Playing sport helps to keep us fit and is an excellent way of preventing disease. Generally, a combination of sport and a healthy balanced diet helps to achieve a feeling of well-being and eliminates tension and stress.

 

Sport helps children�s physical and mental development, and teaches them how to mix in the context of the social group surrounding them. Exercise makes the body feel good, and this continual feeling of well-being in a child can be very beneficial when facing puberty.

 

Regular physical exercise combined with a balanced diet, assists weight control, preventing obesity, both in childhood and adult life (it is proven that 80% of obese adults were obese children). It is essential for stimulating growth of bones and the muscular system, of psychomotor skills and also helps to prevent degenerative diseases such as arteriosclerosis, strongly related to heart disease. For all of these reasons, it is recommended that parents and teachers all encourage playing sport above other activities associated with a sedentary life such as watching television, video games or sitting in front of the computer. Particularly in summer, sport can be promoted as a family activity, going on outings to the countryside, canoeing, swimming, playing together on the beach, bicycle riding, playing tennis and horse riding. This has the added attraction of being able to enjoy nature and get to know it a little more.

 

In order to make sure that children see playing sport as something appealing and fun, we must help them find a sport that they like. For this reason, it is important to ask for advice about which kind of sport they can do and how much time they should devote to it. It may still be a bit difficult to start with, until they get the hang of it, which is why it is very important that they can rely on their parents� support. Sport also contributes towards having a good state of mental health and will encourage increased self-esteem and help you to have more self-confidence and relate better to other people. On the other hand, if parents and coaches pressurise and force children, they will not achieve good results and will lack motivation for sport.

 

School sports by nature, must have educational aims. Particularly when children are very young, sport must not be presented as something compulsory, but should instead retain a playful element providing fun and reinforcing both their behaviour and personality. It is very important that parents adopt a positive attitude and do not always expect their children to be the best, as this may create a loss of self-confidence, fear of failure and inferiority complexes.

 

Benefits of sport
In summary, playing sport as a child includes many positive aspects that will contribute to the well-being of the future adult, such as: good physical development and fitness, the child will have good habits where both food and health are concerned, will learn to have self-discipline, deal with success and failure and will mature psychologically, as well as developing socially in relation to the people around him.

 

Furthermore, it is easier to instil healthy habits at an early age than to get rid of bad habits as an adult. Unsuitable food, sedentary lifestyles, excess weight and many other problems are linked to the development of degenerative diseases such as arteriosclerosis, arthritis, type II diabetes, etc. Although they don�t become apparent until adult life, these illnesses usually stem from our childhood. This is why it is important to prevent them, among other ways, by playing sport.