Children in Sports: How it Affects the Development

Children are always engages in physical activity. Sports is on such recreational activity. In sports, childhood involvement is the strongest predictor of adult involvement. Adult athletes often find themselves having participated actively at ages 8 & 9. Early participation is due to experiences of great deals of success. Receiving positive support from family, peers and teachers influence participation in sports. Of these persons, peer groups and coaches appear to be the most influential.

Youth sport participation has important psychological consequences for children. Motivation for participation can be enhanced, stress can be managed and productively used, and self-worthiness can be developed through positive coach communication. This is as far as it goes as character formation is concerned.

In the book, Lesson from the locker room: The myth of school sports, authors Miracle and Reese (1994) cite instances where athletic participation can inhibit character formation. Negative youth sports experiences can erode motivations for participation, produce excessive stress, and destroy feelings of self-worth. It can even condone negative behaviors such as cheating and violence. Legitimate, therefore, is a concern about the harmful effects of completion on the developing child.

An element promoting positive participation for children is based on the premise that sports participation is not automatically beneficial or detrimental. Sports, whether it is for competition or recreation is not automatically a redress to idle minds. The quality of experiences determines whether beneficial or rimental affect will occur. Young athletes who benefit from positive outcomes associated with sport will enjoy increased motivation to achieve and will continue sports participation.

Some studies prove that the biggest factor for children who chose to continue participating was paternal support. Eight percent of elementary participants continued getting involved in program. This attributes to high rate of continuing participation to the fact that the children find a place of belonging where they can enjoy simple games and experience simple achievements,

The quality of the adult leader contributes greatly to sport participation in children. Coaching behaviors are related to the players’ liking of the coach, liking of the sports, liking of their teammates, and to their self-esteem. Coaches must make the effort to become aware of their behaviors and adopt a positive approach to communicating with young athletes. Suggested are a number of important components to positive communication:

1. Give plenty of praise and encouragement
2. Give praise sincerely
3. Develop realistic expectations
4. Reward effort as much as outcome
5. Reward correct technique, not just outcome
6. Employ a “sandwich approach” to error correction

The last method mentioned involves three steps. First, coaches should praise or encourage young athletes from some elements of their performance that was correctly executed to reduce frustration resulting from poor performance. Second, the incorrect elements of performance should be identified and strategies for correcting performance conveyed. Finally, end on a positive note of encouraging children.

It has been observed that the kids from grades five to seven starts taking games seriously. Winning is a “must” for them and during competitions they have a hard time taking losses. It must be emphasized that winning isn’t everything in the game and sports but the best should always be given. In this manner, it molds a performance orientation in the young athletes. They learn to enjoy performing the tasks on hand to overcome the stress of worrying about winning or losing.

It is a mistake to think that winning is the only objective young athletes have for participation. Most young athletes would rather participate in losing team than sit on the bench of a winning team. Adult leaders should help youth athletes define winning as exceeding their won goals is viewed in terms of effort and improvement, youth sports can be a positive experience. In this manner a greater number of young athletes will experience success and reap the benefit of participation (excerpts from Mick Perez Children in Sports)