Parenting | Kids First

How to get kids involved in sports

Are you worried about your child’s health? Are you trying to figure out how to get your child to socialize more with children their own age? One of the best ways to help with both is to get kids involved in sports. Instead of pushing them into it, here are some easy ways to get your children interested in sports.

First, let them see you exercise. Research shows that 95% of children are more likely to be active if they see their parents being active. Even if you are not working out as much as you like or have dropped the amount of weight, you are on a healthier road.

Second, teach your child the sports and activities that you know. You cannot encourage your child to pick up a sport if they do not know how to play. Instead, spend some quality time with your child and throw a ball around, shoot hoops, play Red Rover, Red Rover. Just get your children active so they can be healthier.

Third, keep your attitude positive about exercising and sports. Your children are more likely to take your attitude to mind when they decide if they want to play sport. You do not have to lie just say the positive aspects of the sport so that they understand you enjoy playing for certain reasons.

Fourth, encourage your child to join a physically sport or activity. Even though it may seem overkill, children are more likely to try something because you encouraged them to try it. Remember to help them pick something that will be fun for them. The activity needs to be an age-appropriate sport. Also, seek an instructor who has experience with the sport or activity and can easily teach child. Get to know the teachers who will be teaching your children.

Filed Under: Child Development, Parenting Tagged With: Child, Health, Physical exercise

Get your children involved in sports by encouraging to play together

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Have you ever stopped and watched your children play together? There is something precious about childâ€™s play because everyone is included and having fun. Playing on an organized team where all of the grown-ups are in charge may be too much for your child to accept at their age. Instead, why not encourage them to get the neighborhood kids together and play?

Children want to be able to all play and have fun. One main problem with organized sports is there is a lot of stop and go. If Johnnie is fouled, the whole game stops because he has a free throw.

When children organize their own games, they have the ability to keep the game going longer and having fun. By helping them create their own team, you give them the ability to learn how to make their own decisions and encourage each other to play the game.

Encouraging your child to start their own games, allows them to use their imagination and work together with other students. They do not sit around and discuss the game. You will notice that if someone has a question the team shows him or her how to do it instead of telling them. Children learn to share, communicate, and lead in these small groups.

After about a year of playing together, they will start wanting to play in a more organized team with coaches. Encouraging your child to play together, allows them to learn things you cannot teach them on their own. They learn to interact with their peers and to decide what they want to do. It helps build their confidence and self-esteem. When they get old enough for a sports league, do not hesitate to move them into the sport. Until they are ready, let them play with their friends.

Filed Under: Child Development, Parenting Tagged With: Child, Parent, Recreation

How Joining a Team Can Help your Child Continue Exercising

: Image by Ed Yourdon via Flickr

If you have been able to keep your child active through physical exercise, you are getting your child out of the house and moving around. Most likely, they are having just as much fun as you are having. It is important to keep them moving when they get into middle and high school. Encouraging your child to join a team will help them stay healthy.

If you have done any exercising on your own, you know how quickly you can lose your motivation. You would rather sleep in an extra thirty minutes than get up and run. You are not the only person who has trouble with it and your child will experience it. If they do join a team, they are less likely to lose their motivation.

When children are a part of a team, they learn there are other people who are counting on them to practice and play the best they can. There is no I in team and they quickly learn it is not all about them. Being part of the team allows them to learn and look up to their coaches and teammates.

There are different types of sports out there that keep your child moving. Everyone works out together, runs together, and plays together. Your child will learn the importance of discipline and exercise.

You should also do as much as you can as your child joins a team. Children are amazing because they can pick up how their coach, parents, or teammates are feeling. They also tend to end up feeling the same way. If you are your own child’s coach or if you are just playing along with them, keep yourself motivated to be with them. Children have a lot of energy, but they have to know they are doing something worthwhile. Go to their games and cheer them on. They will remember it.

Filed Under: Learning Skills, Parenting Tagged With: Child, Learning, Physical exercise

Making sure your child has good skills takes patience and practice

If you are worried about your childâ€™s social skills, take some time and strengthen your childâ€™s communication. You do not have to wait until your child gets into school in order to strengthen your childâ€™s social skills. You can work personally with your child, but it will take patience and practice to help your child get comfortable with people. Here are several mechanics to teaching your child good social skills.

