3 Positive Reasons Why Parents Should Encourage Their Children To Play Sports
Pushing your kids into playing sports can set them up for success.
Boxed Water Is Better on Unsplash I was forced to wrestle back in 7th grade because my parents wanted me to participate in sports. As a kid, I hated the idea of working out and when I started, I wasn’t as good as the other players.
This continued until one day, during my freshman year of high school, I dislocated my knee cap at practice. If you've never dislocated a body part, just imagine the worst pain you can experience — times 20. I knew something had to change, so I decided to put in extra work and go the gym 7 days a week for 2 hours each day.
The only days I got off from practice and going to the gym were holidays and the Superbowl.
What all that practice and dedication led to was a rollercoaster of emotional ups and downs, great comebacks, tournament wins and finally an all-league wrestler award (while wrestling injured).
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I tell you that story because it's important to know where I’m coming from. I was someone that started at the bottom. Someone no one would've imagined starting at all, but I put in work to put myself on top.
That mindset is key outside of sports, too. It’s what can encourage your kids to go on to be the CEO of a company, a successful billionaire investor or a great father or mother to their own children.
1. Sports teach children to perservere in the face of difficulty.
Some parents are concerned about the physical damage and potential injuries their children face when participating in extra curricular activities, such as sports. However, the pain that children face, whether it be due to physical injury or emotional stress, just works to develop their character.
Being able to keep pushing on to your 4th or 5th match of the day, even when you're in pain and you want to quit, is what causes you to keep pushing on into the night working on your job when everyone else is asleep later on in life.
Everything you do leads you to a certain mindset — either an ambitious or feeble mindset.
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2. Sports and academics go hand-in-hand.
When children are involved with sports, they tend to work harder in school. According to an article in The Guardian, Stephen Baddeley, director of sport at the University of Bath talks about the benefits of combining sports and academics:
"[Athletes'] weeks are very pressurised, so top sportspeople are extremely organised, disciplined and efficient with their time, which are useful skills in the academic side of their lives ... The mind wanders when doing essays, but if you develop a focus and know you have to use your time efficiently then it's a very transferable skill."
The fact that they only have a couple of hours to work on homework means they won't have time to slack off playing Fortnite or watching Netflix. They become more competitive, looking to always be the best in their grade.
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3. Playing sports teaches children to be confident and to believe in themselves.
The most important thing kids learn from sports is to believe in themselves. Confidence and hightened self-esteem are not things that're easily taught in the classroom, but those ideals are what will make — or break — them when they grow up and become adults. When your child grows up to be an entrepreneur up against the world, the only thing that will keep him/her going when no customers show up at the beginning is their self-confidence. Their willingness to keep trying, even when times are tough.
When children play sports, they learn that success is as much a mental game as it is a physical one, that believing in themselves is what can lead their team to victory.
Concentrating and believing in their own abilities is what leads sports teams to keep going when the game is almost over. It's what leads teams to championships.
Although I may not be a parent myself, I know that the decision my parents made to have me participate in sports as a child was the right one.
One of the best things you can do to help your kid grow and have a successful future is to put them in sports. Encourage your kids to play a sport they love, bbecause ultimately, when you do things that you love, you are happier. You make friends who are on your sports team, and form a sense of belonging. You are proud of and respect your classmates, and they respect you. Ultimately, sports participation can make children happy, healthy and productive members of society, and set them up for success.
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Steven Hall is a writer who covers astrology, pop culture and relationship topics.