Sports not only keep us healthy and fit but they help us develop confidence, camaraderie and healthy competition. Getting your kids involved in sports at a young age can help them cope with life better when they get older. There are numerous benefits that your child can get when he/she engages in sports. Summer is fast approaching and instead of letting your kids stay home and watch television the whole day, you can keep them active by getting them involved in sports clinics and the like. Who knows your kid may learn to love the sport and be the next champion or professional athlete who will be admired by all.
Aside from keeping your kids preoccupied, engaging in sports can help them develop their physical, mental, social and emotional well being. Doing sports helps your kids be physically fit. It helps them as well develop ways to think of strategic plays or moves to win a game. Engaging in sports enables them to meet new people, make friends and to socialize. Competitive sports help them cope with defeat as well as victory. This is a very important learning experience as they learn that you don't win them all and actual life situations can be like that. Sports can also help many children overcome their shyness and boost their feeling of self-worth and self esteem.
Sports can help your children develop confidence. Your kids become more outgoing and even friendlier. It helps them develop a sense of responsibility and independence knowing that winning a particular competition or game all lies in how they play or perform. It also helps them develop skills on how to cooperate in a joint team effort when it comes to team sports.
Sports also help them develop their motor skills and physical coordination. It helps them be more focus as they aim to win. They could apply this later on in life as they learn to reach for their dreams and maximize their full potential in the real world.
What matters is your kids enjoy the sport they are engaged in and are having fun. They not only learn about discipline, perseverance, teamwork and most importantly sportsmanship, they learn something new and gain new friends and acquaintances. It is important that you help your children choose a sport that they like and match it with the abilities and skills that they possess. Give them support and cheer them on. After all, in life you are their mentor and their coach.
Typically, the child's room is overflowing with things, and there is not enough space in the cupboards and drawers. So, the first thing to do is to provide more space for their stuff, which may appear useless to you but is very precious for them. You might have to invest in additional shelves, boxes under the bed, or chests of drawers.
Ideally you want enough storage space so that there is still some spare capacity even after everything has been tidied up. Otherwise, if everything is crammed in, it can be very hard to find anything when you want it - which makes the solution of scattering everything across the floor rather attractive.
Next thing to do is to make a routine and set up reasonable expectations. Many children are by nature very meticulous and organized; some are not. Also, their concept of tidiness may be very different from yours. If you think you can see their room spic and span all through the day, you are mistaken. It is an unreasonable expectation; it will only lead to frustration. It would be better if you take your child's views and then establish a reasonable standard of tidiness, and how often that should be achieved.
Remember, your goal should be to teach your children how to responsibly look after their belongings; it should not be to showcase a spic and span room to show off to others. If you are taking up this exercise only because the untidiness gets on your nerves, then stop and think again. This will not help you or your child. Set your emotions aside and focus on teaching a good habit to your child. Therefore, you will have to be patient and live with an untidy room at times.
You need to establish reasonable expectations, such as putting things away before bedtime and a once-a-week thorough tidy-up. Then you can draw up some kind of contract.
What this says, in very simple terms, is what are the consequences for success and failure? For example, if the agreement is that they will do a big clean up before lunchtime on Saturday, what happens if they do, or don't, achieve that?
The focus should, primarily, be on rewards - e.g. earned privileges based on achieving the goal. This can be combined with a chart system connected to other chores.
In rare cases you can use some punishments for failure, but only as a last resort. And, the punishment should commensurate with the crime. You may want to try out the "black bag" technique, which is to put all scattered things in a big black bag which will be thrown into the attic, basement or garage for a week. If they tidy up the room by next Saturday, they can have it back. If not, then the next week's black bag collection is also thrown into the basement. This continues until they do some tidying up!
Key to the process, however, is a total absence of shouting or other punishments. All is done calmly. At the appointed time you simply go up to the room and gather up the offending articles.
The black bag technique works very well. No child wants to part with his belongings. At the most you might have to use it a couple of times. That is usually enough to drive home the message.
There may be times when you are expecting visitors and you need your child's room. This is your need and out of the contract. So, remember that this is extra to your original contract, so it would be only fair to offer an additional incentive for them to tidy up. Be grateful that they are doing you a favor by lending their room to you.
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