When looking for reasons to get your kids out the house, off their ipads and into a hobby, the main drive should be one thing – their happiness.

“Happiness is not something ready-made, it comes from your actions”, Dali Lama.

 You’re not alone if you are wondering what sport and activities you should get your kid involved in.

Will they enjoy it? Are they too young? Their older brother didn’t enjoy it, so will they? They’re not into it yet, so not sure it something they should keep trying.

Well, rest assured, we believe there are 4 simple steps to create a healthy habit for a life time:

Just give it a go.

You and your child will never know what they like unless they try it themselves. And by try it, we mean give it a real go – don’t just do one session and never go again.

Sport, above all, teaches real life qualities, and perseverance is one of these. If you allow your child to drop out after a couple of session, it simply says quit immediately if you don’t like it. As adults we know what, over time we can begin to see benefits and begin to enjoy things that at first we weren’t sure about. We need to deliver this same message to our children.

Learn to Love it.

After establishing they want to keep going back, kids need to learn to love what they are doing.

Any program that is worth its salt, will be putting this to the forefront of their aims.

Again as adults, we know what when we enjoy and then care about something, we are likely to keep pushing through even when times get difficult.

From a well-designed program, with mentors and coaches that are passionate and caring about their field, it will ensure that every participants begins to love the activity and cannot wait for the next session.

Begin to Love to Learn. 

After doing something for a while, and now loving what we are doing – we start to want to know more. We want to get better, we want to improve.

We begin to want to be constantly pushed and challenged, and want to be in an environment where we can become the best way can be.

This cycle then continues. We learn to love what we are doing. We then love learning more about it.

Sit back and watch them grow

By this stage, your child will be begging make sure they are early to their next session. They will be driving you mad as all over the house there will be remains of this hobby. They will be watching clips of it on youtube. They will be constantly talking about it.

All you then have to do, is sit back and watch them grow.

They will undoubtedly get better at the chosen hobby, but bigger than that they will improve as people.

They will being to learn and demonstrate traits you might have previously thought they were to young to understand. They might even begin to develop traits you know you need to work on!

So, there you have it. Don’t over think it. Pick an option, help your kids get moving, learn to love something and being to love learning it. You’ll be amazed at just what they can achieve.

At Football Pathway, by sticking to our core values the strive for this, above all.

Come and give us a go, and we can promise you will find these steps easy to follow!