Importance of Team Sports For

Children

As their children grow up, every set ofparents has a different idea as to whatshould be the main focus of theirupbringing and how they should spendtheir free time, especially when it comes toextra-curricular activities. Some parentsplace a huge emphasis on academics andwant their children doing extra reading orworking with a tutor. Other parents areheavily into sports and want their childrento focus on sports.

Some parents simply want their childrento be children and don’t push them in anyparticular direction at all.

In most cases, schools give children at leastsome opportunity to participate in a teamsport. Along with the team sports that aretaught during physical education classes,there are usually a few varsity sportsteams that will represent the school whilecompeting against other schools in thearea.

In addition to this, most communities havea few organized sports leagues thatchildren can be active in.

In my opinion, participation in team sportsis vital to healthy social, physical andemotional development. Participating in asports team exposes children to a range ofchallenges in a team environment wherethey are forced to work with others, relyon others at times and also to encourage orroot for others on their team.

All of this leads to the development of acooperative mindset. Now although all ofthis sounds ideal, I am aware that it doesnot always work out this way. Some timesa child might be a ‘ball hog’ and refuse topass the ball, or want to score all of thegoals themselves. But with time, even thischild learns at some point that they mustwork with others if they want to see truesuccess.

Some kids just love sports and have anatural tendency towards them. There isvery little that a parent could do to stop a

child like this from participating in sports.Other children are quite nonchalant aboutsports, and some children even hate sports.A variety of factors can influence the waythat children feel about sports.

Sometimes they are shy or insecure aboutthe abilities yet with a littleencouragement they will get out there anddo fine. At times, a child may have aphysical attribute that they are consciousor overly conscious about that stops themfrom doing a sporting activity they would

love. I encourage parents to find at leastone team sport that their children canbecome involved in. Not all team sportshave to be high impact activities or‘popular’ sports. A swim team is great for achild that is not boisterous or overlyphysical. Some schools have sailing as anextra curricular activity which again fallsoutside of the typical team sport.

I believe that team sports teach childrennot only how to compete, but how tocompete fairly within structuredboundaries. This is an important life lessonand the skills and the disciplines that theylearn in sports will definitely last them alifetime. Team sports will teach childrenhow to communicate, since most teamsports require children not only to talk toeach other while the activity is takingplace but also how to plan strategies for anupcoming event and how to debrief or

review things that have happened in agame. Perhaps most importantly, teamsports teach children how to succeed andhow to fail since inevitably throughouteach season of their sport their team willdo both. With every win and loss, childrenlearn coping skills. These again areimportant skills to develop in a child andthey will last them throughout life.

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