My daughter wants to take dance, gymnastics, swimming, karate and soccer lessons. Oh, she also wants to take a cheerleading class. The thought of enrolling in her all these different types of activities boggles the mind. I know she wants to do it. However, she is five years old and despite her seemingly boundless stores of energy, she can get burned out.
It’s important to me to let her enjoy herself. I want her to be athletic. I want her to be competitive. But most of all, I want her to have fun and to enjoy herself. She takes two dance classes a week and she loves to take them. Occasionally she gets grumpy about it because she knows she could spend 45 minutes playing rather than in a dance class.
A gentle reminder that she likes dance and she’s back into it again, after May and her recital, I told her she could take the summer off from dance. She said she wanted to keep going, but I suggested that she take a dance camp instead.
We’ve been going back and forth on what kind of camps she would like to take, but we’ve settled on at least three different types of camps to take over the summer. The camps will be a week of dedicated activity that will introduce her to different types of physical sports including soccer and karate.
She will also take a reading camp and a zoo camp where she can learn about animals and habitats. The exposure to the different elements of her education is important. It’s dangerous for parents to focus their children too intently into one area of sports or activity. Partially because of the pressure we can exert on them can leave them feeling like they have very few options.
It’s also better for children to have broad based conditioning rather than specialized. Whether playing sports like baseball or soccer, dancing in tap or jazz or performing gymnastics to broaden their horizons. If they don’t – they may build up only specific muscle strength and this can actually lead to greater chances for injury.
Motor skills like hopping, landing, bending, skipping, jumping, running and hanging are all important for your five and six year-olds to be learning to do. Team sports are important, but so are unstructured activities.
So take a page from my book, expose your children to opportunity and don’t limit their options. Explore fitness the best way – through life and fun.