Youth soccer was demanding, and wearing my family out. My son’s coach came up with a surprising solution.

• After years of club soccer, the pace had worn us all down.
• It had never crossed my mind that we could set limits on what the club asked of us.
• One hard conversation taught us that we still had agency as parents.

At the end of the last soccer season, something had to give. After years of pouring out time and resources into supporting our middle son’s love of soccer, my husband and I decided it was time to quit club sports. We were too tired to keep going with the demanding schedule.

Yet, how would I say goodbye to parents who were now lifelong friends? My 10-year-old also had formed deep bonds with other players, and the idea of starting over at another club was daunting. We’d traveled together, endured games in freezing rain and blazing hot summers. It was a heartwrenching decision, and we agonized over it for months, but what else could we do?

We were surprised by the response my son’s coach gave us

When we approached my son’s coach at the end of last season to say we couldn’t keep up with three weekly practices and a busy tournament schedule, despite our love for his coaching, the club, and the team. He asked us why. I blurted out, “Honestly? We just need more nights free for homework and…life.”

What surprised me most was his response. Instead of a dismissal or saying, “It was nice knowing you,” he said, “Okay, I can work with that. We want your son on our team. Let’s figure out something that works for all of us.”

“Oh,” I said, stunned and expecting some caveats. But there were none. He wanted our child to continue, even if we could only make it to two out of three mandatory practices a week. In that moment, all the stress I’d built up evaporated.

In a world where people always seem to want more than I can give, our coach’s response was life-giving. It reminded me that I still had agency as a parent — something I’d started to forfeit with the ever-increasing pull on my time and energy.

Would another coach have agreed? Maybe not. However, because we were honest about our situation and the pressures on our family, he was willing to meet us halfway.

I got my agency back as a parent

It occurred to me afterward that my husband and I had more control over our family life than we’d realized. It may sound silly — we, after all, are the parents. Yet, in an effort to give our kids everything we think they want, we’d lost sight of what we, as a family, actually needed.

It often can feel like being involved in the culture of youth sports demands your life, your liberty, and, at the very least, all of your free time as a family. I’m not judging families who choose that pace. For some kids, an every-night schedule and constant tournaments are a perfect fit. But until that chat last season, we hadn’t taken a family pulse and asked what we wanted our lives to look like—time-wise. When we did, it made all the difference.

We discovered that despite the pull of school, homework, sports, and music lessons, we could take control of our story. We could choose how we wanted this chapter in our lives to play out.

Because of one conversation, our family is happier

Now, two months into the season, my child isn’t dreading practice — he’s excited to go, and so am I. He also has time to play the piano, eat dinner with us a few nights a week, and run around in the backyard with his siblings — the way I did when I was a kid.

My guess is that most coaches want what’s best for families. Ours certainly did. But we wouldn’t have discovered that had we not simply asked. And by skipping a practice, we got back something even better — not only time with our son, but also our agency as parents.

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