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Physical activity is critically important for all people, especially kids. Besides helping their bones and muscles grow, playing sports has so many vital benefits for their overall health and development. A common parenting quandary, though, is choosing what sport, sports, or active kids’ activities in which to enroll their young children.
In this article, we’ll first take a look at some science behind why playing sports is essential for young children. Then, we’ll look at five of the sports that experts recommend for your little ones.
Why Is Playing Sports Important for Kids?
For one thing, mastery is important for children’s confidence. When kids learn something that is developmentally appropriate (not too hard or too easy), they feel capable and great about themselves. Every parent knows the joy of seeing that beaming smile on their child’s face after a job well done. That confidence in their own abilities carries over into academics and social achievements.
Playing sports and active movement also helps children develop fine and gross motor skills and familiarize themselves with their bodies, which is key to healthy development all around. What’s more, they develop a sense of ownership over their own bodies, as well as what their bodies can do. This is an important relational skill.
Team sports are great for teaching children because they teach kids how to work and interact with others their own age, as well as how to follow instructions and listen to leadership.
When kids are engaged in sports or other movement-based kids’ activities, they’re also getting away from screens. One of the major woes of parenting today is screen time, and for good reason. In 2018, the National Institutes of Health presented the early results from a study on the impact of increased screen time for kids, and it doesn’t look good. Playing sports can not only provide time away from screens but also help impart a love of movement and play in young kids.
We’ve saved the most obvious benefits for last: the specifically physical payoffs of sports. Little ones need lots of activity in order for their bones and muscles to develop appropriately. Remember that when they engage in sports and movement, they’re using muscle groups that they don’t ordinarily use. Also, movement is important for their organs to develop, especially their brain, lungs, and heart.
We could go on and on about the benefits of getting little kids involved in sports and active kids’ activities! But let’s take a look at the particular aspects of swimming, dance/martial arts, biking, hiking/walking/running, and soccer that make them so great for parents to consider.
1. Swimming
Swimming comes in at number one on this list for a couple reasons. Perhaps most importantly, swimming is a life skill; drowning is every parents’ nightmare, as it is the leading cause of death in children aged 1-4, according to the organization Stop Drowning Now. Kids as young as six months can begin learning how to swim, especially life-saving techniques in the event that they are accidentally submerged.
Okay, now that we’ve covered the tough stuff, let’s look more positively at why swimming is such a great sport for little kids. For one thing, if you have regular access to a body of water or pool (in your backyard or neighborhood, or at a local community center or YMCA), it’s something that you can teach them yourself and that they can work on regularly. The fundamentals aren’t terribly complicated, so little kiddos are able to grasp them more easily.
Swimming is terrific for developing endurance and strength, especially since most kids love the water and usually want to keep swimming. Once they’ve mastered the basics, they can enjoy playing in the water with peers, with parents, or on their own.
2. Dance or Martial Arts
Both dance and martial arts are beneficial for little kids because when they do them, kids learn to coordinate the different parts of their bodies and move in sequence, which is important not only for their muscles but also for their minds. More and more dance academies and martial arts schools are becoming inclusive of all genders, which is more great news.
Dance and martial arts teach spatial reasoning and can help develop kinesthetic memory. Kids have to be able to connect words to movements in their bodies and respond to non-verbal cues. Both sports impart the importance of self-discipline as well.
These sports are almost always taught in a class setting with lots of other children around the same age as your little one, so they’re another opportunity to socialize and make friends. Kids learn to work in a group while focusing first and foremost on their own skill development.
Dance has a couple of added bonuses. For one thing, it is one of the few sports that is also considered an art form. It can help children listen to, think about, and interpret music differently. It can also help them develop something that they probably already enjoy; most young kids love moving to music, and dance lessons can give them new ideas and a greater range of motion. On the other hand, martial arts are also a wonderful kids’ activity because they are especially credited with building self-esteem.
3. Biking
As with swimming, biking is something that parents can usually teach kids at home. It is also something that most kids can do almost whenever they feel like it, which imparts healthy exercise habits. In addition to the physical benefits of biking, it’s also a good sport to start very young; there are tricycles and other similar vehicles for toddlers, and bikes can grow with children as they get older.
Biking is an amazing family activity and an easy way to include physical movement into parenting for yourself, so be sure to get a bicycle if you don’t already have one. Take evening rides around your neighborhood together. It’s a good way to meet and get to know your neighbors.
Remember: always wear a helmet (you and your kiddos), and educate yourself and your little cyclist about the rules of the road and caution.
4. Hiking, Walking, and/or Running
There are so many obvious physical benefits of all three of these activities. So in this article, we’ll focus on some of the less obvious positive aspects of these sports for young kids. These activities not only encourage children to go outside but they can also impart a love for nature and the great outdoors. Conservation depends on future generations appreciating it, after all. When hiking and walking outside, young kids see so many wondrous things; encourage them to look, listen, smell, and touch (when it’s safe to do so). They have the opportunity to ask you questions about their world and make connections. It’s a physical activity and a science lesson in one.
They can also encourage a love of exploration. Wherever you go, go outside with your kids. Notice the things that are similar or unique about every neighborhood, city, and place you visit. Soon, you’ll have a little wanderlust-er on your hands.
5. Soccer
If you think about it, soccer is a pretty simple sport with pretty simple rules. Sure, there are positions and strategy and all of that, but if you have ever seen little kids playing, it’s pretty much just a large cluster of kiddos running up and down the field after the ball, trying to score a goal.
That’s one of the reasons why it’s so great for little kids: simple rules, simple motions, lots of activity and fun. It also teaches healthy competition and teamwork, as well as listening to directions and accomplishing goals (literally!).
Another great thing about soccer for families is that it is a good tool for building community. If your child attends daycare or school, they meet a lot of kids their own age but soccer practices and games are a better place to meet other parents on common ground.
Want to get even more involved? Volunteer to coach or assistant coach! You don’t need to know much about soccer (an hour or two on the Internet should do it), and volunteer organizations are always looking for parents to help out. It’s a parenting win when you can get more involved in your kids’ lives in a new way, so this is a great opportunity.
The Most Important Factor in Choosing Sports for Kids
As we have seen, sports can play an enormous role in your child’s relationship with themselves, their bodies, and others. For that reason, it is profoundly important that they genuinely enjoy whatever they do. That doesn’t mean giving up on hard days or giving in when they want to quit mid-season (there are lessons to be learned in perseverance too!), but it does mean not forcing them to keep enrolling in kids’ activities that they aren’t enjoying, even if it’s something that you love or that you really want for them. Parenting is about them, after all.
Once your child finds a sport they love, you will enjoy watching them work at it and play almost as much as they enjoy doing it!
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