If you want to get your kids healthy, the best and easiest way to do that is to get your kids into sports. There are plenty of articles, blogs, studies, books, and whatnot that prove over and over again, that sports are healthy.
Something that isn’t very often talked about is how to get your kids into sports. This is a very important question.
Most parents have faced this issue. Sometimes our children don’t want to participate in something that would be very beneficial for them…
Trying to get your kids into sports, when they don’t really feel like it, is hard. It will require persuasion, tactful approaches, maturity and patience, to achieve that.
Dale Carnegie’s well known best-seller, “How to win Friends and Influence People” has a very interesting tale about a child who didn’t want to go to kindergarten. Unable to convince the child to go there, the parents devise a masterful plan.
They decide to start finger painting together in front of the child. When the child sees the parents having fun together, they obviously want to partake. In requesting to do so, the parents reply with: “Well, you have to go to kindergarten, to learn how to finger paint, and then you can join us.”
This was all it took for this couple to convince their child to start going to kindergarten.
For our purposes today, this story shows us that there is always a way to convince our kids to do the right thing. You will see how, although these examples are from the 1930’s, the concepts, ideas and lessons they represent and share, are still valid to this day.
To get your kids into sports you must…
To get your kids into sports you must get yourself into sports. Think of the story that we mentioned above. Why was it that the kid wanted to learn finger painting? So that they can be part of the fun things that the family does.
You can apply the very same concept to sports, hence to get your kids into sports you must get yourself into sports. They will follow your lead and example.
To get your kids into sports, you must make sports fun. We can actually use the story above as an example again. The reason why the child in the story wanted to finger paint, was because he viewed the activity as fun and appealing.
Make sports seem fun and appealing for your children too. You can easily achieve this by playing together, and creating mini-games and similar things when it’s only you and your child playing.
To get your kids into sports, you must watch sports together. There’s endless study that children who watch sports with their parents end up falling in love with said sport. If your child finds passion and love for a sport, it’s going to be challenging to stop them and have them take a break.
To get your kids into sports, you must make them feel proud. To go back to the story, for the last time, can you imagine how good it must have felt for that kid when one day he could walk inside the house having attained the complex and important knowledge of finger painting?
It is things like this that will help you get your kids into sport, and just as importantly keep them there. Make them feel proud of their achievements, no matter how small or rudimentary they may be.
To get your kids into sports, make them think it’s their idea. This is a general psychological trick, but if you are able to make someone think that it was their idea to start something, or be part of something, they are much more likely to partake in that thing.
To achieve this try saying things like “Well if you like running around and you want to be fast… Okay, let’s go to basketball practice so you can get those.” This style of persuasion works relatively well with kids.
To get your kids into sports, get their friends involved. It is very important that your kid feels part of the group with their friends. Help them invite their friends over to play their favorite sport together.
If you know the parents of the other kids, it is a good idea to talk it through with them too. Chances are they, just like you, want the best for their child.
As our children grow, they will start to understand the world around them more and more. Eventually they will find their passion in life.
Whatever that passion may be, sport-related or not at all, if you succeed to get your kids into sports from an early age, they will probably never stop being active and healthy, despite the work or career path they choose for themselves.
