From Olympic Awe To Everyday Parenting Lessons

We contrast the emotional highs of the Winter Olympics with the realities of youth sports in America and lay out a saner, joy-first path for families. From Norway’s fun-centered playbook to U.S. pressure, costs, and injuries, we share stories that restore perspective and practical steps that protect your kid’s love of sport.

Transcript

Welcome And Why We’re Here

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Legit Parenting, where we ditch the social media perfect parent advice and talk about what really happens and matters in the trenches of parenthood and family life. I'm Craig Nippenberg, father of four, grandfather of two, best-selling author, keynote speaker, and family therapist with over 40 years of experience helping parents understand how their kids' brains work. Through my books, private practice, and consulting work, I've developed practical strategies that help real parents navigate the tough stuff and build resilient kids. With me is Sidney Moreau, producer and your tell it like is mom friend who's living proof that Hot Mess Mom isn't a stereotype. It's a survival strategy and proof that it's okay. No judgment, no pretending, just real talk from a mom who gets it. Whether you're struggling with school drop-offs, navigating social media drama, trying to hold your marriage together, dealing with a divorce, or raising a kid who doesn't fit the bowl, you're in the right place. This is Legit Parenting, where we keep it real and remind you, just relax. You only need to be this side of good enough. Welcome to Legit Parenting. I'm your host, Craig Nippenberg, along with my producer, Sidney Moreau. Today we are going to continue on our series, How Do I Know If My Child Is Okay? We'll be continuing that, but today is a special short edition for the 2026 Winter Olympics. And I'll be touching on youth sports in America, which definitely dominates a lot of family life. So we'll be talking about both of those and some very compelling stories from the Olympics. It just brought me to tears watching it. So I just thought I'd make one comment. I had the privilege of having our grandkids over for a couple days while their mom was out of town. And my grandson, he's kindergartner, and I volunteered to chaperone for the class field trip to the children's Denver's Children's Museum. And after three hours of trying to keep up with these kids, they're running around everywhere. And then there was another chaperone, this young mom. She was great. She was fabulous. And I was exhausted. I went home and took an hour and a half nap. And it's why you should have kids when you're younger. Because I didn't have the energy. I was amazed by the mother. She was just awesome. But fun being with a grandson, but very tiring. Okay, on to the Olympics. I will tell you all, I am an Olympic geek. I have been since I can remember back in the 70s. 68 was the first one I watched. I think there was a 68 in Mexico City. And have been addicted to Olympics ever since. And I binge watch all of it. And now with streaming services, Peacock. I'd start at 6 a.m. as soon as I got up, turn it on, watched it live, and then watched the recap at night with my wife at the various special events. And I just love it all, including the opening ceremony when Andre Buselli sang from La Traviata. And it was just incredible. His voice is incredible. The song is amazing. I actually heard it in the Sydney Opera House back a couple months over holidays. And just loved it that right from the start. I love downhill race, ski racing, slalom, the men's and women's U.S. hockey teams, both with overtime wins for the gold medal. It was just incredible. Half pipe, speed skating, figure skating, my wife loves, so we would watch that together at night, even though I had seen it, but I didn't tell her who won. And we would watch that, and you're rooting for your favorite skaters and mystified by the judges and how they make decisions on things. Mono sled is just the wildest. There's a blob sled for one person. Was two of our athletes, both in their 40s, and mothers, won gold and bronze. That was just epic seeing that. And then holding their kids and celebrating with them. A four-man blob sled is incredible. I've always loved that. My favorite sport of all is biathlon. And those are the toughest athletes there. They are cross-country skiing at full speed. Their heart rate has got to be soaring. And then they come into the shooting lane. So they carry a rifle with them. It's a 22-caliber rifle. And they have to cut off and just slow down their heart rate so they can shoot the target, which is the 60 yards away, and it's the size of a golf ball. Just incredible. And if you miss, you have to do a like a 20-second penalty lap skiing. So it all comes down to both of those. So it's aerobic and anaerobic. And your heart rate variability has to go from all out to nothing so that you can shoot a gun. It really, they're amazing athletes. Most of them are drooling at the finish line. In 2022, my son and I were at the Winter Olympics in Utah. Excuse me, I'm getting over a cold. We were there, we saw the men's 20-kilometer biathlon. They actually had a stretcher crew at the finish line. And these guys would just collapse and they'd run out, pick them up, put them on the stretcher, and haul them off before the next guy came in. And to show you how geeky I am, I really got into curling and the U.S. women's curling team. It's very slow. It's a bit like a cricket match. And there's a lot of very technical rules, most of which I figured out. There was some that were mystified, but just loved it all. And so many inspirational stories. They just go on and on with these athletes, and I'll share a few at the end. But some things that were just really just beautiful, just amazing. Now, first, before I do that, I do want to talk about youth sports in America, an article I just read, and the Norway approach, how Norway deals with youth sports. It's fair to say, since around the late 70s, 80s, youth sports became a national obsession. All the parents getting enrolled their kids in team sports for the skill building and the socialization. There is some of that's important. But we from when I was a kid, we were allowed to do one activity a week. That was it. My mom was not going to be slumping us around. So when I played baseball in the summer, it was one practice a week and one game a week. That was it. Now the kids are practicing two, three, four times a week, plus games. They do travel trips, all these different things. And it's year-round. So kids will go from one club to another, move up in different soccer levels, and then you're traveling, and