Should We Force Our Kids to Play Sports?

I got an email recently from a parent who heard me on Family Life Today talking about faith and youth sports. I know how many parents are sitting with a similar tension right now so I am replying “publically” so others can listen in on our conversation. This is an extremely relevant conversation for my wife and I as we are trying to figure out how hard to push our daughter toward sports (specifically, gymnastics). We’re weighing lots of pros and cons and trying to make the best decision for her and with her.

Before I share the email, let me start with this: There is not a cookie cutter answer to “Should we force our kid to play sports?” So many factors go into making a wise decision. Here are a few questions I am asking any who asks me for some wisdom in this space:

1. How old is the kid and what other sports/hobbies are they involved in?

2. What is the coach like? Is this someone who is creating an environment of growth (and fun) or just about winning? 

3. What is the culture and community surrounding the team like? Is it team oriented or toxic?

4. Have you asked the kid why they don’t want to play anymore and truly understand their reason?

5. Is your spouse on the same page?

Ok, there are probably more, but those are my top five. Hopefully you can see why context questions matter, even as we dig deeper into this discussion.  

Here’s part of what they wrote:

“If my kids don’t want to play a sport (baseball) and one of the parents wants them to play yet the child does not like baseball, should we force the child to do it anyway? They do instruments, church events, other sports but they don’t like baseball. What are some good things to pray over and think about for a good decision?”

Embedded in this message are several really important things worth separating: a disagreement between two parents, a child involved in a lot of things who’s communicating something clearly, and a family genuinely trying to make a wise decision. 

That’s actually a healthy starting place! Now, let me try to work through it the way I’d want someone to work through it with me.

Quick to Listen, Slow to Speak

James 1:19 tells us every person to “be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.” Proverbs 10:19, 17:27, and 18:13 all speak to the wisdom of listening before responding. 

We need this type of proverbial wisdom as there are two relationships here that need our attention: The parent-child and the marriage. Instead of leading with all of the reasons you think the kid should play baseball, start with listening to both the child and your spouse (separately). 

Asking questions to get better clarity on where they are coming from. 

Don’t just listen to respond, but listen to understand. 

If both the athlete and your spouse don’t feel heard, it doesn’t matter what wins you may see on the field, a relational loss isn’t worth it. 

What Do We Know About the Child?

This is an important part of the initial conversation: This family has a kid who plays multiple sports, plays an instrument, and participates in church life. That probably means the kid is engaged, not just sitting in their room scrolling endlessly on their phone. But it doesn’t just mean  they’re engaged in activities, it means they are learning through involvement what they like and dislike. 

And baseball just made the “dislike list.”

In Away Game: A Christian Parent’s Guide to Navigating Youth Sports, Ed Uszynski and I write about how sports give parents a front-row seat to their child’s heart. It’s another way of saying that through athletic involvement, we’re afforded the opportunity to witness their emotions, identity, responses to pressure, failure and success that we wouldn’t see otherwise. But that seat is only useful if we’re actually watching what’s being communicated. And right now, this child is communicating something clearly: I don’t want to do this.

I’m a big fan of giving kids autonomy in the process—and I weigh that even more heavily if the child is involved in a bunch of other activities as well. If the kid is just sitting home all day staring at a screen and their only social interaction and bodily movement is sport, then I am more prone to say “I hear you, but you’re still doing this.” That’s the situation I find myself in with my daughter. 

What Do We Know About the Parents’ Opinions? 

What do we do when one parent wants the child to play, and the other doesn’t?

If I’m sitting across the table from this couple, my first encouragement would be this: before you decide what to do about baseball, decide that you’re going to decide together. 

Again, let James 1:19 be the mediating verse that guides the conversation. 

You need to answer it as a team because a divided front on youth sports decisions creates more damage than almost any specific decision you make. Kids are perceptive and will sense the tension (Heck, some may even learn to exploit it). This is more about marriage 101 than youth sports 101. 

Talk it out, lay out your case, listen well, and ask questions. Pray together and talk together until you understand each other’s “why.” The parent who wants the child to play likely has a reason worth hearing. Maybe it’s about discipline, maybe it’s about a family legacy with the sport, maybe it’s about fear that their child will regret quitting. Those reasons deserve a respectful conversation, not just a vote.

