Parenting is full of tough choices. Every day you wonder if you're making the right ones. Luckily, someone is always ready to offer an opinion.

Allowing my son to try out for and play on one of Edina's "ultracompetitive," "parent-fueled" fourth-grade basketball teams is not a choice I had lost sleep over. However, judging from the article and the online comments on Tuesday ("How early is too early?" Feb. 10), my husband and I are anywhere from "living through our son" to downright "abusive" for letting him play.

I say "allowing" and "letting" because, as it turns out, children are not "little adults," but are, in fact, growing-by-the-minute people, with their own thoughts, drives and wishes. When our son asked if he could try out, we discussed it together. Why would he want to if it wasn't because we pushed him? He likes competition; he wants to learn more, faster. And he likes basketball.

His first year of organized basketball was last year in Edina's house league, a less rigorous, though often even less-equitable choice. If you recall, last winter, with its polar vortex, schools and outside activities were canceled many days, including basketball practices and games. House basketball has a short season to begin with. So, because we don't like to overschedule our kids — yes, we have made that mistake before — we were left with an active, extroverted, intense, competitive boy cooped up for much of the excruciatingly long winter. Yes, he played with friends, but he also went a lot of stir-crazy.

Staring down the barrel of another loaded winter, we said, "Yes! Please!" to more basketball.

My son is on a lower-level B team, not the A team depicted in the article, but I don't believe the experience is all that different. He will have played fewer games than that team, probably will have lost a few more and may practice a bit less. He has two practices a week (or less) and, yes, several tournaments, which are only on weekends. He has fun, he's learning a ton (some about basketball, and much about teamwork, giving your all, working hard, being a friend, and all of the wonderful things sports can teach) and he's keeping active. In his spare time, of which there is still a great deal, he does his homework, plays knee-hockey, skis, skates, hangs out with friends and reads books. He and his teammates have had to miss games and practices here and there for illnesses, school activities, family trips, religious events, robotics and other reasons. Though the team prefers having "all their guys," coaches and parents have understood.

At the Cake Eater Classic (named with tongue firmly in cheek) tournament mentioned in the article, the team spent its downtime playing some sort of made-up game, running around in the halls, being told to stop, watching other teams play and looking an awful lot like "kids being kids," with some basketball in between. As for the money, doing the math on a season lasting from November to March makes it incidentally the most affordable of the club teams our children have participated in, including baseball, soccer, skiing and swimming.

My experience with other parents has been heartening, including interactions with other teams. The players, parents, coaches and referees are not perfect, but in our experience this season, if anything wasn't right, it has been handled well.

Youth sports are a target-rich environment for things gone wrong. I've seen them and I've lived them. Our own experience of Edina fourth-grade traveling basketball has been positive — youth sports gone right.

It's hardly the most competitive, expensive or time-consuming youth sport for fourth-graders in Edina, and Edina is hardly the most competitive, costly or time-consuming place to play traveling fourth-grade basketball. I'm just hoping that my son wants to try out again next year, because one thing parent-approved is that basketball is always played indoors in a heated gym when the polar vortex rages outside.

Letting kids be kids sometimes means playing more basketball.

Michele Miller lives in Edina.