it can, it's a major expense for parents. And the time commitment on you as a parent with taking there, dropping them off, getting your other kids, going back, or maybe just sitting there for an hour while they're practicing. I used to watch my daughter play soccer, and I just sit there and read the paper and look up. It takes up a great deal of your family life and family time. And again, when I was a kid, there was nothing on Sundays. Sundays was a family day. There were no youth sports on Sundays. Now it's the whole weekend is taken up by tournaments. Now, what we know, so we got our kids in all these youth sports going. One of the nice things with COVID is you got to break from it, which is nice, but we're all back to it. 70% of American children drop out of sports at age 13. They don't last. There's very few that continue on or then play high school or college sports. We really drop off. Now, one of the therapy issues, I've worked with several student athletes, is always, and they started playing when they're young, is this kind of dynamic about is this really their joy and what they want to follow, or is this kind of the parents pushing it? And that's a tricky one. When if your child is in new sports, it should be led by them. They should feel joy, they should want to play. If they're not feeling it and they want to stop, you let them stop. It's not about the parents. Now, this article that I saw yesterday in the Wall Street Journal takes it all to a whole new level. I knew there was the concept 15, 20 years ago that started about redshirting, which you'd hold out your child from kindergarten an extra year so that they would be bigger and more athletic than the children, children their own age, and trying to give them a competitive advantage. This one, the title is I'm gonna read it to you, In Race for Deals, Boys Repeat a Grade. More redo eighth grade in bid of in bid to juice their college sports earning potential. And here's a quote for a man who said he poured tens of thousands of dollars into his son's baseball career, club team fees, tournament travel, and top-of-the-line equipment. Do you know how expensive baseball bats are now? It's incredible. I have one of my friends just bought a$300 bat for a kid. I'm like, good God. A high school approached, as high school approached, this man, this father, felt like that wasn't enough. So he paid$20,000 for his son, a Strat A student, to repeat a grade at a private middle school sports academy. So he he had him redo eighth grade, even though there was no academic interest. The draw to it was just giving him a little bit of extra time to develop and mature, he said, whose 15-year-old son has grown about three inches since August and hopes to be a strong competitor next year as a high school freshman. So he's hoping to make the varsity team as a freshman. Sixty other boys are repeating a grade at the same academy. The Togeth, where coursework includes throwing mechanics, game film reviews, nutrition, and plenty of exercise. So you're having your eighth grader repeat eighth grade just so they have an advantage. Now, what's driving that is the NIL money. So college sports athletes are now getting paid. Some make quite a bit. We had a couple from Colorado two years ago that made quite a bit of money in the NIL. And so that money is trickling down to the college level, and parents are really seeing sports as this like investment opportunity. And I'm wondering, what if this kid who's held back decides he doesn't want to play baseball anymore? Or because he's specializing in that sport so much, he's going to get an injury and need shoulder or arm surgery of some type because he's overusing it. So there's the whole overuse disorder that kids are getting injuries from. I just read yesterday as well now in high schools, Florida's main exemption that high school coaches can give up to$8,000 to a student athlete who's struggling with housing or food. So you're seeing money now trickle down even to the high school level. And our obsession with it just goes up and up. But there is another way. There's a whole nother way to do this. So if you watch the Olympics this past couple weeks, you saw that Norway, a very tiny country, finished with 41 total medals. That's an Olympic record for one country. They also set an Olympic record for 18 gold medals. They were wiping everybody out. So the question is, why are they so successful? They did a little expose on sports in Norway. I don't know if you caught it. It was a side deal that they were showing. And in Norway, they don't focus on competition. They focus on fun and outdoor family time that will last a lifetime. It's about being outside, being with family. And these film clips were amazing. Hundreds of kids cross-country skiing with their parents, ski jumps where you go down that big hill and shoot up into the air. They had mini ones that some four-year-old was going off of. They're eating, they're roasting hot dogs over the fireplace and marshmallows, and having family time and just having fun. The kids get to do it for free. So they have state-sponsored programs where the kids can use the ski jump and they get equipment. And it doesn't cost a dime. So you got cross-country skiing, downhill ski jumping, all for fun. And they don't start competition till the age of 13, the age which 70% of our kids quit. They don't start competition until 13. So there's no games, there's no scores, no competition, there's no rankings about who's the best or what team's the best. There's no early specialization in anyone's sport or mechanics. It's just for fun. The result is the majority of kids, so at least over 50%, continue on with sports for their lifetime. That is a whole nother way to approach youth sports is just let the kids have fun. And on another note, let them play outside and just have fun and be kids and not getting so cranked up. But it's always amazing to me when we're traveling. My wife and I were recently at a resort down in southern Colorado, and it was the state gymnastics championship, female gymnastics. It was amazing. Little girls, older ones, all dialed up, running around between the competitions, parents everywhere. We always joke that every anytime you go to a state hotel where there's a youth sports team there, the kids are running around wild at night, pushing the elevator buttons just cause a chaos, and the parents are in the lounge eating pizza and drinking. Like, really? It's something to behold. And I'm really into sports, but I think maybe we've overdone it with our children. And we need to take a step back and maybe do the nor way. Sydney, I saw you nodding your head. Do you think the same thing?

