The Allowance of Sports in your Child's Life

It’s definitely a big decision making process the day your child comes home and decides to ask you if they can play a sport or not. Let’s be honest, as a parent, plenty of worry rushes into your mind about the safety of the child as well as their self-esteem should they not take to the sport very well. It’s completely natural for any parent to feel worried about a child wanting to play a sport, but with as many negatives that you can find about the situation, there are much more positives for a child playing sports. Of all the things a child could take away from sports, it’s easy to see how the pros can outweigh the cons in this situation. Yes, health is a factor should your child suffer some kind of unfortunate injury, but health is also a positive regarding sports. If your child is asking about joining a sports team, here are the positives that one can take away from athletics. Once again, health is an extremely positive for the world of sports because it keeps children active and teaches them benefits of stretching, working out and keeping the body moving in order to ensure better health. Sports can teach children the proper nutrition (proteins) and help them learn a healthy lifestyle for their youth and their future. Sports allow children to get into a team setting where they can learn teamwork and leadership abilities amongst their peers. The positive reassurance from other children and adults (coaches) will help with the child’s social skills and self-esteem that they can take with them in any situation whether it is a potential job interview or meeting the special people in their lives. Sports boost the level of confidence that a child may have through success and hard work. Along with the health and social positives, self-esteem is probably one of the biggest factors to how a child reacts throughout most of their lives. If they’re told they can’t do something or they’re not good enough, those words hold a negative effect on the child for quite some time. For children starting young, coaches and teammates alike are usually very positive no matter the given situation, allowing the child to keep a positive self-esteem while learning from any mistakes they may have made whether they missed the soccer ball, let someone make a basket on them or they simply made an error in baseball. The big picture to look at when deciding on if your child should participate in sports is the happiness of the child themselves. Of course, they may like one sport better than the other and if they are extremely happy to be playing, that goes a long way in how they will react throughout their time in sports. All too often children are pushed into sports that they don’t enjoy, but the parents are reliving their dreams through the child, so make sure it is the child’s choice on which sport to play and if they want to play.