Many international schools in Manila are encouraging their students to take up extracurricular activities; sports, such as basketball and football, are some of them. This is because they not only maintain your children’s fitness, but also because they impart a few life lessons along the way.
All the benefits kids could learn from playing sports will affect them physically, mentally, socially and emotionally. To learn more about this, read about the many benefits of having your children partake in competitive sports found below.
Improved Social Skills
Most sports require a good amount of teamwork, which means that communication is very important when playing. Essentially, this would help your children learn how to communicate better and be confident in interacting with other people.
Respecting Authorities
Along with helping your children interact with their peers, sports also teach them to respect authority figures—coaches, in particular.
Coaches are the people in charge of guiding your kids during training and games. They serve as their mentors not just while they are playing a game, but in life as well. Respecting authority would help them appreciate their mentors in school, along with the other adults in their life.
Higher Self-Esteem
Another thing your children could benefit from playing sports is a higher self-esteem.
Being part of the team means they would have to make contributions. These could be big or small things that could propel their entire team’s performance. Because of it, your children would feel better knowing that what they did might have led to their victory. In turn, this would enable them to feel more confident about themselves.
Become More Disciplined
Engaging in sports means that your children have to train and keep getting better. This, essentially, instills a sense of discipline and routine within them. This is because they will have to be on time and train during early or late hours of the day so they can have a better performance.
This would establish healthy and positive habits, which could be applicable in different settings in the future.
Coping with Losing
In sports, it is inevitable that your children’s team would lose a game. Losing can be painful, which means that they have to learn to cope with it.
Playing various sports allows them to accept that losing is part of playing any game and that there is value in losing. Your children could turn their loss into a learning experience for them and their team.
Being able to cope with losing is part of becoming mentally and emotionally stronger, which would help build up their character.
Improve Overall Body Health
As mentioned above, playing sports will make your children healthier. It will not only develop their body’s muscles, but also make them stronger. This will, then, strengthen their overall body resistance so they won’t easily get sick. Plus, sports will help them become faster, which will increase their overall athleticism.
Your children would also be able to manage their weight, as their training will help maintain their body fat at a low level. Their blood circulation will also be improved, which does wonders for their cardiovascular health.
Better Diet and Food Choices
Other than being able to participate in physical activities that help your children’s body get fit, they must also have a proper diet in place to help develop their bodies. Becoming part of a sports team means that they must not only exercise daily, but also ensure that they eat the right kind of food. A balanced diet would give your children all the right vitamins and minerals in their bodies to help them grow better.
Developing Patience and Resilience
Being good at sports requires plenty of time and effort, which means that it is not about instant progress, but a constant process. Sports would help your children learn that success and excellence require many steps, some of which may lead to challenges that will help them become stronger. Patience would help them become rational thinkers and teach them to do things in a step by step basis.
Along with patience, your children would also learn resilience, which helps them get through each day despite all the challenges and hurdles that come their way. Overall, sports build physical and emotional strength that would help them in their everyday trials.
Key Takeaway
Sports is one of the activities that provide many benefits to your children.Ultimately, playing sports will provide them the opportunity to become better versions of themselves through learning discipline, teamwork, and respect for others.