SPEAKER_00 15:08

Well, I grew up doing gymnastics and dance and through high school. And also I had one went completely through an art school playing a musical instrument that he now wants nothing to do with. So I think like the pressure that we put on kids in there wasn't like ever, I was never gonna be Mary Lou Rentin.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Mary Lou Renton, that's going back in Olympic history. I remember her.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

Well, that was like the inspiration when I was a kid.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Mary Lou Renton.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

But I was never gonna be that or anything like that. It wasn't competitive in the way that it's competitive now. But I do see the kind of the policy of what parents push. And then it met many of the kids that have serious injuries from these sports too, which then impacts their adult life as well.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

We didn't even touch on how the parents get so involved with the refs and the umpires being the fistfights in the stands and yelling at the umpires, who are just teenagers making some a little extra cash. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

And it's like they're taking it like it's the gold medal of the Olympics. No, these are fifth graders playing baseball. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Life goes on.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

Life goes on. Right. Yeah, it does. And it becomes so focused because it becomes so singularly focused. And then you didn't even touch on the family dynamics of it, of the pressure that a lot of these kids feel from their parents to be. And then like I have many when I went to Cherry Creek High School, which was filled with that's a very successful sport sports program. Because they couldn't. They didn't. So it is. It's a I've never been I never pushed it with any of my kids with sports. My daughter played gymnastics until COVID or competed in gymnastics till COVID. And then that was it. And I was like, okay, we're good. We're fine.

Injuries, Costs, And Family Strain

SPEAKER_01 17:08

I had this great. I was really impressed by a dad last night, his seventh grade son, is he wanted to try out for lacrosse and start playing lacrosse, which is a huge sport here in Colorado. And he's always played soccer, he's never played lacrosse. He's the only newbie in the whole group. And these kids have been playing since kindergarten or first grade. And I looked at him and I said, Man, you're like 10,000 hours behind. And yeah, he doesn't even know how to cradle the ball, how to he's working on the basic fundamentals and doesn't really understand the game. But he showed me his first bruise on his arm where he got whacked with a stick. And I'm like, that's lacrosse, man. But his dad was really cool, but he said we wanted to sport him trying something different, and it's up to him whether he wants to continue. We're not pressuring him. If he decides this isn't the thing for him, that's just fine. And I really thought that was great.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

And it's kind of sad too, because it like teaches this mentality of you're too late to try.

