Negative Impacts of Pushing Children into Sports

Running head: SPORTS
SPORTS
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Introduction:
Parents are seen to push their children into sports with the wider dreams of multimillion-
dollar contracts, college scholarships and even Olympic glory. Children are admitted to various
sports coaching sessions at a much younger age while many others are pressurized for
participation in year round activities (Weinberg & Gould, 2018). These are mainly done by
parents with their hopes of making their children the next superstar in sports. It is indeed true that
sports have many positive aspects. However, pushing children into playing sports can also have
negative impacts on their emotional development as well as harm the development of parent-
child bond. This assignment will mainly portray the negative aspects on children when parents
push them to sports and will explain each of the impacts in details.
Self-esteem issues:
It is seen when students participate in school sports, they can develop a variety of
techniques as well as skills. They engage in friendly competition with their schoolmates and
have easier time maintaining a healthy body weight with lower risk of obesity and hence
bullying. Parents sending their wards for sports are seen to have positive body image. They gain
a sense of accomplishments that helps in shaping self-esteem.
On contrary, it is seen that some parent’s aspirations about the future success of their
child make them blind and therefore they fail to judge the ability of their children in the sports. It
has been seen that when children lacks the ability but they are still forced to compete, they often
face humiliating situations where they continually fail (Walters et al., 2015). Experts are of the
opinion that in this case sports fail to cultivate healthy self-esteem from effective sports
participation. Rather the repeated embarrassment can result in development of stress, depression,

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SPORTS
feelings of withdrawal and anxiousness in the child. Children are also seen to develop negative
sense of self due to poor performances instead of concentrating on the character traits as well as
actions and other abilities required for healthy self-esteem (Harter, 2015).
Burnout and development of interests:
Passing times surfing internet, playing computer games and watching televisions make
children sedentary and increase risk of obesity. Studies have found that children who do not
participate in sports or other physical activities can grow as inactive adults. Sports help in
healthy growth of muscles, lungs, hearts and bones. It helps in improving agility, balance and
coordination. So parents are often seen to force their wards into sports (Walters et al., 2015).
Arguably, experts have also noticed that when a child is pushed for participation in
sports, there remains high chance that the child will develop sports-related burnouts. Studies are
of the opinion that in place of resulting in an overall development, forced participation might
result in inhibition of the child from enjoying the activities as well as decreasing the desire for
succeeding at it and increasing their risk of injury (Corsaro, 2017). The child may develop
negative viewpoints and thereby lose interest in the competing in the sports activity altogether. It
has been suspected that such forms of negative connotation might cause the child to miss
different of the positive attributes that also remain associated with healthy sports participation.
When children are pushed to participate, it can also result in preventing the child from learning
in effective management of life and natural development of interest. All these factors have the
ability in damaging the overall wellness of the child as well as his productivity and shuns
creativity.
Resentment: