Children’s Sports This Summer
Children need to be active and to take part in sports especially during the summer. While my daughter is in school, she has Physical Education only once every few weeks and recess only once in a while. When she gets home, we try to get her to go outside and run around in some way, shape or form. The problem is that school work always comes first.
This summer, we are working on prying her off the computer, away from books (not that it’s bad for her to be reading!) and the TV so she can work off some energy, and learn about being a team player. She loves PE but doesn’t like the competition factor of group sports. What ends up happening with her is that she gets upset when she is compared to other children. In PE, there is a teacher who is responsible for allowing every student to take part in the games that they play, doesn’t allow children to bully others, and provides different levels of sports for her students.
How do we accomplish this on our own? We’ve decided to have play dates in which sports are the main focus, including basketball, hockey and good old fashioned games like hide and seek. When we as parents oversee these games, we can allow the children to play kindly with each other. Another thing we’re doing is enrolling our daughter into swimming lessons. This is to help her gain confidence. Hopefully this will enable her to take part in competitive sports if she is interested later on.
We’ve seen both the good and bad in sports with our older daughter who was on a roller hockey team and a school track team. Parents often were the worst offenders, who used foul language, became angry with coaches and referees and made what should be a pleasant time for children, a difficult time. ResponsibleSports.com is working towards changing the environment of children’s sports. They provide resources for coaches and parents and support volunteer sports programs. They are funded by Liberty Mutual.
This blog post is sponsored by Liberty Mutual with the opportunity for an Amex Gift Card of various denominations depending on content, comments and Twitter discussion.
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Comments
It is sad, JMom. They were supposed to have have some form of physical activity every school day, but that was gone too quickly due to budget cuts here.
Comment by Connie It just makes you wonder what the future holds…. The whole child needs to be educated…. in that the physical child needs worthwhile activity and they need to learn how to function in a team environment.
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Comment by Christina thecoffeelady Hi Connie, I enjoyed reading your post. Some kids are great at organized sports, being on teams, others are great at self competition. I think you are doing exactly the right thing. We want it to be a positive experience for our kids on every level.
I am sorry to hear you experienced parents who had a negative impact on their own kids or a team. It certainly doesn’t model the behavior. It doesn’t make the statment we try to teach our childre “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.”
The good news is there are a number of coaches out there who are skilled at curbing that kind of behavior.
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I hear you on the lack of PE in schools nowadays. They keep cutting back on everything, even recess! My daughter only has PE once a week.
I think being compared to others is one of the drawbacks for non-competitive kids like mine. They don’t like being compared and are discouraged by it rather than encouraged. I wish more coaches and PE teachers would realize that not everyone has the competitive bone.
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