SPEAKER_01 18:05

I know.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

Right. Right? Like the kid that just wants fun in middle school.

Norway’s Fun-First Model

Parent Pressure And Burnout

Trying New Sports Without Fear

Aging Athletes And Risk

Grief, Grit, And Olympic Moments

U.S. Hockey Triumph And Legacy

SPEAKER_01 18:09

No, Norway, he'd just be if he was in Norway, he'd just be starting out. He might have played some pickup lacrosse, but it wasn't competitive yet. On the things of beauty make me cry from the Olympics. One of the things I was so impressed by, the two 40-year-old moms, the hockey players had their kids with them out on the ice, both the men's and women's team. Very impressive. And as I talked to some of my students who don't remember this, but back in the day, Olympic athletes couldn't get paid at all. So most Olympic athletes would do one, maybe two Olympics, because they had to make a living. They couldn't afford it. And now they're allowed to be paid. And what that has done is it's transformed these careers from one or two Olympics to four or five Olympics. That you can, there's not really an ending point, and some of the curlers are older than me, not quite older than me, but they're up there. And I really like that and support that, that these they should get compensated and be able to compete. And you are seeing older athletes that are doing amazing stuff. Of course, I'd have to mention Lindsay Vaughan here from Colorado, who's kind of controversial. A lot of people have mixed feelings about her deciding to come back in her 40s and rekindle her career and try to win Olympic gold. And I watched it live, and on the very first poll she had to go around, she made just a beginner's mistake and clipped it with her ski pool and went down and just shattered her leg. Yesterday she said in a news article that if they hadn't done surgery on her immediately, she would have had her leg amputated. She's back in the States now having more surgeries. But the scene of her getting lifted on a stretcher by a helicopter and wrapped up in a blanket and being taken off in a helicopter, it was bone chilling. Just holy shit. That's really creepy. So I do wish her well for her recovery, and you got to give it to her for trying, but that was something else. Another one that really caught my attention was this Norwegian skier, I think it was in the slalom, as I recall it. It was either slalom or downhill, and he was going for gold. And his grandfather had recently passed away, and he missed one of the poles, so he missed the gate, and he stopped, he fell down, he threw off his poes, he took his poles off and threw them up off the course, took off his skis, and just walked across the slope through the fence and across halfway across the mountain through another ski slope where nobody was in into the woods, right to the edge of the woods, and he just laid down next to the fence and he took off his gloves and he cried. And I'm sure he was thinking about his grandpa. That one was quite moving to see his desires end with a crash, but thinking about his grandpa. And then, of course, from Colorado is Michaela Schiffer, who is the greatest skier of all time, male and female, she has the record for most wins. She's incredible. I've loved her career at the Olympics two times ago, so eight years ago, then expose on her about her having anxiety before she races and how she deals with that through breath work, and she visualizes herself on the course before the race. She actually stands outside of the warm up hut and is out there by herself on the mountain, and she moves her body like she's going down the course as she visualizing it, but is able to overcome that. Now, this one she had all this weight on her shoulders because four years ago she didn't win any medals, she crashed, didn't do anything. So there's all this pressure. Is Michaela Schiffer going to get gold finally? Again, she did eight years ago, but is she going to get the monkey off her back? And in her first race, she didn't and finished 12th with her teammate. It was a partner's race. And she came down to her last race of the Olympics. And a couple nights before, she posted on Twitter or some social media, and I don't remember the first line. The other two, the second line she had, I thought was amazing. She said, tread lightly on uncertainties. So she wasn't sure if she would win or not, but she didn't want to go down a deep hole of obsessing about it. And that is a great advice. I've used that line several times with my kids this last couple weeks. That when life's uncertain, we don't know what's going on, we can really go down deep holes thinking about this and that, and what if it doesn't happen, what, what? And just tread lightly on it and show up and give your best. And she did, and she took the gold medal. And I couldn't have been happier, just exhilarating. But great advice for all of us. I get a lot of life knowledge just from sports. Okay, U.S. men's hockey team. A little backstory. In 1980 was the famous game. They called it the Miracle on Ice. They made a movie on it. Mike Rizzioni, I think, was our captain. We won the gold medal in 1960 and then again in 1980. And it was the semifinal game, the U.S. versus the Soviet Union. And if you're old enough to remember the Cold War and the Soviet Empire, they basically were an athletic machine. They produced pro-quality players for their hockey team and all their