Outside of school, children should be encouraged to participate in activities that will help to enhance their development. Extracurricular activities, like playing sports, for example, has multiple benefits for children. You may be aware of the exercise advantage. When engaged in physical activity, kids can maintain a healthy weight and reduce their risk of a lot of diseases. However, there’s also the added benefits of goal setting, team building, a boost in confidence, improved social skills, and the increased ability to excel academically. Let’s take a closer look at some of the reasons parents should urge their children to get involved in sports.

Physical Fitness

At the very core of participating in sports is the physical activity involved. Whether children decide to join a basketball team or play tennis, they are regularly engaged in physical fitness which can help to prolong their lives. Routine practices and games compel children to pull themselves away from the TV screen or video games and get active. As you know, exercising for at least 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week can help you maintain a healthy weight and reduces the risk of weight-related diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure. The more they work up a sweat, the better their health is. In fact, some of the benefits of sweating include reduced toxins, improved mood, better skin and hair, and more.

Sense of Belonging

Children involved in team-based sports learn a lot about camaraderie. They learn to interact with children their age outside of the classroom, creating a more diverse social circle. The longer they play on teams together, the more supportive they become of each other cultivating friendships that can last a lifetime.

The Art of Losing

As an adult, you’re fully aware that everything won’t go as planned. You realize that in an effort to succeed, failure is imminent but not the end of the world. Children, on the other hand, aren’t aware of this early on. They tend to feel bad about themselves or throw tantrums when they fail or things don’t go as planned. Playing a sport, however, can help them learn the “art of losing”. Essentially, they develop the understanding that you won’t always win, but that you can still hold your head high and learn from those losses.

Boost in Confidence

Participating in school sports can help to boost your child’s self-esteem. As they hone in on their talents and become better players, this helps to build character. Not to mention, the supportive environment from their teammates, coaches, parents, and other members of the community and school, can be very enlightening.

Collaboration

Learning how to work well with others is another great advantage of allowing your children to play sports. Throughout life, there will come times where they need to set their differences aside and learn to work with those from different backgrounds to reach a common goal. Sports teaches them the importance of teamwork. Utilizing everyone’s unique skills and abilities to win the game, ultimately help them to learn to be effective teammates in the field, in school, and throughout life.

Academic Success

It is a proven fact that athletics make better learners. In learning all the above life skills, students learn how to apply these to every aspect of their lives – including their academics. They are far more disciplined, goal-oriented, and resilient, giving them the tools necessary to navigate the often complex journey through education. There are also added benefits like exercise improving brain function, schools mandating students who participate in sports have good grades, and an increased chance to receive a scholarship to a major college.

Sports are a great extracurricular activity for you to get your children involved in. Though there is a great deal of responsibility that goes into playing soccer, basketball, baseball, or football, the advantages are priceless. Your child not only gets health benefits of exercising regularly, they learn tools like camaraderie, resilience, confidence, and teamwork, which can all be used to help them exceed in school and throughout life.