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Monday's Health Report: Team sports can teach kids more than just teamwork
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BATON ROUGE — A recent study found children who play team sports are learning more than teamwork.
They seem to have better executive function, which includes things like memory, focus, ability to adapt and emotional control.
"I think that it's the practicing of those skills in a team sport, that allows a young person to have another venue where they would be – it's like working out, right? You can get some of that in school, but this is a venue where you're doing more of it, and so I think it's an extension of what we might see through childhood development,” sports psychologist Matthew Sacco said.
Experts say it makes sense. Children have to consider their teammates, remember plays, take instruction and make quick decisions. Beyond that, sports have also been shown to help kids with social skills and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Researchers say 70 percent of children in the United States stop playing sports by the time they are 13. It may have to do with the pressures that come from playing in more competitive leagues as they start to get older.
"Kids get tired of it, and they can get burnout, especially if they're in something that may not be rewarding or as reinforcing for them or as it once was,” Sacco said. “Because once we get out of that, 'hey this is fun', everybody is kind of playing, everybody is having a good time, which is that traditional kind of recreational model, the competitiveness is not for everybody, or developmentally not yet for some people.”
If your child is interested in trying a new sport, you can try signing them up for a rec league first. That way you can see if they like it before committing to a travel team, which can be expensive and time-consuming.
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