Benefits of Children Playing Sports
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Encouraging children to play sports will enhance their team building skills, understand what commitments are, and will build a child’s confidence.
The biggest and most important things that children learn about playing sports are team building skills. It has been generally agreed upon by researchers that sports can promote healthy development. (Holt, Kingsley, & Tink, 2011). It has been been seen through out the years that the majority of jobs in the workforce are looking for people who both know how to lead and follow. When children grow up playing team sports they grow up with the understanding of the importance for teamwork.
Commitments are a very important part of not only playing team sports, but also in anything that want to do as they get older. One of the biggest problems that can be seen by the children of today is that when things get tough they just quit. When children grow up with a thought process like this it only hurts them when they get older. I can remember a few years after I joined the Marine Corps I started to notice the change in the mentality of the younger Marines. One in particular comes to mind. I kid not even 18 yet came over to ask me a question about deploying to Iraq. I told how it was and that things would be fine because we are a team and everyone of us counts. He looked at me and said, “I don’t care if we are a team it’s going to be to hard to be away from my family and I would rather go home.” Then next day when we were in formation he was gone. It turned out that he did in fact go home.

Finally, the best thing about playing team sports is the confidence that children get when they are a part of something. It especially builds confidence in disabled children. It was written That succeeding in athletics is a great way for young children to build confidence and self esteem and that also holds true for disabled children. (Maynard, 2015) My brother is disabled and when we were growing up all he wanted to do was play sports. Which ever sport I played he played. When he got to high school he tried out for the football team and even though he didn’t make the cut he became the water boy. But he didn’t care he was on the team and that is all that he talked about. You can see the confidence that grew inside him. He wasn’t just another disabled child the went to the school he was MEME the water boy. The reason that it builds so much confidence is because it helps them to break out of their comfort zone to try new things and meet new people.

References
Holt, N. L., Kingsley, B. C., & Tink, L. N. (2011, May). Benefits and challenges associated with sport participation by children and parents from low income families. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 12(), 490-499.

Maynard, K. (2015, September 2). Athletic Participation Builds Confidence in Disabled Children No Excuses. Child athletes , p. 1.