Capstone Limiting Children Essay

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Capstone Research: Limiting Children In recent years, there has been an increase in the amount of adults who want children to specialize or pick their desired athletic path too early. Parents, teachers, and coaches have always pressured and questioned children about what they want to be when they grow up. Parents might want their kids to choose one sport for financial purposes, coaches might do it for selfish reasons to better the children in their specific area of teaching, and teachers might pressure kids to make this choice so they know the kids are growing up with goals and aspirations. All of these are valid reasons, but asking a kid to pick one specific area to specialize in before they are fully developed can lead to more harm than good. …show more content…

“In an article from The Wall Street Journal, multiple sports participation was encouraged by no less an authority than Stephen Curry, who despite being a basketball prodigy at an early age, ‘also played some baseball, football, soccer, and basically everything else in a sports buffet’”(The dangers of youth sport specialization and the benefits of diversification, n.d.). The greatest shooter in the history of basketball, a highly skilled sport, grew up playing multiple sports and advocates for children to do the same. While it is understood he spent endless amounts of time getting extra shots up, he made time for other sports which he says play a large role in developing him into the athlete he is today. Also “an increased amount of volume of one specific movement while the body is growing can lead to imbalanced development and a higher chance of overuse injury” (Reinold, 2015). Specializing can create muscular imbalance and limit overall development or cause an athlete to create early, lingering overuse …show more content…

Potential Burnout In conclusion, a lot of the points that have been made throughout this paper can be benefits of children playing just one sport in general, but they should be playing multiple sports for the huge reason of burnout. Specialization often leads to children being burnt out because of the over repetition at such a young age, while it takes a lot of repetitions to be elite at a sport, incorporating practice and training from other sports will allow a child to have a break from their ‘main’ sport while still staying in shape and developing athletic and mental skills. “An athlete who specializes early or plays on an ultra-competitive select team is at increased risk of burnout or quitting sports as a result of chronic stress, repetitive strain and a decrease in intrinsic motivation and enjoyment during their training sessions” (Lench, n.d.). Kids will feel pressure from their parents to do extremely well if they do specialize, this is because parents will have spent countless amounts of money and time on their kids'

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