[molson]

I wonder how the impacted kids talk about this stuff amongst themselves. 7 is so young, they're still the age where whatever their parents do just becomes their normal, their version of what the world is. Which is terrifying. Maybe 12 or so is old enough where you can mock the other kids whose parents act like this.

And 13 year old umpires and refs is a horrible idea. Really anybody choosing to ref is making a risky choice. That's where the change in youth sports can come, when nobody is willing to do this anymore. In the meantime, that job is only going to attract a certain kind of person who either can handle the harassment, or enjoys the confrontation and throwing it back at the harassers.

I never saw any of this as a kid in the 80s. I am very retroactively thankful for the positive environment my coaches and other parents created. I played youth sports in a time and place where the most embarrassing thing me or my friends could possibly imagine is our parents being too visible, at anything. I don't know if that was unusual at the time, but, it's still bizarre to me how aggressively involved some parents can be in every facet of their kids' life, including how they experience something that should be a coming-of-age/maturing/gaining independence kind of experience like youth sports. When I played the kids really were the focus, it wasn't about the parents.