I have written before about how important it is for children to be involved in sport activities. Today’s blog post is taking it a step further and is on the benefits of playing team sports. It is generally understood about how physical exercise is good for children, but team sports involves much more than that.
Phil Jackson, the famous basketball coach who coached the Los Angeles Lakers to five league titles, said this about teamwork: “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” Here are some of the benefits of children participating in team sports:
It helps them develop better communication skills. Each team member must communicate with the others to develop better skills and play better together. Team members talk with each other before a practice or game and after. They encourage and joke with each other as well as discuss their disappointments. They learn to respect each other.
It helps build their self-esteem. What could make a child feel better than his/her fellow team members speaking words of encouragement and hearing their shouts of joy and cheers?
It helps them to build leadership skills. Each team has a few leaders so your children can aspire to be one.
It serves as an external family and community. Children develop friendships and loyalties with each other and that serves them well for many years, often a lifetime.
It can help older children to be mentors of younger ones.
Find out what types of sports our children would like to play and consider helping them to join a team. It is important to make sure that you and your children will have time to participate in all that team sports entails.
To learn more, please visit:
https://www.edutopia.org/discussion/social-and-academic-benefits-team-sports
https://abcquality.org/posts/2020/the-many-benefits-of-children-playing-a-team-sport/