First, adjust your attitude of the situation. Your child will be able to pick up what you think of the situation by how you are acting. Help them get over this hurdle by keeping your mood happy and chipper.

Second, help your child understand how to apply the social skills they are learning by giving them real life situations. It does not matter how many times your child learns something, but if they do not apply it they will never learn it. Take them to the grocery store, to the library, to church, and to grandmaâ€™s house and let them ask the clerk, librarian, teacher, and grandma question. Each situation requires different social skills just make sure you prepare your child beforehand.

Third, take your child to a busy public area and let them observe other people. This will give them the opportunity to see how families, strangers, couples, etc. interact with each other and strangers.

Fourth, practice and patience is important for your child to develop good social skills. Remind them that they need to be patient as they learn. Patience is not an easy principle for a kid but if you remind them about the result, it will make the process easier to go through. Even though it may seem like your child will never properly learn how to communicate, it takes time to develop good social skills, and as your child continues to practice you will both start seeing results from all of the hard work.

Filed Under: Education, Parenting Tagged With: Child, Learning, Social skill

How to make your teens become a responsible driver

As far as teaching driving to your kids is concerned, everyone can do that by sending their kids in the driving institutes or by giving lessons to their teens themselves. Most of the parents are just happy by seeing their teens driving and they do not pay attention towards developing responsible driving attitudes in their kids until their kids do not get penalized by the law authorities for over speeding, for driving while drunk or for talking over cell phones while driving.

Parents almost forget that as their kids need their guidance with other things in life, they also need their support and guidance to develop a responsible driving attitude and to become a safe driver. Also, parents should not forget that when their kids are driving it is just not a fun ride but a ride that could prove fatal to the lives of their kids if they do not show a responsible attitude. Every year, only in U.S more than 5,000 teen lives are lost in fatal car accidents.

It is a major responsibility of the parents to keep an eye on their teens when they are driving. No matter how confident parents are about the driving of their teens, they must not let them go out to drive the car in the night time. Also parents must themselves present their example in front of their kids by being a responsible driver. Parents not only themselves should avoid practicing things that leads toward distracted driving but should also keep guiding their teens about the safety rules and regulations and the ways to avoid distracted driving.

No driving institute can develop responsible driving attitudes in the teens. It is only the parents that can play their role in making their kids to become a safe driver and hence a good and responsible citizen.

Filed Under: Parenting Tagged With: Adolescence, Parent, Traffic collision

Understand why children quit sports

Have you ever just listened to child play together? They play house, cops and robbers, and hide â€˜n seek. They do not worry about the rules or they are going to get their new dress dirty because they are chasing the dog around the backyard. Kids like to move and have fun. They also love to create their own games.

If you have not experienced it yet, children have a tendency of being excited and then when they get step into the swing of the football practice or cheerleading tryouts, they want to quit. Before you get mad about your child changing their mind, look at three reasons why kids want to quit sports.

First, they do not have any fun while playing the game. This goes back to the informal games they played when they were younger. They were able to choose the rules. Now they have to go to practice and run drills.

Second, they may be experiencing emotional stress from trying to excel for the benefit of winning a game. No longer are they having fun, but they have to work hard and they do not get the same feeling they got when they were shooting the same basketball in their backyard. Children just want to have fun with the game.

Third, they are not seeing any changes. Just like adults, children want to see the reason they are working so hard happen. They see it as I am running hard, the coach is yelling at me, and I do not get to play in the game. If they do not see results, kids lose interest just as fast as adults do. Children get bored when they do not have fun as they are working. Help your child have fun with their new sport so that they do not quit.

Filed Under: Child Development, Parenting Tagged With: Child, Games, Parent

What you should not do if your child is having trouble understanding social skills

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Children are given the opportunity every day to make new friends who last for several years. For some children, it is hard for them to interact with their peers and this can lead to them becoming outcasts if parents do not recognize their children need help learning and understanding social skills. Even though most children are able to notice social skills as they interact with other children, some kids are not able to. As a parent, you should step in and help them learn about these skills.

