm exhausted. I'm tired. I just want to get this thing done. He goes, got it.

And like, if I'm saying that at the time 38, I'm exhausted. trying, I know I'm playing poorly. I know I'm not doing things correctly, but I wasn't in a place to hear from an expert who is trained with a doctorate degree in how to teach people how to move.

Dr. Emily (20:26.008)

this is the thing parents need to work on. Some coaches need to work on. mean, maybe we could shift just a little bit. I know that you talk a lot about sort of the importance of coaches being positive. What do you say to them about what they should be doing to keep kids in sports? You know, is it that kid who's coming for the first time to be on a team or they're getting up to the varsity level and maybe they're just not quite as good as their peers, but we want them to keep playing.

Jonathan (20:53.742)

So there's an old cliched saying, but it's true. Kids don't care about how much you know until you know they know how much you care. And first and foremost, you have to show these kids you care about them as human beings. It can't just be, I'm going to critique, critique, critique. And one thing I want you to hear if you're listening to this is the way our brains are wired, it takes five to 10 positive interactions to make up for one negative interaction. Being overwhelmingly positive isn't simply about like just creating this positive environment or cause kids can't handle critique. It's because as humans, we cling to negativity more than we cling to positivity. So if we are doing a one-to-one congratulations critique, it's going to feel overwhelmingly critical.

So we have to shift the balance to overwhelmingly positive, finding the little things that we can celebrate so that when we pick and choose what needs to be critiqued, it doesn't feel like we're just picking on someone. coaches, we say, I'm not picking on you, I'm just trying to make you get better. But what we have to realize is as humans, the way our brains are wired,

we hold on to the negative more than the positive. So it feels like we're getting picked on when there's not the encouragement. I'm not going to say praise when the encouragement isn't also there. And it's also going to require choking back some of those things that you see are wrong and asking yourself, is that worth correcting right now? If they're doing it over and over and over and it's becoming a habit, then let's correct it. Can we correct it in a positive way?

But not every mistake needs to be corrected.

Dr. Emily (22:53.676)

One thing that I can do is look for coaches who know these things. Is there any strategy or any sort of class or certification you could look for or any particular leagues that have extra classes for their coaches to give them this knowledge so that I know, okay, if I get my kid involved in this league or this particular club, I may be more likely to find a coach who has all this knowledge and who will do a really good job keeping things fun.

Jonathan (23:21.158)

One of them is a program called Yes Coach from the U.S. Soccer Foundation. It is completely free. It's an online course, but it's designed to train coaches as mentors, but the entire training process is free. It's to help.

Coaches and parents are coaches as well in their own right. Look at this as being mentors more so than X's and O's. The other one that I tell people about is, especially if you're part of a league or you want to, but it is positive coaching Alliance. A PCA is probably the leading organization in the country and training coaches in this positive, encouraging way. They do incredible work helping frame.

youth sports in the proper context so that people have the tools they need to go through this in the proper way. And they've got this saying sports done right changes lives. And that's the that's the core of what they do. So yes, coach by US Soccer Foundation or Positive Coaching Alliance would be the two places I would go if you're wanting those.

Dr. Emily (24:27.148)

we know that girls are actually 40 % more likely to drop out of sports than boys. And those that start menarche earlier or have their period earlier than other girls are actually 68 % more likely to discontinue sports. so having a female coach among their other strategies to keep girls in sports, but...

We can probably do a whole nother podcast just on that, but want to draw attention to we really need to focus on girls here too.

Jonathan (24:58.976)

And to take that one step further, the, the dropout rate for girls is twice as high as it is for boys. Yet we know that 96 % of C-suite women leaders played sports when they were growing up. sports teach the leadership and the confidence and all of those things that go on to impact their future life. And one of the biggest issues we see, especially with girls are body image issues.

And so think about how you talk about athletes like that kids a little overweight that kids a little, a little slow. These preteen teenage years, when we start judging girls based on their appearance, they're already hyper sensitive to their bodies changing to the hormones changing. And then when we start saying that they're too big or they're too small or they the body image just compounds and they're like, if I'm going to be judged in that sport, I'm out. So do those things impact sports? Yes. A kid who is overweight is probably going to be a little slower. A kid who is underweight is probably going to be a little less strong. We got to, we have to be intentional about how we speak about these things, who we speak about them to.

Dr. Emily (26:01.582)

That's right.

Jonathan (26:21.176)

We need to make sure that we're not saying it around the girls or about the girls in ways that are going to be negative or critical.

Dr. Emily (26:28.782)

That's what girls hear, which you mentioned, but also what they see, right? So on social media, starting to talk to your kids about, is this a realistic view of whatever they're seeing? And the perfect professional athlete looking body and how that is one in a million.

Jonathan (26:47.436)

Have your kids follow along with Ilona Maher. But like, when it comes to like healthy athletic bodies, she is the spokesperson for female bodies and she's incredible.

Dr. Emily (26:50.766)

100%.

Dr. Emily (27:00.384)

At the end of every podcast, I pretend that I'm gonna write a prescription or ask pediatricians everywhere to write a prescription for active play every day. And so Jonathan, give us like your top three things, suggestions that would be on that prescription to keep your kid having fun and playing.

Jonathan (27:18.776)

Keep it positive, keep it at the level they desire, not what you think they need based off of fear of falling behind, and let it be driven by them. It might not be the sport you wanted, it might not be a sport you know, it might not even be a sport, but let the kid help your kid develop something they could be passionate about and then foster that passion as much as possible in a healthy way.

Dr. Emily (27:45.41)

Love it. Yeah. And hopefully, you know, everyone, every parent will listen to this podcast several times.

If you found this episode helpful, please help us out by reading and reviewing the show from wherever you're listening. It really helps other families find us. Until next time, consider this your Active Play prescription, because play isn't extra, it's essential.

Arleigh Greenwald

http://bikeshopgirl.com
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Active Play Starts with Joy: Making Movement a Daily Family Habit - Episode 6