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SportsEssential.co.uk Featured Article
7 Good Reasons to Get Your Child Involved in Sports
By
Stacie Mahoe
Encourage a Healthy Lifestyle
Making exercise a part of your child’s life teaches your
child the importance of fitness. This, along with proper
nutrition, plays a vital role in maintaining health.
Children need physical activity every day and
participation in sports helps fill this need. With
today’s wealth of video games and increasing computer
literacy, daily physical activity is often times
forgotten. Getting your child involved with sports helps
them make exercise a part of their lifestyle and
increases their chance of a being a healthier adult.
Promote Self Esteem
When a child realizes that they are getting better and
better at their sport, they can’t help but feel a sense
of accomplishment. Choosing a sport your child can grow
and improve in gives your child an opportunity to build
self-esteem. Together, with positive reinforcement from
you their parent, they will gain confidence and have a
more positive view of themselves.
Learn Goal Setting
I’m sure you’ll agree goal setting and success go hand
in hand. Participation in sports gives your child a fun,
practical way to learn about goal setting. They’ll see,
experience, and learn about how goal setting works. If
your child’s coach doesn’t cover goal setting, that’s
okay! You as a parent can sit down with your child and
set goals. By assisting your child in developing this
skill, you give them a better chance at succeeding in
life.
Learn and Experience Teamwork
How often have you read a help wanted ad where the
employer wants a “team player” or a candidate that
“works well with others”? I see it all the time. How
much more valuable are you as an employee when you can
put differences aside and get the job done? Sports teach
children about teamwork and about how their actions
affect other people. If they can’t learn to work
together with teammates while playing a sport they
enjoy, how will they be able to work with co-workers
they may or may not like while performing a job they may
or may not enjoy? This is an important lesson to learn.
Encourage your child to be a team player and, as a
sports parent, keep tabs on whether or not your words
and actions promote this trait in your child.
Develop Time Management Skills
Adding extracurricular activities to your child’s
schedule encourages development of and time management
and prioritization skills. Teach your child that taking
care of responsibilities, such as school work and
cleaning up after themselves, comes first. This gives
them their first taste of prioritization. Next, help
your child formulate a plan which enables them to
efficiently handle their responsibilities while still
leaving time for sports practices and competitions. For
example, show your child how working on homework instead
of playing outside during their after-school program
helps them finish their homework in time for practice
each day. Then go ahead and make that part of your plan.
Learn About Dealing with Adversity
Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone has problems. How well
you handle these mistakes and problems directly affects
happiness and quality of life. Many people “get in a
slump” and can’t get out of it. Others continue making
the same mistakes over and over again. In sports, we
always try to minimize errors, but we’re human. Mistakes
happen. Even professional athletes make bad choices and
make bad plays, but it’s not the mistake that counts.
What you do from that point forward carries much more
significance. If your child learns how to deal with
adversity, errors, and challenges in sports, chances
are, they’ll be able to translate that skill to real
life and effectively minimize mistakes and/or bad
decisions as well as competently recover from set backs.
Have Fun!
Positive experiences play an essential role in raising a
happy, healthy human being. Sports provide numerous
opportunities for positive experiences both for your
child as an individual, and for your family as a whole.
“Sports parents” are blessed with the chance to watch
their child have fun while learning and developing as an
athlete and as a human being.
Stacie
Mahoe, http://www.AllAboutFastpitch.com. Sign up for a
FREE Speed Training e-Course at AllAboutFastpitch.com/GetSpeed.html |
