Are Children Becoming Less Active?

In this post I will explore my sporting experiences as a child and compare them to what I see young children doing at present times in terms of sport. I will highlight current issues and current attitudes of children and parents. 

I have had excellent sporting experiences within my childhood, I used to regularly go to local astro turfs and play football with my dad. When it was the school holidays and I was sent to my grandma's house for a week, she would take me to play football and cricket at local fields and parks. Due to this I feel that I have been lucky in terms of positive experiences and exposure to sport but I feel that children nowadays will not be taken to parks by their parents or family members. On a sunny day many children would rather stay in and play games rather than going outside on a local park or field to play with friends.

Attitudes have changed over the last 10 years with children and parents being more cautious about playing outside due to potential threats and dangers such as abductions and traffic. When I was a child these were issues but not as serious as they are now, traffic on the roads is a bigger issue with more and more cars on the roads. I think that it should be compulsory for children to join sport clubs, as they can choose any sport they want, they can develop not just skills but also develop character and social awareness, another positive of joining sports clubs is the safety and security of the child there will always be an adult watching. Children are playing out less and less so it would make sense to get them into safe fun organised clubs or activities regularly. 

In my opinion, I think families need to play a bigger part in developing their child's attitude and enthusiasm for sport. This can be done by finding a local field or park and having a kick around or play games outside, I have seen and heard on many occasions young children playing in a tiny back yard blasting a football around while the parents stay inside and watch television. There are two fields close to them, one is 50 yards away and the other one is 300 yards away, why not take the children on the fields and let them run free and play football in a spacious facility under supervision from parents? Issues with this are working commitments, for parents who work they can find making time to go local parks a challenge. I can relate to this with my mum working nights this was rarely an option but I can't stress enough the importance of support from parents, my parents made an huge effort to organise lifts and opportunities for me to join clubs so that I wouldn't miss out on having a sporting childhood. 

To conclude, I have had fantastic opportunities and experiences of sport from a very young age and this has been the catalyst for my passion and love for sport. My family has been instrumental in creating sporting experiences for me, not many people can boast slide tacking their grandma at football and then she slide tackling you back! Making use of local facilities and decent weather can help ignite children to be enthusiastic and passionate about sport. 

Any comments or experience can be posted here or on twitter.

@dannymaynard92

Parental Issues Within Coaching

This post will discuss current issues with parents in a sports coaching and teaching environment and also look into what problems coaches face in terms of parents. 

Parents can be a massive hindrance to the coaching process in terms of interfering with the coaching taking place. Sometimes parents can give advice to their son or daughter but this can go against what the coach is trying to do. On the other hand parents can play a useful role in reinforcing what the coach is trying to do and this can result in positive impact on the coaching process. 

After speaking to another coach, he explains that in grass roots football parents provide many challenges for him as a coach but also for the officials. The coach works with an under 14's football team and has experienced some poor behaviour by the parents. When an official told the opposing team's manager to get off the field because he was actually standing on the pitch, the parents and other coaches started hurling abuse at the referee and this filtered down to the players. The players joined in with the parents and coaches abusing the referee and the coach who i spoke to said that the official handled it really well and stopped the game to ask the coach "Is this the example you set for your players?"

At times parents can be a coaches worst enemy and it is the same with teaching, teachers nowadays are afraid of giving students detentions because of the hassle the teacher will get off parents. When I discussed this with a few coaches, we came to a decision that if we all had a child that was in trouble we would back the teacher or coach. We would be more interested in why the child has been in trouble, because we would have raised the child better than that and they should be able to follow rules. 

In my experience I have found that too many parents wrap their children up in cotton wool. Don't get me wrong I don't want parents too care less about their children, however when they go to coaching sessions and tell their children that 'they don't have to do anything they don't want to do' this makes it difficult for the coach. Attitudes like that can spread around a group very quickly and I found this out the other week; one child in the group didn't want to run around the track for the warm up and because the child objected this resulted in a few of the other children sitting out of the next activity. 

Today's society is making it very difficult for coaches and teachers to control groups of children, this is because if the child gets told off and tells their parents the coach or teacher will have to deal with the aggravated parent. My advice to parents is to support the coaches and teachers, I understand the child will come up with the excuse of "everybody else was doing it" This doesn't excuse the behaviour and if the child has been made an example of then the teacher or coach should be praised for taking control of the situation and not be challenged. 

To conclude, children will copy their parents behaviour so it's important that parents set a good example for their children to follow. Coaches should be supported by parents as they will always consider the welfare of their participants and they wouldn't put their welfare in jeopardy. The parent should be more concerned as to why the child is misbehaving instead of 'having a go' at the teacher or coach for telling their child off.