What is the fine line for when you have your kid playing too much soccer?. My 10 year old kid practices 2x per week and usually plays 1 game per week. Our season was 9 games over 10 weeks. We haven't done any private training this year, but we've dabbled a little bit in the past. We kinda go year round, with some multi-week breaks here and there. She seems to be developing appropriately and doesn't complain too much. My niece (same age) is what worries me. She is the same age. Plays at a bigger name club on their 2nd team (out of 3). Here club has normal practice 2x per week. Her season is 14 games over 8 weeks. They recently put in an age group session on another day. They have optional futsal on Sundays (but kids are afraid to miss because it can impact their club league playing time). She also plays on a rec league and has a game once a week. And she does a private training once a week. Her is an example of her schedule last week- 1. Practice Tuesday and Thursday. 2. Age Group Training (for NEXT fall) on Friday) 3. Club Game on Saturday. 4. Private Training at 9:30 am on Sunday morning (my kids had a sleepover with them on Saturday night. She went to her private training while my kids were still sleeping. They were awake until midnight eating popcorn and doing kid stuff). 5. Rec game on Sunday at 1:30 (hour drive to get there. Hour drive back). 6. Futsal game on Sunday at 5:30 At some point on Sunday, she fell and fractured her wrist. Now, I'm sure her dad will say it was just bad luck and nothing to do with her crazy schedule. I'd argue that the kid is tired and likely wouldn't have fallen as hard if she were well rested. For her sake, I hope it's not a bad injury, but I kinda hope it sidelines her for a few weeks to get some rest. But I'm sure her dad will be worried about how this will impact her selection for the "A" team next season and will still have her training with her feet to stay sharp. She's a decent player and likely better than my daughter. But for 6x more training, I would certainly hope so.
Tough question. At that age kids start to make independent decisions about their life. I would use the happiness barometer. An enthusiastic player is not playing too much. Rest is always important. Fatigue increases the risk of injury even when not overtraining. The Sunday 3-a-day training is likely too much at any age.
depends on the kid. I have a friend who I took some golf lessons from, he confided in another friend of mine that when he was young he would pray that his arms would get broken so that he could do something other than play golf. His parents pushed golf on him, seeing that he had a talent for it, and he did win some tournament money and got paid to give lessons throughout his adult life, but was he happy doing that? Psychologically I think we in our culture are worried too much about getting kids to develop a life long skill at too early an age, but there are those kids that just fit with a particular sport, art, or skill, and they should obviously pursue it.
Looks like too much. Probably too much. I had a girls team a few yeaers back like this... by the time our Sunday game came around, they were tired and just going through the motions. There's an emotional component to soccer. When I was growing up, we had one game, dammit I was ready to go come Saturday, because that was my time to play in a game.