When it comes to sports and kids, you should never expect a one-way attitude. In fact, each kid develops personal tastes throughout childhood and the teenage years which impact the way to approach sports, as well. We all know that playing sports is an important life experience for everyone. If you allow your kids to learn and practice sports, they will gain specific skills that will help them build up a stronger personality. Of course, people whose personality types become stronger most often have many more chances to get the best results in their private and professional life.
“Practice? No Thanks!”
Normally, most adults tend to think that all kids should play sports… but the fact is that sometimes things aren’t as easy with kids who don’t really want to practice. This shows parents that stereotypes should never deserve that much trust… each kid is an individual with personal tastes, ideas and life projects. That being said, we want to underline the fact that parents shouldn’t consider that their kids might wish to try different activities any more than what most teens like to do. So, if your kids don’t like sports at all, don’t think there’s something wrong with them, it’s just the way they are.
However, a large number of children seem to even hate sports – sounds pretty weird or unusual, but it happens and one of the main reasons why they quit or don’t want to start to play a sport is because of practice.
Practice means nothing but a lot of effort, time, patience, dedication and determination… in other words, practice turns out to be a “sacrifice” that many kids these days really don’t want to experience.
Aspects That Kids Dislike About Practice
Let’s have a closer insight onto the specific aspects that kids hate about practice. As we said above, practice means a lot of physical efforts, but there’s also something more to consider:
- During practice sessions coaches tend to interrupt exercises to give their pupils explanations and tips. That might take a long time, which somehow break the pleasure of practicing together with the other team mates. Many children can’t keep their attention high for a long time, which leads them to be distracted and to even distract the others’ attention.
- It’s a matter of fact that in a team not all members are considered the same by their coach. There will always be a #1 team player, who deserves more attention by the coach. What about the other team members? Well, some of them might feel motivated to imitate the team leader to get as much attention, but some others might easily feel down and sad. Obviously, the latter children may want to give up playing in that team or even to completely quit sports.
- One of the goals of practice is to achieve improvements, but the fact is that prerforming the same exercises over and over becomes nothing but a boring repetition (certain children might need a longer time to master certain aspects of the game, so the coach decides to repeat same exercises over and over). If a kid sees that there’s no improvement opportunity, that’s easy to understand that there’s no reason to go on practicing that way.
- Many kids can’t find the ideal sport to play, so they often feel disappointed with their sports experience. If might happen because certain parents want their children become the next football star, but forget to ask them about their wishes, projects and sports tastes.
The list of reasons why children might develop a strong hostility to sports is long, but you can always do something to make sports practice become a really engaging and appealing experience.
Sports Practice Tips
First of all, don’t force your children into sports, just propose your ideas and be positive and open-minded. Listen to their opinion and desires. If your children want to follow your advice to start to play sports, don’t charge them with useless responsibilities, like “we want you to become a superstar” or “you have to be the best player in your team”.
Practice is difficult, so be ready to offer your kids all of your patience and encouragement. Make them understand that a little sacrifice leads to greater satisfaction in all fields of life, including school and work.
Talk to them about the positive side of learning. In fact, adults who want to become stronger at games have to practice a lot. Gamers, for example, invest a lot of time to master pastimes like slots or poker – there are many Australian casinos for real money at PlayPokiesOnline and it’s really worth the effort.