A unified front is a win. Even if you don’t love what’s been decided, celebrate the process of agreeing to it with your spouse.

What “Forcing” Actually Does

Here’s what the research on youth sports consistently tells us, and what we’ve seen play out in ministry contexts: when kids feel coerced into sport participation, intrinsic motivation shrinks. Sure, they may comply in the short term, but the relationship with the sport (and oftentimes with the parent) takes a hit. As my friend and co-author Ed Uszynski says often: “One of our biggest goals in youth sports is to interact with our kids in a way that ensures they will still want to come home for Thanksgiving in 20 years.”

Forced participation rarely produces the character formation we’re hoping sport will provide. A child who is miserable in the dugout and counting down the innings until they can leave is not having a character-forming experience. They’re having an endurance experience. And there is still an upside in that! It can teach kids to honor commitments they’ve made. But that’s different from signing up a child in a new season of a sport they've already told you they don’t enjoy and don’t want to play anymore.

What to Pray Through—and What to Ask

This particular parent asked specifically about prayer, and I want to take that seriously. Here are four things worth bringing before God in this decision.

1. Pray for discernment about whose desire is driving this. Ask God honestly: Is this decision about my child’s flourishing, or about something I want (a sport I love, a hope I have for them, a fear I'm carrying)? That’s more diagnostic than accusatory. God can handle the honest version of the question.

2. Pray for wisdom about what your child is really communicating. Are there other factors beneath the surface that might be contributing to this opinion for them? Is this dislike of baseball just a phase, a bad experience with one coach, or a genuine and consistent lack of interest? Those are different situations. A child who had a discouraging season and now says they hate the sport might just need time and a better environment. A child who has tried it multiple times builds a stronger case on hanging up the cleats.

3. Pray for unity as a couple. Ask God to align your hearts—not just to reach a compromise, but to actually want the same thing for your child. 

4. Pray for your child’s flourishing more broadly. This child plays other sports. They play instruments. They’re involved in church. Ask God what He is forming in them through the things they have said yes to and whether adding something they’ve said no to is part of that formation, or a detour from it.

A Framework for the Decision

The question to ask here is not simply “should we make them play?” The question is: what does our child need right now and long term, and is baseball the vehicle for that, or are we forcing the vehicle just because we like it or it worked for us?

If what you’re hoping baseball provides is discipline or teamwork, your child seems to already have multiple contexts for that. If it’s specifically a love for baseball, that’s worth examining more honestly because we can’t “give” our kids loves. That being said, sometimes we just know better as parents, right? 

If your kid is six and says they hate baseball, that’s different than a sixteen year-old saying the same thing. Six year olds hate lots of things that, after a little exposure, they learn to love later.

As a wrestler friend once told me. “Some sports just aren't fun at first but as you master them they become a blast. Wrestling for most kids is a sport like that. You get beat up and things are hard but it becomes fun as you continue to master it. It took me four years until I started to enjoy the sport. And six years before I really wanted to keep doing it.” 

So, we can expose them to things and hope that mastery, or discipline, or love follows. But at some point, the exposure has done its work, and if the result didn’t take, that’s okay. You can have a bad date with someone and it may be worth giving them a second try. But if date after date with that individual leads you to think they wouldn’t make a good spouse, wisdom would say it’s time to move on to someone else.

All of that to say, my honest thought on the limited information provided: if this child has been given a genuine chance at baseball and has clearly communicated they don’t want to continue—and they are involved in other sports and other hobbies, then respect their decision to stop. 

Celebrate the win in that they communicated this with you up front and it didn’t fester for years as they worked up the courage to be honest with you. In this process, give them language for how to honor commitments they’ve already made, but I wouldn’t sign them up for another season until they give the green light. Redirect that energy ( yours and theirs) toward the things God is already growing them through. 

And if the parent who wants them to play baseball is understandably grieving that a little, that grief is worth acknowledging too. It’s real! Sometimes what we hoped sport would be for our family doesn’t match what our kids actually want. One of the hardest parts of being a youth sport parent is seeing the death of an imagined future that we had for our young athletes. 

At the end of the day, whatever your family decides, be slow to speak and quick to listen to one another—and let your child watch you model the kind of listening you hope they'll offer others one day. If your child feels heard and your marriage comes out the other side more united than divided, regardless of the decision you make, you’ve won.