In the world of youth sports, parents often find themselves navigating a playing field full of various types of advice, information, and experts. Safety comes first, but not far from the top of the list are the other factors: What’s the best combination of sports to play? How often should we be looking to play and train? How do we balance energy expenditure and recovery? And ultimately, are my kids having fun and developing life skills beyond sports?

We’re pleased to introduce a Q&A with guest contributor Matthew Harris, Physical Therapy Manager at Nemours Children Health specializing in youth sports. We sat down with Matt to gather his “Fast Five” insights for parents. We also have an upcoming discussion on this important topic! We welcome you to join our free, upcoming webinar at 6pm on Wednesday, April 10th, 2024: Spring into Sports Season: Webinar Featuring Nemours Sports Medicine’s Matthew Harris.

How can I prevent my child from getting injured while playing sports?

My big thing is stretching since you just don’t want to jump right into an activity. Warm-up and cool-down are huge parts of injury prevention, and often they’re the easiest things to overlook. Warming up is super important because it prepares your body for the activity that you’re going to be doing by raising your body temperature and activating the muscles that you’re going to be using during that activity. The thing that really gets overlooked is the idea of cool-down. Most people forget that you’re going to get the most gains in your flexibility after because your muscles are already warm and you’ve already gone through the activity. By cooling down, you’re going to help move some of that lactic acid out of your body and minimize any soreness.

What are the signs of overtraining and how can I ensure that my child isn’t pushing themselves too hard?

Generally, you’ll start to see some sort of change in performance, mood, and/or sleep habits, whereas before they may have been excited to be participating in practice or games.

To make sure that that doesn’t happen, ask your child, “Do you want to keep playing?” See what their comfort and confidence levels are within the sport. Sometimes it’s as simple as having a conversation with your player. They may tell you, “No, it’s too much… I’m too tired… I don’t feel like I can handle it…”

However, there are a lot of social barriers. We often hear, “Well my friends are still part of the team” or “My parents have invested a lot of money in this,” and they may just decide they’re going to play because they feel like they have to. It’s a very big social struggle that a lot of kids will face, and sometimes it’s hard for them to have that conversation with their parents because their parents may never ask them or they just feel that pressure there. So sometimes it helps to engage in that conversation with them and help them bridge that gap.

How can I foster a positive attitude towards sport and physical activity in my child.

Typically, we spend a lot of time as parents coaching our kids and commenting more about the technique of their game or whatever the skill set was that they’re working on as opposed to coming at it from a point of view of simply saying, “Hey, I just enjoyed watching you play.”

If a parent says to their kid that it was just fun to come and watch them have fun out there, that can do a lot for a kid when they just hear those words from their parents. I think that goes a long way toward creating a different kind of framework or positive attitude around sports. We all get caught up in trying to coach our kids, I’ve done it with my son, but sometimes we have to catch ourselves and say, “You know, it was just fun to watch them go out there and play today.” That will go a long way and resonate well with your player.

What are the benefits of participating in multiple sports and how can I help my child explore different activities?

There’s a lot of research that’s emerging on this. In the past, it was said that the only way you’re going to get better is something is if you practice it over and over again, but we’re steadily realizing that higher-level athletes are doing multiple sports. Well, why is that? It tends to be because these athletes are engaging different muscle groups and developing different skills they are helping them a lot down the line.

There’s this idea of physical literacy. The idea holds that there are certain foundational movements that, when practiced and built upon, lead to greater skills. Just like the alphabet is the foundation of reading – the more you practice your letters the better reader you become. For example, if I read my son the same story over and over again, he’s going to hear those same words, but it’s not enhancing his vocabulary. It’s not going to make him a better reader down the road. So by reading different books, he’s getting a better vocabulary. So when we do different sports activities, we’re getting a better sports vocabulary that’s going to help us be more successful in the end. This is because we engage different muscle groups and learn different movement patterns and that are going to help us.

I have a huge passion for telling kids to do different sports. It doesn’t matter if you do sports year-round but be sure to do different sports that are going to engage different muscle groups and hopefully reduce that wear and tear on your muscles. Once you get into that high school level then, you’ll want to start specializing.

How can I ensure my child’s safety during sports activities, especially when they’re playing outdoors?

One thing that comes to mind is the environment and being dressed appropriately. If it’s cold, you want to make sure that everything’s covered and have appropriate clothing. If it’s hot, you want to make sure you aren’t wearing too many layers (and also staying hydrated).

You’ll also want to check that you have the proper equipment for whatever sport you’re playing (i.e. making sure your equipment fits.) The equipment that you had last year might not fit this year.

Lastly, make sure you’re playing in a safe place. You’ll want to be in a well-lit field and know the territory you are in. This also ties into the supervision piece of this all. Ask yourself, “Who’s going to be watching…? Who’s coaching…? Who’s participating…? What families are going to be there…?” Keeping track of where everyone’s going to be and making sure everybody’s on the same page between parents can go a long way to easing your mind as a parent.

We thank Matt for dropping by and sharing his insights with us! Click here to RSVP for the upcoming webinar!