How to Teach Your Children About Hard Work, Team Work and Fun in Organized Youth Sports

As I walk around the neighborhood, a smile comes to my face each time I walk past the old baseball fields that I grew up around playing baseball. Children laughing and playing hard while learning the values of team work are memories that I cherish as I look back. I am a firm believer in youth and children sports and I encourage any parent with children of their own to enroll their son or daughter in a sports league. 

As a young child my parents enrolled me in baseball and while I was only an average player, I played hard and was determined to do the best job I could playing defense in the field and at the plate. That determination has spilled over to the classroom where I excelled. 

In the newspapers you hear stories about children doing drugs or gang fights. The trouble first starts when children of any age are bored and have nothing to do so they resort to drugs, violence and alcohol. By playing sports, children stay out of trouble. 

It doesn't matter how good or bad a child is at a sport. Even if they hate playing it I suggest enrolling them in the activity and having one year of that organized sport under their belt. Many times a young child will say they hate playing a sport even if they have never played it before. 

Using team work and making new friends, children will come to love sports even if they themselves aren't even good at playng it. The concept of winning and losing has tremendoes significance because it teaches children that they must work hard to succeed and they cannot win every game or every time out. Sports teach children to work hard at something. 

Many of the times that children are on sports teams they make lasting friendships. 

Sports teach children that nothing is handed to them and that they must work hard at something in order to succeed. This same attitude spills over into th classrooms as children work hard to achieve success. In fact you will also seem children worknig harder around the house like cleaning their room or taking out the garbage even when they aren't asked.