Every parent wants their child to do well and thrive socially, academically and to be fit and athletically inclined. Sometimes in the parental zeal to have our children accomplish all of these things, we forget to allow them the time and space to be children. It’s great to set goals and standards, but we need to leave down time and play time and let our children be just kids.

The creative art of being kids and playing tag, jump rope or red rover seems to be on it’s way to extinction. Children occupied in unstructured play time is very important to developing socialization skills, decision making and imagination. Children in these settings don’t know they’re learning, they’re just busy having fun. Children role play through playing with dolls, dressing up and coming up with their own games. They are learning valuable life skills.

Competitive sports are also wonderful for the children as are organized extracurricular activities. Competitive sports like soccer, T-ball and softball all teach valuable lessons about fair play and social skills. However, if children are doing only these type of activities, they will begin to feel pressured.
If you want your children to be happy and well adjusted, let them just go outside and play. Leave some nights without organized activities. Make sure you don’t overbook your child with back to back sports and activities after school every night.

Make sure there’s enough time for well balanced meals, plenty of rest and sleep and just old fashioned joyful playing outside like a kid and you’ll all be better off as a family. Children are increasingly complaining of headaches and migraines and other stress related ailments when they’re only in grade school. Parents, keep your kids motivated but don’t stress them to overachieve.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 26th, 2007 at 8:46 pm and is filed under Fitness Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.