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March/2010/children & sports |
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Whether or not you ever participated in sports as a child, or have your children involved in sports now, this article will explain the correlation between children and their involvement with sports, and how it may or may not affect them.
In sports, childhood involvement is the strongest predictor of adult involvement. Adult athletes often find themselves having participated actively at ages 8 & 9, a prime age to start getting involved.
Youth sports participation have important psychological consequences for children. Receiving positive support from family, peers, and teachers influence participation in sports. Through team sports, motivation for participation can be enhanced, stress can be managed and productively used, and self-worthiness can be developed.
On the other hand, negative youth sports experiences can erode motivations for participation, produce excessive stress, and destroy feelings of self-worth. It could even condone negative behaviors such as cheating and violence. So in other words, team sports aren’t for everyone. Sports participation isn’t automatically beneficial or detrimental, the quality of experiences determines whether beneficial or detrimental affects.
Young athletes who benefit form positive outcomes associated with sports will enjoy increased motivation to achieve and will continue sports participation. Studies prove that the biggest factor for children who continue participating was paternal support. After paternal support, the next biggest influences are coaching behaviors, teammate interactions, relate to the liking of the sport for most children.
A few ways to encourage your children are to: give plenty of sincere praise and encouragement, develop realistic expectations, reward effort as much as outcome, reward correct technique, not just outcome, and lastly employ a ‘sandwich approach’ to error correction (praise/encourage, suggest corrections for improvement, encourage again)
It’s been observed that the kids from grades 5-7 start taking games and gaming seriously and this is the time when winning counts. It’s important to implement during this time that winning isn’t everything, but best efforts should always be given. In fact,most young athletes would rather participate in a losing team than sit on the bench of a winning team. this way, they learn how to enjoy performing, and lose the stress of feeling they have to win.
The importance of physical activity such as team sports is at an all-time high due to the fact that many of our children are now overweight. Currently studies show that only 1 out of 4 adolescent children participated regularly in any type of organized physical activity. The number of obese adolescents in America has nearly tripled in the past 20 years in 1999 14% had weight issues.
Exercises has been shown to help many problems for both the mental and physical. Exercise is known to aid insomnia, depression, and low self-esteem. Important in today’s world where many children feel inadequate due to all the perfection displayed by the media. Exercise also helps manage stress, alertness and a calm attitude.
While there are different reactions to playing on a team sport, the physical and mental benefits associate with team sports are substantial and not to be ignored.
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