Sports for the adults can mean money, passion, discipline, training, career, or mastery. It is their way of relieving themselves from stress or earning income for their family. But can their field of discipline be a field of fun and enjoyment for kids? Yes, of course! Children also want to engage in sports because they to play and have fun. Swimming, chess, and martial arts can be three of the choices parents could let their children take on.
The hot six-packs, voluptuous curves and sexy tan lines do not have a spot in children’s dictionaries. Summer vacation means fun-in-the-sun activities, and swimming is no doubt on top of the list. Parents do not enroll their children into swimming classes to perfect their breaststrokes and dives. Swimming teachers for children do not include freestyle and butterfly in their lesson plan. Rather, children are expected to love and appreciate the water. They are removed of the almost-everyone-has-it hydrophobia. They are taught to enjoy breathing and kicking and floating on water.
Yes, they enjoy it. As swimming is considered to be the number one exercise as it involves your whole being, it is still considered as play for the children. They don’t mind the calories they burn, nor the blood flow and circulation inside their bodies. Nothing could be more exciting to these kids than soaking in water while Mr. Sun is up to please everyone.
Children love the outdoors, but that does not mean that they won’t equally enjoy the indoors. Chess, the brain-requiring sport, is often played by our dads and grandpas. Well, not anymore. Moving the chess pieces (like their toy soldiers or dolls) in that 8-by-8 square board (which is the battlefield or the tea party) also spells F-U-N. This sport helps the child develop his or her critical thinking and problem-solving abilities by coming up with strategies on how to take on the opponent. It also helps the child improve on his Math and Science subjects, as they take into consideration cause-and-effect or the number of tiles they should move a piece. Moreover, it boosts the child’s memory by remembering which pieces to move and not to move, and the strategy that his opponent has come up. Not only his mental skills are accorded to, but also his personality and behavior as well, as the child interacts with others especially with his opponent. He may not know it, but soon he may find himself sitting in front of another person, finding ways to make a check mate, and winning the championship!
Balancing of the heart and mind, the body and soul… Finding your center of gravity… Yin and Yang… Did I hear someone say Martial Arts? Bull’s eye! Engaging children into these intense sports such as karate and taekwondo will not only teach them how to protect themselves and others, but also trigger their excitement as they perfect the field. I’m quite sure that kids are familiar with martial arts, since they first practiced kicking and punching inside their mommy’s tummy.
Now, doing martial arts is like leveling themselves to their favorite cartoon or Anime characters, battling the evil forces and saving the world from their evil plans. What’s more exciting is that they get different colors of belts on their way to being the greatest fighter.
There are more child-friendly sports that kids would surely love and parents would approve of. Children have their own way of enjoying activities and actually finding themselves loving the craft. Adults have discipline and training in mind, while children inject fun and enjoyment.
