Kids' Sports: A Blessing?

No running back has dominated the NFL like Jim Brown. He won the rushing title eight of nine years during his career. He is still the only player to average over 100 yards per game rushing. He was voted to the NFL Pro Bowl every year he played. And he believes that he benefited greatly from his involvement in sports:

Sports basically saved my life. . . . If I had never gone on to play at the professional level, I can safely say that the lessons I learned on the playing field in junior high and high school would have helped me through life in any other field. I walked away from those experiences knowing how to work hard, to concentrate. I knew how to get up after I lost and how to cope with the fact that I wasn’t always going to win. These lessons helped me gain confidence.

I could easily fill several large books with testimonials like Jim Brown's. Unfortunately, I could probably also fill a large book with testimonials of the negative impact of sports on children. What makes for the positive? the negative? To help your child’s sports’ memories be mostly positive, it is important to understand how sports can build or tear down children. The next few blogs will focus on the strengths and weaknesses of children's sports.

Physical Development
“Johnny, would you please mow the lawn this afternoon?”
“Dad, why do I always have to do it? Why don’t you ask Mary once in a while.
“I do ask her to help. But I’m asking you to help this time.”
“But Dad, you always make me do more.”

Ask a child to mow the lawn or clean his room, and he may act like you’ve asked him to wash all of the windows on the Empire State Building! But put him on a basketball court and he has the unconscious energy to play for hours. Sports are a way for children to get needed exercise-- without even knowing they are exercising.

How important is exercise? Exercise can not only by firm up the muscles and make the body look good, but it can also bring about positive changes in the cardiovascular system, reduce cholesterol and triglyceride levels in the blood, produce weight loss through caloric consumption, reduce blood pressure readings, and reapportion body fat.

Though the number of youth participants in sports is exploding, children’s waist-line is also exploding—the rate of childhood obesity doubled during the 80’s & 90’s. How can this be? Part of the reason our kids are obese is that they don’t maintain their commitment to exercise--over 75% of kids quit sports by the age of 15. Thus, one of our goals as parents should be to help our children develop the habit of exercise. No amount of exercise in childhood will be sufficient to support physical health as an adult.