AL Gondi
Children in late childhood stage (between 10 and 12 years) have improved transitional skills and are able to master complex motor skills.
They have the cognitive ability to understand and remember strategies and rules of sports such as football and basketball. Vision is fully mature.
Children at this age are generally ready to participate in most sports activities that require more complex motor and cognitive skills.
Emphasis should be on skill development, but instructions on tactics and strategy should be incorporated by the organisers. Most experts feel that skill development, fun, and participation should take priority over competition.
It is important for adults organizing children’s sports activities to understand that motivational factor for children’s participation in sports is to ensure children’s goals and needs are met.
Motivational factors
Motivational factors for children’s participation in sports are to have fun, to improve skills and to learn new ones, and to be with friends as well as to make new ones.
Other factors such as family participation and enthusiastic leadership are also important. Winning is usually the least important factor.
It has been noticed that 90 per cent of children of young athletes would rather play on a losing team than sit on the bench of a winning team. The health provider should understand what motivates children to participate in sports and reasons why they drop out of sports.
They include interest in other in other activities, not getting to play enough skills, not improving.
Others are boredom and lack of fun due to over organisation and regimentation, hating the coach because the coach yells, plays the favourites, or is unfair.
It is estimated that children by the age 15, 75 per cent of those who have been involved in organised sports have dropped out.
Game structures
This suggests that many youth sports programs are organised in ways that do not promote the interests of the children, but those of adults involved.
It is therefore vital that game structures and adults’ expectations for participation and performance be revised to match interests and developmental capabilities of the children to provide positive sports experiences during childhood to promote lifelong involvement.
For many years, it has been thought that children lack the ability to improve endurance in response to training since many studies in training children showed little or no improvement in endurance.
However, recent studies show that when training programs meet adult standards (in terms of intensity, frequency, and duration of training), there is improvement in endurance. This topic to continue next Sunday.