There are always the right way and the wrong way to a situation. With teaching your child about social skills, there is a wrong way to helping them learn. As a mother, you may be tempted to let your child learn about good social skills by being with other children who seem to understand what these skills are. Unfortunately, this technique can back fire. Instead of helping the situation, you actually hurt it.

Your child needs to be taught what good social skills are. They need to learn the skills before they can apply them. Teaching your child good social skills takes a lot of patience. As you teach, you need to remember they desperately want to be with their peers making friends.

Pushing them into situations with peers who already know good social skills can actually make your childâ€™s situation worse. Right now, your child does not understand that being too blunt can make the other kids cry. Being too blunt can cause other kids to think your child is mean, making it harder for your child to make friends.

Instead, work with your child at home. Teach them what someone should say to another person, that they should not be mean, or hurt someone else’s feelings. After your child understands the social skills you need to teach them then invite over the children with good social skills.

Filed Under: Child Development, Parenting, Social Skills Tagged With: Child, Learning, Social skill

Why you should encourage your children to turn off the video game and play outside

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What are your children doing today? Are they reading, playing video games, or playing outside? Unfortunately, it has become extremely common for children to stay inside all day instead of getting a group of the neighborhood kids together to hit a hockey puck around, shoot hoops, or ride their bikes down the hill. There are numerous benefits for your children if they shut off their video games and go outside to play.

First, the physical movement will help keep them fit and healthy. With more and more children becoming obese, the physical activity of playing sports outside with friends helps their bodies. Many children have too much weight on their small framing resulting in other health problems. By encouraging your children to go outside, you help them benefit physically.

When children get up and move around, they are creating habits that they will use in the future. Most likely if they work out and eat healthy, they will continue doing so as an adult. Even watching you workout or going outside to play a game with them will encourage them to go outside more often.

Interacting with other people not only helps them make friends, but it also helps them develop social skills. By encouraging them to get outdoors, you are enabling them to develop socially, mentally, physically, and emotionally. Playing sports with friends can lead to sports leagues, playing in middle school or high school, and it can even cause a family tradition to begin. Why not encourage everyone in your family to spend some family time together outside playing flag football or swimming? Dad and mom could also use time away from social networks and online casino games. Children are more likely to stick to something because they see their parents support and encourage them to do it. If they see you enjoying yourself as you shoot hoops with them, they will want to do it more often.

Filed Under: Child Development, Parenting Tagged With: Health, Physical exercise, Video game

Keeping your child from getting dehydrated while playing sports

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As your child runs around the soccer field trying to keep the opposing team from scoring, the last thing that will be on your little oneâ€™s mind is drinking enough water. As a parent, keeping your child healthy and hydrated is a handful. Whether you are getting your child dressed in the uniform, cheering on your youngster as she plays volleyball, or drives the family home after a long day of playing beach volleyball, here are some tips to remember about keeping your family hydrated.

If your child is already thirsty or complaining about how dry her mouth is, she already is dehydrated. When playing sports, the body sweats releases the bodyâ€™s water and nutrients. In order to keep everyone healthy, you need to know the signs of possible dehydration. They include dry or sticky mouth, feeling thirsty, headaches, muscle cramping, extreme fatigue, weakness, irritability, and dizziness.

To keep your family properly hydrated no matter the sport activity, you should hydrate before, during, and after the fun. Thirty minutes before your daughterâ€™s volleyball games starts, give her 12 ounces of water of drink. When she is playing, she should be drinking water also every 20 minutes. The amount of water will depend on her size. If she is less than 90 pounds, she should have 5 ounces of water. If she is over, she should have 9 ounces.

Drinking water after the game is also important. Everyone should be drinking water every 20 minutes to help restore your bodyâ€™s water loss. It should be in the first hour after the outing. Do not let anyone in your family fall victim to dehydration. It is possible that if someone is extremely dehydrated, they can pass out and they would need to go to the hospital to get intravenous fluids. Do not let this preventable incident happen to your family.

Filed Under: Child Development, Learning Skills, Parenting Tagged With: Dehydration, Drinking water, Water