Be Aware 
“Mens sana in corpore sano” - Latin saying, meaning 'a healthy mind in a healthy body'
Getting Hold of Real Childhood Fun!
Do you want to cross out your child’s time on the Xbox? Are you perturbed over their preoccupation with Playstations?
Getting your child off the couch and on his feet is a modern problem, which parents of the past didn’t have to face before today’s dizzying array of distractions entered our homes.
There is one thing you can do to help your child get a hold of real childhood fun – by nurturing a love for sports. Sport isn’t just for children. Even animals rely on play to hone their survival skills, ranging from hunting, defending themselves or fleeing from danger.
Similarly, children do need play to develop their own set of survival skills. As I have learnt in my studies on children and sports, parents have a powerful influence on their children’s participation in, and more importantly, enjoyment of sports.
How to Nurture a Love for Sports
The benefits are well documented, and include some very surprising effects. They go beyond simply increasing your child’s physical health and mental well being, but also reveal opportunities for imparting values, gaining social competence and forging lasting bonds and good memories.
Some of the critical elements that I found especially useful for fathers to successfully nurture a love for sports in our children are:
- Helping them deal with the many new experiences and discoveries as they become active in sports.
Dr Richard Ginsburg advises fathers to help their children become aware of what distracts them, and concentrate on performing better, possibly using strategies like ‘keep your head up’, ‘take a deep breath’ or even (stroke/hit/run) ‘smoothly’. (1)
- Teaching how to deal with pressure. Dr Joel Fish, author of 101 Ways to be a Terrific Sports Parent, also advises parents to teach their children that “fear, sweaty palms, though uncomfortable and unpleasant, is not a bad thing”.
Dealing with the pressure of competing at any level can benefit your child, including in performing under other types of pressure such as public speaking and taking examinations. (2)
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Being a great role model for sportsmanship by engaging with the parents of your child’s opponents, even congratulating opponents when they win, and show your child the benefits of competition.
- Giving them permission to feel nervous. Another interesting tip that Dr Fish wrote is to “give your child the permission to feel nervous”.
He advises parents to reassure their kids that they can learn to overcome such feelings by persevering, and this helps them to get better at overcoming their nerves. He also advocates describing “competitive stress” as “competitive excitement” instead.
How Kids Benefit from Sports, No Matter Their Age
Fathers will also need to remember that at different stages of your child’s development, different issues will take center stage in your child’s participation.
Dr Fish provides three general stages and their associated issues:
- - Ages 6-11: kids of this age tend to see things in black and white, and need help with finding the gray areas of social and sporting interaction
- - Ages 12-14: in these pre-teen years, identity becomes an important concern, as they try to find out who they are. Fathers need to help them find a positive answer to this question
- - Ages 15 & above: peer pressure becomes increasingly influential at this stage, and we have to help our teens make the best choices for themselves
Five Golden Rules for Co-Participation in Sports
What if you have more than one child participating in sports? This situation presents an additional opportunity – fathers can set firm rules for co-participation in sports. Dr Fish dispenses great advice in his five Golden Rules:
- Agree on the rules of play
- Be a gracious winner
- Be a good loser
- No name calling, taunting etc., before, during or after play
- End each game appropriately
I know that if my kids can play with each other according to the above guidelines, I would be a proud father.
However, Dr Fish also gives sound advice for fathers when their children cannot play by the rules. In such situations, fathers may have to step in and make the decision for their children that they cannot continue to participate in that particular sport or activity.
Rewarding Right Behaviour
Conversely, rewarding your children is just as important, and fathers can maximise their impact by rewarding the right behavior. Fred Engh, President of the National Alliance for Youth Sports (USA), wrote that the most important thing to pay attention to in rewarding your children is when they have done their best. (3)
Engh says that to a child, the most devastating thing is not being acknowledged by his parents for doing his best: “If doing your best isn’t going to win approval, then why bother at all?”
As fathers, we certainly want to raise children who do not quit, and rewarding honest effort is the best way to build resilience – that ‘try, try again’ spirit.
Sports Creates Positive Memories
The final tip I found to be a great encouragement is to use sports to create positive memories with your child. I remember growing up, my dad would take me out to sea as I rode piggyback on his windsurf board, next to the then East Coast lagoon in Singapore (today, the lagoon is home to Cable360 – a wakeboard facility).
While my parents surfed, I would also get the chance to catch sea creatures and socialise with the kids of other surfers.
This active lifestyle and the concomitant trips to nearby windsurf spots in Changi and Johor, Malaysia, have left a mark on me till today, as well as created a wonderful bond with my parents.
Just as important, I developed a natural affinity to sports that allows me to look forward to getting out of bed early even on weekend mornings, so that I can head outdoors with the family, even if it’s just for a walk to have breakfast.
Our children will most likely continue participating in sports when we encourage them to, when they witness our enjoyment of sports, and when they’re having fun at it.
If your child isn’t having fun engaging in sport, it’s important for you to find out why. Learn how they think, and help them to resolve the possible issues they face. It could be any of the difficulties described above. But remember that the key is ‘fun’, because fun is a great motivation, and it enriches your child’s experience with sports.
Knowing that fathers can make such a difference in this area makes me itch to take the kids out for a run-about in West Coast Park, or to an ice rink at Kallang. After all, there’s no running on the couch in my house, and I’m betting not in yours’ either.
References:
- Ginsburg, R.D, & Durant, S. (2006). Whose game is it, anyway? (pp. 260-7). New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Co.
- Fish, Joel Ph.D (2003). 101 ways to be a terrific sports parent. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
- Engh, Fred (2002). Why Johnny hates sports. Garden City Park, NY: Square One Publishers.
Additional Web Resources:
- The Mayo Clinic: ‘Children and sports: Choices for all ages’
- India Parenting: ‘Motivating Children to Take up Sports’
- eSSORTMENT: ‘Sports competition and children’
About the Author: The DadsforLife Resource Team comprises local content writers and experts, including psychologists, counsellors, educators and social service professionals, dedicated to developing useful resources for dads.
