It’s easy to think of football as something that only helps toddlers with physical skills but there are social benefits to football. Here, we will talk about the social benefits of football and how your child will benefit from joining a football class.
Football is an excellent sport for children. And it is a really good idea to get your child taking part from a young age because football is so good for children.
It will help children with their motor skills, helping them to coordinate their whole body and develop balance. Football classes from a young age will also help your child with the development of their cognitive skills like numeracy, speech and pattern recognition.
Along with this, there are many social benefits that come from your toddler taking part in football classes.
Within this article, we will look at the social benefits of football and why your toddler should be taking part.
Improving Communication Skills
The first social benefit of football we are going to talk about is that taking part in a football class will help your toddler with their communication skills.
Taking part in a sporting activity regularly will mean that communication is a necessity. Without communication, a toddler cannot work with their parents or football coach. As they get older and begin working with other children, communication will be even more important.
An excellent way to help your toddler with the development of their communication skills is to keep the child engaged with the classes and entertained. We do this at Socatots by starting each session with some fun, child-friendly music and a kick around.
Learning Teamwork And Cooperation
At such a young age, toddlers are developing their understanding of the world and learning how to interact with their peers. Football offers a valuable and natural environment for introducing crucial social skills like teamwork and cooperation. Simple activities which require them to share, take turns allow your toddler to see the benefits of working together. At this stage, the focus is not on competition or scoring but on fostering positive engagement and cooperation in a fun setting.
As your toddler gets older, they will begin working with the other children in pairs and in small groups so they will fully learn what it is like to work as part of a team and the benefits of cooperation.
Football classes show toddlers that working as part of a team isn’t just about winning, it’s about helping each other, making friends, and having fun together.
Building Confidence
Football classes provide young children with opportunities to experience small, manageable wins that give their confidence and self-esteem a boost. Experiencing these small victories, such as scoring or participating, helps them to see how capable they truly are.
The increased self-confidence, gained through attending football classes, will help them to have confidence and belief in themselves in many areas of their life, such as they head off to school and out into the world. They will have the confidence to face challenges and not be scared to try new things.
Making Friends
One of the biggest social benefits of football is that, by attending football classes, your toddler will make new friends. There’s no better way to meet other children with shared interests and attending weekly classes will help them to build friendships that could last a lifetime.
Navigating Emotions
Football classes will also help your toddler to navigate their emotions, from joys that come from a win to the frustration or sadness they feel when they find something challenging.
These little emotional ups and downs help them develop emotional regulation, helping them to learn how to handle disappointment, and how to celebrate their successes in healthy ways.
Developing Empathy
Empathy is an important emotion as we grow up because we use it to understand and care for others better. Having your toddler take part in football classes can help them with the development of empathy.
Your toddler will be around other children during their football classes and they will begin to develop friendships and care about the other children. They will learn how to support the other children and how to be a good sport, accept defeat graciously and how to be humble when they win.
Learning How To Deal With Setbacks
This brings us nicely to our final social benefit of football which is that your toddler will learn how to deal with setbacks.
Not every football class is going to go well. There will be some things that your toddler will find challenging. In order to learn the skills that they find more challenging, they need to have patience and remain committed to coming to football classes.
Being able to overcome the setback of not being great at something straight away is an important skill to learn and your toddler will learn it when attending football classes.
Overcoming challenges teaches children valuable lessons that they will carry with them throughout their life. Having encouragement and a comfortable environment will empower them to persevere through setbacks so they will continue to improve and develop.
Why You Should Choose Our Football Classes
There are many social benefits that come from attending a football class but you need to make sure to choose the right class. Within this section, we will take you through why you should choose our football classes for your toddler.
Football Training That Suits Every Child
All of our football classes are designed to be appropriate for each age group. Each of our classes is a different length, starting at 30 minutes for the younger children, aged 6 months to 1 year old, and reaching 45 minutes for the older children, aged 3 to 5 years old.
As your child gets older, different activities will be introduced to cater to their expanding skills, such as introducing working with their peers in pairs and small groups.
With all our football classes, we take an individual approach with each child, catering to each child’s specific needs. We want every child to feel confident in all areas so we will take time to help them overcome any parts that they are finding more challenging, as well as helping them to celebrate all their successes.
Expert Coaching For Each Child
Your child will receive expert coaching from our coaches. Every one of our coaches is:
- DBS qualified
- UKCFDS qualified
- First-aid trained
- Fully insured
Your child will be learning from professional coaches so your child will always be in good hands.
You Will Play Be A Part Of Your Child’s Success
Throughout your child’s football training, you will play an imperative part in their successes.
Having the parents play an active role is important because it will help to increase your child’s confidence and self-esteem, whilst strengthening the emotional bond that you share with each other.
The Social Benefits Of Football
Football can be seen as something that simply helps your toddler to develop in a physical way but there are many social benefits to your toddler attending football classes.
Attending football classes will help them to develop their communication skills, to learn cooperation, make friends, navigate their emotions, build confidence and empathy and teach them how to deal with setbacks.
The social benefits of football are vast and we hope you consider bringing your toddler to one of our football classes.
To find out more about our football classes, please click here.