Kids Play Soccer, Child and Family Services Is Called

Lenore Skenazy
Thu, 29 Jan 2026 16:49:18 -0800
Opinion

"Child-on-child aggression" is how child protective services categorized the incident — and why they decided to investigate. What the heck had happened?

As Park City, Utah, teacher Heather Bryant explained in a piece she wrote for her local paper, the Park Record, her kids — 12, 8 and 5 at the time — were playing a game of pickup soccer in the neighborhood. Sounds innocent enough, right?

But afterward, the mom of another boy who'd been in the game overheard him complaining to Bryant's 8-year-old that Bryant's older son had played rough. She then called the authorities.
Updated: Thu Jan 29, 2026

"Child-on-child aggression" is how child protective services categorized the incident — and why they decided to investigate. What the heck had happened?

As Park City, Utah, teacher Heather Bryant explained in a piece she wrote for her local paper, the Park Record, her kids — 12, 8 and 5 at the time — were playing a game of pickup soccer in the neighborhood. Sounds innocent enough, right?

But afterward, the mom of another boy who'd been in the game overheard him complaining to Bryant's 8-year-old that Bryant's older son had played rough. She then called the authorities.

What truly disturbs Bryant, she writes in her piece, is that somehow "a casual soccer match outside — kids running hard, voices raised, bodies colliding in the ordinary way children play — was later described as 'dysregulated' and overly rough. Normal physicality was reframed as aggression. Healthy competition became cause for alarm."

Once the Division of Child and Family Services was alerted, the system kicked into gear. A caseworker was dispatched to interview Bryant's three kids — at three different schools. Bryant didn't even hear about this until after it happened, when the caseworker called to say that the investigation had yielded nothing of note.

Nothing? For Bryant, a whole world of worry had just opened up! The caseworker's call, she told me, knocked her "sideways" and left her shaking. She started worrying whenever her kids were playing with their friends. Would the other kids say something to their parents? Would she be investigated again?

And what did it mean that she, a longtime teacher who wanted to give her kids some bracing, confidence-building unsupervised time, had had her parenting second-guessed?

Bryant had moved to Park City in part because it's such an outdoorsy place. Tons of ski kids are on the slopes instead of inside on screens. How healthy!

"Helicopter parenting is associated with higher anxiety, lower resilience, and reduced independence in children," Bryant wrote in The Park Record. "Yet this approach is increasingly normalized and protected, while parenting that allows for age-appropriate freedom is treated as suspect."

In the end, thank goodness, the caseworker told Bryant, "We want to reassure you that your children are all clearly well-adjusted. No further action will be taken." In other words, the case was closed.

That's a victory for common sense. But here's the foundational problem: We think of kids today as fragile. Hearing about a spat or fight or almost anything upsetting, we — parents, onlookers, government authorities — have become conditioned to leap in for fear that the kids will be damaged.

Completely discounted is the fact that there's damage in undermining kids' innate resilience. One reason kids are so anxious and depressed lately is likely that they get so few chances to work things out on their own. If you never figure out how to deal with an older kid playing rough, you never learn how much you can handle. Instead, an adult is always there to solve the problems (or call a hotline).

Meanwhile, the parents get stuck in anxiety mode. By being with our kids so much of the time, so close, we near all the little spats and squabbles. Minor things that would have been forgotten are now witnessed, worried about and turned into "issues." Why is that progress?

After Bryant wrote her opinion piece, she reposted it on Nextdoor and got over 50 comments, all of them supportive. Turns out no one likes parenting under a microscope.

Growing up under one isn't great, either.