Allowing children to participate in outdoor extracurricular activities, such as sports, helps them explore and develop skills which are considered beneficial throughout their lives. By participating in sports, children are exposed to various mental, social, emotional, physical and educational benefits. Some of these benefits are:

Developing Self-Esteem

Several studies have suggested that taking part in a sport can help in the development of your child’s self-esteem and confidence. Gestures such as a high-five from a teammate, a pat on the back, or a handshake, when a match is over, helps build confidence. Also, words of praise or of encouragement from the coach or players help build self-esteem. This also helps them learn to trust their own abilities and push themselves in their pursuits. However, one thing that should be remembered is that their self-esteem should not be distinguished based on winning or losing. Constructive criticism should be a major part in helping children learn about accepting their weaknesses and working on them to improve themselves. To do this you could encourage your child to play sports, and always ask them whether they enjoyed it or not, rather than whether they won or lost.

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Social Skills

Playing a sport helps children develop social skills which would benefit them even when they grow older. Playing sports teaches them about teamwork and cooperating with others. They learn to interact with people from different ages. Also, joining a sports team helps give children a sense of belonging and gives them an opportunity to make friends. With more friendship circles it would help improve their communication skills, which will help them in their future careers and relationships.

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Accept Defeat at Times

In most of the things you do in life, there will be a winner and a loser. Through sports your child can learn sportsmanship. They can learn how to accept and cope with losses rather than feeling completely defeated. You cannot win them all, and through sports, your child can understand that sometimes it’s okay if you lose. The important part is to get back up and try again.

There’s no harm in being competitive, but if you lose you should show good sportsmanship and accept defeat. No one likes to be around a sore loser who doesn’t respect the rules, and this brings us to the next point.

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Maintain Discipline

Any sport requires the athletes to maintain discipline. This discipline could be mental, physical, or tactical. To become better in any sport you require discipline. Without self-restraint it would be hard to succeed in any sport. Discipline helps the player achieve their goals and also reach their fullest potential.

In sports your child would need to follow a set of rules, take orders and accept decisions made by the coach. Good discipline is appreciated in sports, as there are penalizations for bad discipline. By listening to the coach and peers, your child would learn an important life skill which would help him throughout their career and life.

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There’s No I in Team

Teamwork is a necessary skill to learn from an early age. A team cannot succeed unless they work together. Sports provide children with the important lesson of learning how to work in a team. Everyone has to come together to achieve the goal. By working together they will learn each other’s strengths and weaknesses and will be better able to decide and strategize the best plan for the team. This will without a doubt help them in their future lives and careers as well.

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There are various benefits of sports for your child. This list is not exhaustive. There are several other benefits such as a healthier living, more academic integrity, medical fitness, etc. All of these benefits just goes to show how much a child can learn outside the classroom as well. However, to get your child to play a sport you may need to encourage them. You can help your child become active in sports in several ways:

•              You could be physically active in sports yourself. This would help them as you are leading by example.
•              Support your child’s efforts in sports. Try to be there for every match that your child plays, for encouragement.
•              Try to limit the time spent on sedentary activities such as watching television or playing computer games.
•              Play a sport along with your child.

So why wait any longer? Get your child enrolled in a sport which they want to learn. While you’re at it you should try learning it as well!

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After serving as a youth coach for the Portland Timbers in Bend, he founded the Changing the Game Project and is now an international speaker and national best-selling author of Changing the Game: The Parents Guide to Raising Happy, High-Performing Athletes and Giving Youth Sports back to Our Kids. His writing has also been featured in the Huffington Post, Soccer America Magazine and The Soccer Wire.

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Many aspects of a child’s life are connected to being competitive: in kindergarten, some children can do something faster or better than other children can. In school, some children do very well in spelling or they always win in sports. While it is important for parents to teach children to win and succeed, teaching them to lose is just as important. By showing them that losing is not the end of the world, children learn that life is full of second chances.

What Can Children Learn from Winning?

Winning a game or being the best in the class gives children a good feeling about themselves and makes them proud. It shows them that they are good at something which builds their self-confidence.

A confident child is more likely to develop a ‘can-do-attitude’. This is because the experience of winning helps children get motivated to take the next steps to achieve even bigger goals, such as jumping even further. Competition is also helpful to inspire children to do more than is required. This is an ability that prepares children for a variety of situations in their future lives, when it is up to them to make the decision whether they want to be part of the crowd or to be recognized for going a step further. In that sense, winning competitions helps children to succeed.

The feeling of winning prepares children to think more strategically. In board games, children know that they can only win by being more clever than their opponents and children who know that they need to follow the rules will start thinking more strategically in order to win the game. Placing emphasis on thinking more strategically to win games also helps children win by learning to follow the rules. By winning and following the rules, children learn that they can win without cheating, but by accepting the same set of rules that the opponent has to follow.

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Games Are Not Just about Winning

For parents, it is important to remember that there is a lot more to winning a competition, says Kenneth Barish a professor of Psychology. Every competition is a socializing experience for children. Participating in competitions in kindergarten, at school or at the playground can help parents teach their kids about the importance of teamwork, commitment to a task, cooperation and respect for the opponent. Every game is also an opportunity for children to learn to play by the rules. Even though these rules seem arbitrary to children, they need to learn that rules serve particular purposes. Competitions are a good place to demonstrate the reasons behind the rules to children to help them understand them and follow them.

What Can Children Learn from Losing?

The feeling of losing and moving on are particular skills children need to develop in order to deal with negative experiences in life when they become older. It might not seem fair to children that one kid can do something faster or better than they can, but parents can teach their children that everyone has different talents and that it is impossible to be good at everything.

Research has shown that losing games is helpful for children because it teaches them to show empathy and cope with the experience of losing.

Christine Carter, who has published books on parenting, says that children need to practice losing in order to be able to cope when they lose in a competition in front of their peers.

Children who do not experience losing can grow up to be anxious, because they start seeing the possibility of not winning as some form of harm and they cannot deal with situations that do not go their way.

Losing a game is the only way for children to learn from their mistakes and think about strategies to improve. When children improve their skills and win the next time, they do not only get better at the sport or game, but they also learn something new. Learning new things increase children’s confidence and their self-belief and they start to be proud of their abilities.

When children lose, they also learn to identify themselves with others who have lost. Melody Brook, a therapist in Texas, says that the experience of coping with loss is helping children to show empathy towards other children in the same position. A child that has never lost a game will not realize that everyone struggles in life.

Finally, losing shows children that they need to work hard in order to have success, because good things are not just handed over to them. These situations also help children to lose with grace in front of others and to be seen as a fair loser.

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