Column: Why youth sports drive parents crazy and 10 more lessons from a mom who's been through it
This column is the second installment in a series on parenting children in the final years of high school, "Emptying the Nest."
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A while back, I sat in the aggressive discomfort of the bleachers at my youngest daughter's high school basketball game and vibrated with rage. After nearly 20 years of watching my children play youth sports, I thought I had tamed the "What game are you looking at, ref?" beast that lurks within us all, but no. There it was, roaring to life as my daughter, for reasons clear only to the men with whistles, fouled out in the third quarter.
I didn't yell or suggest that the officials were in cahoots with the other team, as some people to whom I am married did. But I did exacerbate my TMJ. Of course my daughter commits fouls. Everyone commits fouls. But most of these calls appeared ridiculous.
Though not, perhaps, as ridiculous as me. There I sat, a full-grown woman, aware that I was watching the next-to-last season of a decade's worth of high school sports, and ruining
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