PARENTS are most happy to see their children engage themselves in sports, and as a result, kids are entrusted by their parents to teachers, trainers and coaches, with the purpose of making their children physically better and give them the opportunity to learn a specific sport of their interest.
Most likely, children exude in energy and can run and play the whole day; it is natural for kids to play that is why encouraging them to participate in sports programs is important, trained or untrained, seeing children participating in various kinds of sports is a very good sight for parents that they become their child’s motivator.
However, providing motivation should not be pushing the child into it, but should be done in a way to help the child understand the importance of the sport, and where he can gradually learn and enjoy it and not wanting to see a child’s fun being ruined due to either pushing him to do the sport or taking the child’s sport too seriously.
Working with kids takes a lot of effort from their parents, trainers and coaches alike; patience, understanding, trust and confidence are major factors one must be equipped with when dealing with kids in sport plus a lot of psychology to cope up with their attitude and behaviour.
Children’s sport must not be shifted abruptly from being playful to being too goal-oriented because children are vulnerable to either being trodden or helped by competitions, because they need to develop more confidence, physically and mentally. Taking into consideration their discipline and interest of the sport because these can steadily influence them to continuously play the sport.
Letting children know how to lose and be good losers is part and parcel of the package when working with them, let them not be award conscious, because it is by losing some that they can appreciate winning.
Goal setting is as important in working with kids in sports, trainers and coaches like parents in preparing their children for the future should have a long-range goal; it is not be the compulsion to win that should be inculcated in their minds but the fun and the need for fitness in playing the sport putting in mind that there is a big over-competitive world waiting for the child.