Affect of team sport on children - Essay Example

Team Sport and Early Childhood Childhood of an individual is perhaps the most sensitive and crucial stage of life. Lessons learn during this phase always remain with the person. When a child is born, he or she is exposed to the environment that is not known to him/her. He tends to learn new thing every day, and this learning experience continues throughout his life. However, the pace of development is maximum during early years of life. Encouraging children to participate in team sports has many benefits. Sports offer a great deal of learning, and they also promote growth in a child. Children who get involve in team sports from a very early age tend to learn more than those who lag behind in physical activities (Taylor, Blair and Cummings). Sports deal with three basic spheres of personality development; physiological, psycho-social, and cognition.
The biological growth of a child is optimized through physical activity. It offers development of muscles, increases in height, prevents obesity, and induces the habit of regular exercise. Social facilitation is the phenomenon that explains why people tend to perform well in an activity while doing it with others. The idea of promoting children to play team sports is to use the principle of social facilitation, in order to motivate them to strive hard towards achieving their goals. Another important role of sports in early years of life is related to cognitive development. Sportsmen spirit and fair play are the two qualities that are best learnt by getting involved in sports.
Coordination and cooperation are the two main elements of a team sport. One of the purposes of encouraging children to involve in team based sports is to sharpen their social skills. A team is no less than an organization that offers interdependence between team members. A child can learn a lot of things by playing team sports. These games offer children an opportunity to learn how to behave in an organization. Further, a child, who is regularly involved in playing team sports, learns how to deal with competitive environment. Team sports, enhance interpersonal communication skills, moreover, they teach tolerance and acceptance within an individual. The quality of teamwork determines the success of an organization; a successful organization is one in which all the team members work in collaboration to each other (Cabane and Clark). Collaboration refers to the synchronization of individual activities in pursuing a single goal. For instance, in soccer the main aim of a team is to score maximum goals, however, there are only two or three main strikers in a team of eleven players; so if the purpose is to score maximum goals, then why not play eleven strikers? The answer is very simple, a team cannot simply rely on offence, and it also needs someone to defend the goal, further it requires mid-fielders to bridge the distance between forwards and backs.
Team sports promote growth, improve social skills, and help in cognitive development. Therefore, to conclude, one can suggest that team sports are useful tools for intuiting healthy lifestyle among individuals from a very early stage.
References
Cabane, Charlotte, and Andrew E. Clark. "Childhood sporting activities and adult labor-market outcomes." (2013).
Taylor, W. C., et al. "Childhood and adolescent physical activity patterns and adult physical activity." Medicine and science in sports and exercise (1999): 118-123.
Weintraub, D. L., et al. "Team sports for overweight children: The Stanford sports to prevent obesity randomized trial (SPORT)." Archives of pediatrics & adolescent medicine (2008): 232-237. Read More