I remember when we first moved to suburbia and my kids were really young. On those rare occasions that we were out after dark and were driving by the town's main playing field -- fondly known as the Rec Field -- we would invariably see teenage boys practicing some sport.

Susan Wiseman is a writer, blogger, former lawyer, current mother, strategic consultant and (sometim...read more

I remember looking down my nose from my perch high up in my minivan (it was my first car in suburbia -- what did I know?) and I would think, those parents are crazy. My son would never be out playing sports at 9:00 at night. I was never going to be that parent.

And now, 11 years later, I have become that parent.

The thing is, I just don't know how it happened. My son plays pretty much anything with a ball. Soccer, football, baseball, basketball. Didn't these sports used to have firmly delineated seasons? It seems like now it is all sports, all the time.

Soccer, a fall sport, continues into the spring. Baseball, a spring sport, has spread into the fall. Basketball, the winter sport, starts practices in the fall, plays all winter and then has play-offs in the spring. Football...well when I think about football, I think cold, dark and broken bones. I just don't share the joy of football.

We have our annual broken bone (usually a finger -- almost always on the growth plate, as if anyone even knows what that means; I mean come on, what plate?...where?...I've seen the x-rays and I have yet to see a plate, much less a broken one) from football, soccer or basketball.

When my son first started breaking things, I was inexperienced, so I'd look for the tell-tale signs of a break. The stuff you always thought you'd see -- you know the drill: swelling, discoloration, inability to move the swollen blue appendage. But I never got those symptoms. So we'd ice the thing down when we got home and I'd play the whole thing down -- "You're fine, it's just bruised". And I'd send him to school the next day and get that call from the nurse. The one she makes home right before she calls child protective services.

So the next time he came home saying he hurt his finger, I went straight to the emergency room. Does anyone else get that friendly smile of recognition in their local ER? Naturally, it wasn't broken. So now, it's a total crap shoot. When we go to the ER, it's never broken. When I ignore it, it almost always is. The doctor who put the most recent cast on -- thumb broken during football practice on, that's right, the growth plate -- actually thanked me for all the business. (Still don't know if he was joking or serious. Still don't know whether his expression of gratitude was lovely or offensive).

So I muddle on, trying my darndest not to cause my pediatrician to feel the need to report my inadequate parenting. We have sports every day of the week, sometimes two sports in one day. Wednesday night is basketball until 9:30 and Thursday night is soccer, at the Rec Field, until around 9:15. I see them out there -- the moms with tiny little boys belted into their car seats, looking down their noses at me as they drive by in their minivans. I know just what they are thinking. ...read more blogs