Your kid says their arm is "a little sore." They've said it before. They keep playing. You figure it's normal. Kids complain, right? They're probably fine.
Three months later, you're sitting in an orthopedic office hearing words like "stress fracture" and "six weeks of no activity" and wondering how you missed it.
This is how overuse injuries happen. Not with a dramatic moment on the field. Not with a pop or a fall or a stretcher. They sneak up slowly, one "I'm fine" at a time, until suddenly they're not fine at all.
And here's the part that's hard to hear: a lot of these injuries are preventable. Not with expensive training programs or specialized equipment. With boring, unsexy parent habits that don't make for great Instagram content but do keep kids healthy and playing longer.
What Overuse Injuries Actually Are
A quick distinction: acute injuries happen in a moment. A twisted ankle. A collision. A fall. You see it happen, you deal with it.
Overuse injuries are different. They develop over time from repetitive stress on bones, muscles, and tendons that haven't had enough time to recover. Think Little League elbow, swimmer's shoulder, shin splints, stress fractures. The damage accumulates quietly until something finally gives.
These injuries are increasingly common in young athletes, and the reasons aren't mysterious. Kids are specializing in single sports earlier. They're playing year-round instead of taking off-seasons. They're doing more repetitions of the same movements than their growing bodies can handle.
The good news is that parents have more influence over this than they might think.
The "They Said They Were Fine" Trap
Kids are unreliable reporters of their own pain. This isn't because they're lying. It's because they're kids.
They want to play. They don't want to let the team down. They're worried about losing their spot. They've absorbed the message (from coaches, from culture, from sports movies) that toughness means pushing through. So they minimize. They say "it's not that bad." They hide limps when they think you're watching.
Your job is to watch anyway.
Pay attention to changes in movement. Are they favoring one side? Has their throwing motion changed? Are they running differently than they used to? Sometimes the body tells you what the mouth won't.
Ask specific questions instead of general ones. "Does your arm hurt?" will get you "no" almost every time. "Point to where it bothers you" or "on a scale of 1-10, how did your knee feel after practice today?" gets you better information.
And when they do admit something hurts, take it seriously the first time. The "let's wait and see" approach is how minor issues become major ones.
The Year-Round Problem
Here's a sentence that would have sounded insane to parents thirty years ago: your 10-year-old plays the same sport twelve months a year.
But that's the reality for a lot of families now. Fall ball bleeds into winter training which bleeds into spring season which bleeds into summer tournaments. There's always another team to join, another showcase to attend, another coach suggesting that taking time off will put your kid "behind."
Behind what, exactly?
Young bodies need rest. Not just days off, but actual off-seasons where they're not doing the same repetitive movements. The research on this is clear: kids who specialize early and play year-round get injured more often. Not because they're unlucky. Because their bodies never get a chance to recover.
This doesn't mean your kid has to quit their favorite sport. It means building in real breaks. It means maybe playing a different sport in the off-season that uses different muscle groups. It means resisting the pressure to do more, more, more when their body is asking for less.
The Magic of Doing... Less
There's a concept in training called the 10% rule: don't increase intensity, duration, or frequency by more than 10% per week. It's boring. It's not aggressive. It works.
Young athletes get into trouble when volume spikes suddenly. They take two months off, then jump back into full practices. They make a new team and suddenly they're training twice as much as before. They go to a week-long intensive camp and do more in seven days than they normally do in a month.
These spikes are where injuries happen. The body can adapt to increased demands, but it needs time. Rushing that process is how you end up in the orthopedic office.
As a parent, you can be the voice of gradual progression even when coaches and culture are pushing for more. "Let's ease back into it." "Maybe skip the second session today." "You've had a big week, let's take tomorrow off." These aren't signs of weakness. They're injury prevention.
Rest Days Aren't Lazy. They're Strategy.
Somewhere along the way, rest became a dirty word in youth sports. Taking a day off feels like falling behind. Sitting out feels like quitting.
This is backwards.
Rest is when the body repairs itself. It's when muscles rebuild stronger. It's when bones recover from the stress you've been putting on them. Without adequate rest, you're not building an athlete. You're grinding one down.
At minimum, young athletes need one to two days off per week from organized sports activity. Not "active recovery." Not "light training." Actual rest. Playing in the backyard doesn't count if they're still doing the same movements. The body needs a real break.
And sleep matters more than most parents realize. Growth hormone is released during deep sleep. Tissue repair happens during sleep. A young athlete who's training hard but sleeping six hours a night is sabotaging their own recovery.
The Conversation Nobody Wants to Have
Sometimes preventing overuse injuries means saying no to things your kid wants to do. The extra tournament. The second travel team. The showcase that conflicts with their only week off all summer.
These conversations are hard. Your kid might be upset. They might feel like you're holding them back. They might point out that their teammate is doing all of it.
You get to be the parent anyway.
"I know you want to do this, and I love how much you love this sport. But your body needs a break, and it's my job to make sure you can keep playing for a long time. Let's skip this one."
That's not being overprotective. That's being smart. The kids who have long, healthy athletic careers aren't the ones who did the most at age 12. They're the ones whose parents protected their bodies when they were too young to do it themselves.
Warning Signs to Actually Watch For
Not every ache is an overuse injury. But some patterns should get your attention:
Pain that shows up during activity and gets worse over time, rather than improving as they warm up.
Pain that lingers after activity ends, especially if it's still there the next day.
Pain that keeps coming back in the same spot, even after rest.
Swelling, tenderness, or visible changes in a joint or limb.
Changes in performance or movement patterns that don't have another explanation.
Any of these warrant a conversation with a doctor, not a "let's wait and see." Early intervention is almost always easier than late intervention.
The Long Game
Your kid's athletic career is a marathon, not a sprint. The goal isn't to maximize their output at age 11. It's to help them build a body that can keep doing what they love for decades.
That means being the parent who notices when something's off. Who builds in rest even when the culture says go. Who understands that doing less now often means being able to do more later.
It's not dramatic. It won't get you any recognition. But it might be the difference between a kid who plays through high school and beyond, and one who burns out with a preventable injury before they ever get there.
Your kid will probably never thank you for making them take a day off. That's okay. You're not doing it for the thank you. You're doing it because you can see what they can't: a long, healthy future in the sport they love.
And that's worth protecting.
Ian Goldberg is the CEO of Signature Media and the Editor of the largest and fastest growing sports parenting newsletter. He's been recognized as an industry expert by the National Alliance for Youth Sports, the US Olympic Committee's Truesport, and the Aspen Institute's Project Play. Ian is also a suburban NJ sports dad of two teenage daughters and has over 2,000 hours of volunteer time coaching them (which he calls the most fun form of R&D for his newsletter content). Ian and his team provide players, coaches, parents and program directors with the articles and content they need to have a great sports season. Ian has spent most of his career in digital product development and marketing and got his start at the White House where he worked for the economic advisors to two US Presidents.
