@coffee addict
“There’s a family I know that their son liked watching soccer so when I asked the father why he lets him the father replied “you got to pick your battles”
The kid isn’t Frum now”
It is absolutely impossible to draw conclusions from this type of anecdotal evidence. For every such story, there is at least one where the parents did not allow the children to watch or follow sports, apparently (eventually) driving their children OTD, and another story where allowing the children to watch/follow sports apparently kept them Frum.
Here is an observation I have had about some families where the parents use the rationalization of “you got to pick your battles.” This is a pattern of behavior I (as a Rebbe) have seen for years, sometimes throughout the whole family, sometimes in reference to only some of the children.
Parents use this mantra to excuse themselves from the hard work of parenting. In each particular case, when asked, they take the high road of “picking battles”, but in reality, they just don’t want to have to discipline their children. The message these children get is that their parents don’t really stand for anything, that they have no principles other than personal convenience. If this is the case, it certainly understandable that the children may end up OTD.