What positive lessons can kids learn from being sports fans? Image by Flickr user daveynin
The Super Bowl has just passed, and March Madness is just around the corner. Do your kids enjoy watching these big sports events? Do you worry about whether they’re learning the right lessons from professional and college athletes, who don’t always seem to be the best role models?
Over at Huffington Post, pediatrics professor Dr. Deborah Gilboa has advice for parents on how to help kids pick up lessons in “sportsmanship, perseverance and loyalty” from watching big-time sports events.
“Point out the big and small moments of sportsmanship,” she says.
An opposing team member gives a hand up to a tackled player. Handshakes and even hugs happen between teams at the beginning and end of the game. If someone goes down and stays down, ask your kids why the players from both teams take a knee on the field wherever they are. Why don’t the guys on the other team cheer? Or gloat? Or even just wander around talking to each other? Why do they applaud if the injured man gets up to walk off the field?
What does it take to get to this field of play? How many laps, situps, pushups have these guys run? How early did they get up on days that their friends and siblings slept in? How late did they stay up doing homework after practice? How many injuries have they recovered from? How hard has each member of the staff (coaches, physical therapists, statisticians, assistants) worked to be involved with this franchise at this level? Most of these answers are one quick Internet search away, but it’s the conversation that will teach the work ethics we want our children to absorb.
Great ideas, Dr. G! Thanks for a new way of looking at TV sports — as a potential goldmine of teachable moments.
