A Mom’s “Rookie Mistake” Raises Questions About The Right Age To Start Kids In Sports

There’s so much to learn as a parent. There’s everything to learn, in fact. We don’t know what we don’t know, and so it’s no coincidence that our kids’ early years—especially our oldest kid’s early years—are full of moments where we stare into the middle distance, stewing in quiet, resigned regrets. And Emily, who posts on TikTok as @emily_wehner recently discovered one such moment on a bright Saturday morning...

“We did the thing that apparently every first time parent does and then regrets, which is sign your kid up too early for soccer,” she begins. “Our son is 3, almost 4, and we signed him up for soccer this fall. I was like ‘This will be a fun activity for us! We’ll get to go hang out with our friends and stuff.’ Which we did, [but] also then you lose Saturday mornings.”

It wasn’t bad, but it did bring about an important realization: they were definitely rushing things and trying to do too much.

“The chaos of our life right now is that we have small children at our house. We will get to the stage of life where we will be doing a lot of activities outside of our house ... but we are not at that stage and I don’t want to get to that stage too early.”

Too late now, obviously: she and her partner are locked in for another few weeks of scrambling out of the house before 9. But, in the spirit of live and learn, she says that subsequent children will likely wait until they’re 5 or 6 before starting soccer.

“Kids sports/activities under age 5 is like trying to herd drunk adults that always run off,” muses one comment.

“Don’t do it,” warns another... albeit a bit late. “They are always the earliest game. Waking up at 6:30 am to watch them run in circles...”

But it seems that Emily’s video has served as a cautionary tale for at least one other parent out there.

“My fyp knew I was planning to sign my 3yr old up for soccer,” they write. “Thank you for this.”

Obviously, of course, we get it. Even before our kids are born, we often daydream about introducing them to different activities, particularly the ones we love and want to share with them. As a former theater kid, I always hoped my kids would get involved in plays and choruses. My husband always looked forward to enjoying afternoons of crafting and board games with our children. And now that they’re older it’s great... not so much when they were still of an age when they could reasonably remember pooping their pants as a matter of course. Because no parent should have to manage both a practice schedule and a nap schedule.

So if you feel the urge to go out and do the most, remember: good things come to those who wait.