Self-esteem, competition, sexual abuse, violence, friends? What is in it for the children, when it comes to sport?
In several articles, multimedia productions and other contributions, we will focus on the childrens role in sports around the world throughout the week of PlaytheGame 2007.
Furthermore we want you as users to contribute with thoughts, ideas and questions for us or the conference participants. Together we’ll create dialogue on children in sport between stakeholders and participants at PlaytheGame.
Speak Up!
4 responses so far ↓
1 Kristian Moss // Oct 26, 2007 at 11:33 am
Just a thought, Parents pushing their gifted children to pursuit some sport vigoriusly, is that worse than parents forcing their children to do homework. The main goal in each case would be to insure their children the best possible position to later get at job, in case of sports it would be as prof. athlete
/Kristian
2 Louise Christensen // Oct 27, 2007 at 1:22 pm
Yes it can be worse as the pursuit of perfectionism in sports often makes the child miss out on a lot of other things. Things, that “ordinary” children get to experience.
And - is it really a good thing - that such a childs whole identity is built around being good in this particular sport because he or she has never done anything else. What happens when the child is not “god enough” any more or gets injured?
3 AllBlackLineOut // Oct 27, 2007 at 11:35 pm
Pushing children to do the best they can is the what the parents should be aiming for. If they do not win in an individual sport, you want to see that they tried their best. Tell your kid that you learn more from losses than from wins. I think this attitude goes to the parents themselves. Are they in it for their own ego? Or are they doing it to promote sporting virtues in their kids?
4 Francophobic // Oct 29, 2007 at 10:18 am
Parents should encourage their children to be expressive in their chosen activity. The childs ability should be nutured enabling the child to develop naturally. I agree with the sentiment of learning from losses, my take on it is that losses speeden up the process of intrinsic motivation. In some households I imagine the predominant sporting interests of the parents will spawn drive for a child to emulate that. However, comparing that interest with parents forcing children to ‘complete/attempt’ homework is drawing a long bow. There is such thing as kinethestic intellegence and this should be an essential element to homework.
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