Because childhood obesity has become more common, parents often assume youth sports can solve this problem. But my question is, is this really the answer?  The honest answer, not necessarily.  Think about this:

• 75% of ball contacts are made by 40% of the players during a third-grade soccer game.
• 35% of players never caught the ball, while 52% of the players never threw the ball during a fifth-grade kickball game.
• Three students never touched the ball or ran the length of the gym floor during a fifth grade kickball game.
• Twenty third-grade children, participating in a one-hour softball game, had a total of 39 throwing and catching opportunities.  The average number of throwing and catching opportunities for each child for the one-hour game was 2.3.
• Children participating in an hour-long hockey game had possession of the puck less than two minutes each.

(Steve Grineski, Cooperative Learning in Physical Education)

Now, take your experience participating in youth sports or a parent watching youth sports.  What type of child is usually participating on the field?  Typically, we see children who are perceived to have more talent playing the majority of the time.  However, these kids are only physically active on the playing field about 25% of the time.  In addition, the children who are sitting on the side lines are perceived as less talented and typically do not have the opportunity to participate as often. Therefore, the skills needed to improve are not met and these children grow to have negative feelings towards physical activity.

Our goal as parents, is to make physical activity (i.e. exercise) an enjoyable experience for our children. We also need to understand that not all children can be pushed, challenged, or encouraged in the same manner. Kids would much rather cooperate and make up their own games versus having to play games with adult rules and structure. Encourage your children to use their imagination to create their own games and let them teach us something about conflict resolution and thinking ou