Last night my son participated in the third night of tryouts for the traveling baseball team that will compete next spring. While watching these young boys give their best effort, I noticed something that I had never really paid much attention to before.

Parenting has become the most competitive adult sport.

You might think this sounds like a ridiculous statement, although one only needs to visit a local youth sporting event to see this in action.

When a child performs a superb play on the field, it isn’t too hard to pick the parents out of the crowd as they are likely grinning from ear to ear and commenting to anyone within earshot that that is their child. The shocking thing is that often times this sense of pride in their child is more about them than it is about the child.

Likewise, when a child fails to make a play, more often than not there is a parent waiting on the sideline with words of criticism rather than encouragement.

This behavior isn’t unique to sports either.

You will find parents competing with one another when it comes to their child’s athletic accomplishments, academic accomplishments, and social accomplishments.

To be honest, I am not even sure that many parents realize what they are doing. This behavior is grown from good intentions, as we all want to be the best parents we can and help guide our children down the path of success. However, conversations about our children quickly become a game of oneupmanship with other parents.

Parent Smith: “Johnny had a great year, he received straight A’s again!”

Parent Jones: “That’s great, Jane had straight A’s in all of her advanced placement classes for the third straight year.”

Not wanting to be outdone by another parent’s boasting, the following response is not uncommon:

Parent Smith: “Right, Johnny would have taken the advanced placement classes too but between being the star quarterback and his volunteer work he just didn’t have the time.”

By now you probably think I am joking.

I wish that I were.

While not verbatim, these are scenarios that I have witnessed and conversations that I have overheard in my community.

Parents are competing with one another and the game is their children’s lives.

Children are being forced into competitive sports, signed up for extracurricular activities, and enrolled in additional educational courses. The fear is that if your child is not excelling in all of these areas that they will be a failure, which means that you have lost the parenting game.

There are preschools near my home that charge an annual tuition that exceeds many colleges and universities. Would you believe that there is a waiting list for enrollment in these preschools?

Watching the parents that were watching their children compete on the baseball field really made me recognize this twisted sense of competition between the parents. There were parents chastising their kids for missing a ball. There were parents screaming at their child to try harder. There were even parents making a point to recognize the failures of other children, as that means their child has a better chance of making the team.

It was a rather sickening experience, one which I wish that I could tell you that I have never been guilty of but I am certain that I have done it as well.

Why are we, as parents, competing so heartily with one another?