Andy here. Chad’s on a terrific roll here and he’ll continue blogging and I’m going to ease back in. We’re also kicking around some ideas for the blog. In the meantime I will post some, too, from time to time.

Today I wanted to share this article I read over the weekend about kids and sports. Getting harder to find officials who want to deal with obnoxious – or in some cases dangerous – parents.  This is not a new problem but it’s a sign of the times.

One of my daughters plays ice hockey and last season we got a league-wide note from one of the leagues she plays in about parent conduct at games. There was a list of behavior that at first reading seemed to be just (extreme) examples of the kind of thing not to do, my wife and I had not seen any of those episodes at games. Upon closer reading we saw it was a list of actual events during the season to that point. And some of them were pretty off the wall – or in one case on the wall, a parent climbing onto the boards to swear at a referee over the plexiglass.

Like many I am concerned that kids are too stressed today and mental health is an under appreciated – and under supported – issue for youth. But, perhaps in our rush to find various culprits, tests, homework, schools, social media, and so forth we overlook the broader and less quantifiable one in plain sight: culture.