sports. And they've been canceling the Olympics for several of them now because of drug doping and all that. But, you know, this was the highlight of the head of the Cold War. And it's us versus the Soviet Union, their pro hockey team versus our college guys, because we didn't have paid athletes, so we couldn't have pros. So it's just ragtag uh hockey guys from college. And I was at the time, my buddy John Pettigrew and I, he's now departed. We're in Brighton, England. We traveled down to Brighton and Southern England for the weekend, and we were in a pub watching it. We were the only Americans. And of course, the Brits were pulling for the U.S. because Margaret Thatcher and the U.S. were close. And we won. And they picked us up in the air, celebrating, and bought us more beers than we could ever drink. But I'll never forget them picking up and cheering for the Yanks that we won. And then they went on to win the gold medal in the next game. That was like the start of, so I was 20 years old, 21, like that capped to the start of my adulthood, basically. And the win last week in 2026 was a cap to my adulthood. Like those all those years that covered my life. So that was very special to me. And another special point was in 2022 at the Winter Olympics. My son and I and brother were at the opening ceremonies when they brought the flag from 9-11 from the World Trade Center out on the stage, which everyone was crying. And then that Miracle and Ice team came up to light the cauldron. So pretty amazing. And they did it in this just tremendous, dramatic fashion. Our goaltender was lights out, made some just unbelievable stops. There was a minute and a half during the third period where we were two, we had two men in the penalty box. If you don't know hockey much, you usually have five skaters and one goalie. This case, Canada had five skaters and a goalie. We had a goalie and three skaters. And usually, if you were going to bet on that, that's a good bet that Canada would have scored. It's almost impossible to stop. And they did. And then one of the Yoes brothers, there were two sets of brothers for the U.S. team. He got his teeth, front teeth, knocked out and blood coming down at the end of the third period. It goes to OT and he scores the winning goal to put the U.S. over. Now that was exhilarating enough and so much fun. And then some of the backstories. So one was Brock Nelson, who plays for the Colorado Avalanche. His grandfather was on the 1960 gold medal team. His uncle was on the 1980 team. So his family lineage, they had two of those two gold medals were in his family, and he got the third one. So now they have three family members that have won those three gold medals, which is incredible. And another thing that really just made me so pleased was when my grandson was over, I was, uh I showed him the highlights of the game, and it ended early in the morning, and we were watching in the player interviews, and one of the players talked about how he did how he was playing for our country. And then he said, the generation before us and the generation to come. And my grandson plays hockey. He loves it, loves the sport. And I said, Hudson, he's talking to you. He wants you to do it now. That was very special. Now, the one that just, it's almost too hard to explain. But several years ago, Johnny Goudreaux, who was an NHL star, and his brother, who also played hockey, went out for a training bicycle ride. I think it was a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. And they were run over by a drunk driver, and both were killed. Their parents lost their two sons that afternoon. Their daughter, they still have a daughter, and Johnny, I don't know if his younger brother was married. Johnny had a wife and two children. And he was friends. All these U.S. players were friends with him. And so we're used to seeing our star athletes battle on the field. But what most people don't realize is that off the field, a lot of these guys are friends. They golf together, they hang out together, they go to different teams, they play for this team. In this case, they're all unified to play for the U.S. And at the end of the game, two of the players brought out a small U.S. jersey that said Goudreau on the back with his name on it. And when they did the team picture, we're all kneeling on the ice. They took that picture with his jersey and they skated around the ice with that jersey. And then, of course, the camera was showing Johnny's wife and his two toddlers, toddler preschooler, and his wife and the parents. And then on the next picture, one of our hockey players went over, I think it was Keith, uh Keith Kachuk's kid, one of the Kachuk kids. I saw their father play years ago, skated over and took Chinese kids in his arms and brought them out in the ice, little boy, little girl. And two of the players, they held each other child for the team photo. Just incredible. And it it's that resiliency out of devastation. And to see them honor their teammate, their friend, his family, his wife, and his kids was just truly moving. Just a beautiful thing. And that's mostly what makes me cry is when I see resiliency out of devastation. Just a beautiful thing. That's my hockey edition. Sydney, I gotta clean off a few tears here. Oh we want to thank you for tuning in. And if you liked it, please share it with a friend. And as always, as a parent, relax and remember you just have to be the side of good enough. Thank you.