Some of those extra curricular activities include playing football, cheerleading, wrestling, karate, basketball, and the list goes on. If approached correctly, these activities can bring immense enjoyment and positive feelings within each child. If approached correctly youth activities can bring wonderful feelings of self-worth. Playing youth sports can help with living a healthy lifestyle, maintaining a healthy weight, creating positive self-esteem, and avoiding harmful demises.
Everywhere you look, any time of year, you can always find one sport or another going on. In the spring it is baseball, softball, and soccer. Schools even start the wrestling season early in the year. In the summer you still have baseball and softball. In the fall there is always football and cheerleading. When wintertime hits basketball starts it's season. For there to be so many sports going on all the time, there has to be a positive outcome for a person wanting their child to play as many sports as possible. Parents have to look at playing sports as a positive experience for their children. Or there would be a huge decline in playing any sport. When asked what kind of effect playing youth sports has on children, experts say “a good one” (Hilgers, 2006). Hilgers also states that while playing youth sports, children are learning to be physically active, “no small feat when childhood diabetes is soaring”.
With the rise of childhood diabetes and with that the rise of childhood obesity, sports provide an active outlet for many young children. According to the 1999-2000 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the prevalence of overweight or obesity in children and youth in the United States is over 15%, a value that has tripled since the 1960's (Pediatrics 2006). Being over weight as a child can cause major health risks like sleep apnea, diabetes, hypertension, and poor self-esteem. Exercise is a great way to keep close eyes on weight issues. It is also a great way to maintain a stable, healthy body weight. Physical activity can also help your child over come obesity or being overweight (Obesity in Children). Daily exercise, whether it was just fun play or playing a sport, would help any child feel better in the long run. The article “Obesity in Children” also states that “Kids need about 60 minutes of physical activity a day”.
Playing an active sport can help with the requirement for a child's physical activity on a daily basis. Interacting with sports as a child can also help an adult lead a more active lifestyle (Journal of Physical Education 2004). As an adult, many people are not as able to live a very active lifestyle, but as a child playing a youth sport may help maintain that active lifestyle way into adulthood and also eliminate many problem that come along with getting older. Many people would feel much better if they had learned at an early age how to be physically active instead of letting the television and video games entertain them. So many children nowadays would rather play the newest game than go outside on a beautiful day and ride a bicycle and we as parents let them. So if playing a sport at a young age could deter the fact that a child would have less health problems, what parent could possibly object?
Not only does youth sports provide an outlet for aggression and a daily balance of much needed exercise, but physical play during infancy and early childhood is central to the development of social and emotional competence says Laura Egendorf (1999). Many children learn the most crucial aspects in life through playing with other children. Children learn how to communicate with other people in society through playing sports. They learn to play as a team and also acquire a sense of self-worth. Children learn how to work within a team as well as take pride in their skills. When children participate in a sport they also learn the concept of fair play. Children can learn the art of right from wrong. A child learns how to abide by the rules, a concept all children should know and love. Playing a sport helps with a child's self-esteem. A child glories in the praise they receive from their coaches and parents.
In today's society, having high self-esteem is very much needed to divert any harmful aspects of a child. Children experience many different forms of encouragement and discouragement in the world today. It is a known fact that when a child is involved in an activity, such as a sport, it can help alleviate a lot of the peer pressure, help raise a child's self-esteem. Donaldson and Ronan (2006) write “Some less well-behaved youth may have been "gated" at early stages and prevented from participating in more organized sports.” Donaldson and Ronan also go on to say that the children who engaged in more formal sports and for a greater length of time reported less delinquent behavior, aggression, and peer-related problems. So how can taking a child off the street and putting them into an organized game be harmful? How can making new friends through a sport be bad for a child?
