Fun Fitness For Kids: Suggestions for Keeping Kids Happy and Active.This is an Olympic year, and I love the Olympics! Our athletic family watches the Olympics each evening during the broadcasts and we cheer wildly for our USA competitors. We relish each personal story and live each drama with the athletes. The thrills of victory and the agonies of defeat are compelling. Our hearts sink with the suffering of disappointment and soar in victorious moments. We feel the sweet emotion of our patriotism each time the National Anthem is played. I feel exhausted by the end of the evening, having tensed my muscles as I live vicariously through each athletic performance. As humans, we tend to try out the behaviors of people that we admire. Olympic athletes are positive role models who have achieved what most of us can only dream of. But, in the wake of the Olympics we may emulate elite level sports by engaging our children in high-pressure competitive sports and thus endanger their personal enjoyment of athletics for the future. My experience as an athlete, physical educator, and parent has provided me with about a half century in children's sports and the opportunity to observe trends and changes in American sport and culture. Highly organized competitive children's sports and the pressure to perform have escalated tremendously over the past 20 years. Many American children suffer from the conditional acceptance of adults who want them to win. Is winning more important than learning? Will a good score mean more to a child's future than a good mastery of athletic skills? Even though the social, psychological, and health benefits of sport participation are well recognized, up to 70% of participants drop out of sports between the ages of 7 and 18 years. Why? Researchers have identified negative experiences as the main reason children drop out of organized youth sports. Sport is like a double-edged sword. Swung in the right direction, the sword can have tremendously positive effects, but swung in the wrong direction can be devastating. It is the responsibility of parents and educators to create positive athletic experiences early in life. When sport experiences are positive, children will continue participation and develop skills and confidence that will endure throughout their lives. Kids just want to have fun! Children are motivated to participate in sports to have fun, learn skills, test their abilities, and experience excitement and personal accomplishments. These child-centered goals are best accomplished in a non-competitive and supportive learning environment that offers a variety of athletic experiences. Cooperative games, personal challenges, and goal setting are enjoyable activities in which young athletes are free to experiment to achieve their personal best and sometimes fail. Due to the developmental differences in children, early physical abilities are not a predictor of later success in athletics. Research demonstrates that a variety of activities rather than early specialization lead to successful achievement in a specific sport later. Just as a wide variety of academic experiences contribute to intellectual ability; a wide variety of physical experiences will contribute to physical and athletic ability. This is best accomplished by encouraging participation in a variety of activities with less intensity prior to adolescence. Why not competitive, organized sports at an early age? Coaches and parents in competitive sports have a tendency to put adult goals on childrenís participation, thereby causing negative experiences and deterring future sport participation. Emphasizing athletic excellence for young children may have serious psychological, emotional, and physical ramifications for young athletes. Children who drop out of organized sports give reasons such as lack of fun, lack of skill development, lack of playing time, excessive parental pressure, excessive emphasis on winning, and negativistic coaching. Young children do not develop a mature understanding of the competitive athletic process until they reach about 12 years old. An example can be observed with 7-8 year olds participating in beehive soccer, in which both teams chase the ball without regard to position or assignment. Such behavior, much to the delight of children and frustration of coaches, reflects their stage of development. They just want to have fun and be part of the action! Kids don't care about position, nor do they remember their 'job' in their excitement to be involved. However, the unrealistic expectations of coaches and parents can cause anger, frustration, and sometimes verbal abuse in competitions. The emphasis for young children should be on learning basic core skills in a non-competitive environment. Everyone can and should learn athletic skills. American children can become physically literate just as they can become academically literate. Physical literacy contributes to greater enjoyment each and every day of life because we are required to move our bodies continually throughout life. The best way to keep children active in sports is to maximize enjoyment of participation rather than focus on scoreboards and statistics as the measure of success. Emphasis on doing your best, getting better, and having fun creates a positive experience for both children AND adults! Early skill development creates a strong foundation for competitive sports in middle and high school and helps to avoid the burnout associated with participation in early competitive sports. Keeping American children active has become a national goal due to the obesity epidemic in the United States. If we are to achieve the goal of increased physical activity, we must create early physical experiences that are enjoyable for children. We all enjoy activities when we experience success and have the freedom to experiment and develop our abilities. We want to participate when we are encouraged in our efforts and supported in our failures. Even though not every child will be an Olympian, everyone can enjoy the exhilaration of conquering new physical challenges and developing new abilities. All children can benefit from the self-discovery, discipline, goal setting, courage, and confidence that sport participation offers. We can keep the Olympic spirit by allowing our children to experience the best sports have to offer. Let's give our children the gift of skills for lifelong physical participation by helping them to develop their abilities while respecting their childhood.
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