The number one reason why your child won't join in at sport.

A few years ago my son was booted from his under-six soccer team.

It was done very politely – “sidelined” might be a better term for it.

It was delicately suggested that “another team” might suit him better; that in the following season their focus was changing.

It was a semi transparent way of telling me he wasn’t quite good enough. They were on track to win, and having a child who had only kicked the ball a few times in the season (let alone a goal) wasn’t their idea of a successful combination.

Failure to qualify at the age of six.

My son wasn’t too bothered he had liked soccer at the start and by the end of the season hated it. He cried each time I told him he had practice. He stuck his five-year old boots in the ground and refused to run on. He wasn’t enjoying it. He wanted to quit.

It’s not unusual. In fact across many developed nations, including Australia, the number of children playing team sports is falling.

In Australia about 250,000 children drop out of organised sport each year and the dropout rate is rising by 10 per cent every year.

The main age is by 13 – when 70% of kids drop out of organised sport.

In an article for The Washington Post Mark Hyman, a professor of sports management at George Washington University and the author of several books on youth sports said that the problem was that many of the sporting bodies tailor their programs to meet the needs of the most talented kids.

He said that the fact participation rates were falling came down to one thing: overly competitive parents.

“We no longer value participation. We value excellence.”

Of course there are other reasons – and anyone who has ever paid $190 each to sign two sons up for cricket recently will know my pain, coupled with our busy lives it sometimes gets to the point that kids just do too much – and we have to make the difficult decision to withdraw our child from an activity they enjoy.

But experts say that when it’s the child’s decision to quit the number one reason is that it isn’t fun and in the majority of cases us adults are the ones to blame.

“The adults have won,” Hyman told The Washington Post “If we wiped the slate clean and reinvented youth sports from scratch by putting the physical and emotional needs of kids first, how different would it look? Nothing would be recognisable.”

What we forget is what the kids want.

A team of researchers at George Washington University surveyed nearly 150 children about what they found fun about sports.

The kids identified 81 factors contributing to their happiness.

Can you guess what they were? Can you imagine that what makes sport fun for kids?

Coming in at number 48 was winning.

The Washington Post writes that also low on the list was playing in tournaments, “cool uniforms and expensive equipment”. Whereas high on the list: positive team dynamics, trying hard, positive coaching and learning.

But the researchers told the newspaper that when they inform parents of these surveys they refuse to believe it.

This kid really isn't interested in this game. Post continues after video. 

After my son was booted off the Under-six A League All Stars we found a team better suited to him.

They trained only once a week (thank god.)

They gave everyone a go, not just the kids who were high scorers and there was no pressure to succeed. The parents in this team didn’t yell from the sidelines (well not as much) and there were no emailed game plans the night before the big matches.

It taught me what I now know the experts all say.

If you want kids to like sport, to continue with sport, to want to go to sport and to join in it’s simple. You can make it fun again but it takes restraint and careful planning because it comes down to you, not your kids.

The answer is to back off.

Are you concerned about the drop out rate from organised sport?