Football holds many benefits for your toddlers, one of which is helping with their emotional development. Here, we will delve into how football supports emotional development for toddlers.
Toddlers are emotional beings. Without always having the right words, expressing their emotions can be an excellent way to try and get an adult to understand how you are feeling inside.
When they begin playing football, it will be no different. It is not uncommon to witness older children expressing a range of emotions, including crying.
But playing football and taking part in football training can also help your toddler with their emotional development. Within this article, we will look at how football supports emotional development in toddlers.
What Does Emotional Development Mean?
Firstly, let’s take a look at what ‘emotional development’ actually means.
Emotional development is the emergence of emotions and the experience, expression, understanding, and regulation of these emotions which starts at birth. This develops and changes throughout childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.
The first emotions that can be recognised in babies include joy, anger, sadness and fear. As children’s sense of self develops, more complex emotions like shyness, surprise, elation, embarrassment, shame, guilt, pride and empathy will emerge.
Football And Emotional Development For Toddlers
It is well known and documented that having your toddler take part in a physical activity, like football, will aid their physical health and development. But, football (and other physical activity) will also aid your toddler’s emotional development.
Within this section, we will discuss how football will help support the emotional development of your toddler.
Developing Self Awareness
Football can help your toddler to develop their self awareness when it comes to their emotions. For example, when they master a technique or skill we are teaching them, they will recognise a sense of happiness. When they find something harder, they will begin to recognise that this causes them to feel frustrated or upset.
Football will help your toddler to recognise their emotions and to see what makes them feel a certain emotion.
Developing Self Regulation Skills
Attending football training from being a toddler will help them to learn how to manage and self regulate their emotions. They will learn positive self talk and how to stay calm. This will help them with their football as they get older but it will also help them in other areas of their life.
Helping To Build Empathy
Playing or training for a team sport like football will help your child to learn and build their empathy. Understanding why a teammate or classmate is upset about not being able to master a skill will help them to build emotional bonds. This will help to relate to other children, in and out of football training.
Giving Them Stress Relief
We don’t like to think of our children being stressed, particularly not our toddlers, but sadly modern life can be stressful, even for the youngest of us. Children can be stressed and anxious about many different things. A big stressor from age 6 months to 3 years is separation anxiety. They may become clingy and cry when separated from their parents or carers. This is a normal stage in a child’s development and nothing to be worried about.
It is also common for toddlers to begin developing fears and phobias, such as fear of insects, storms, heights or the dark. Some children may be stressed by the idea of school and the change that comes with that.
Football can help as it will help them to relieve stress because it allows your toddler to express themselves, let go of fears and to have fun. Football can also help to reduce stress hormones in the body which will help your toddler to learn how to play positively with others.
Keeping Them Motivated
Taking part in football will help your toddler to develop intrinsic motivation as it will encourage them to set goals and then work towards achieving them. This could be nailing a skill that they are finding hard. It will help your toddler to learn to channel their emotions into determination and motivation.
Building Social Skills
Attending football classes will massively help your toddler to develop their social skills. Your toddler will learn to express themselves clearly whilst learning to listen to others and cooperate with them. This will help as they progress with their football and as they head off to school and the rest of their adult life.
How You Can Help Your Toddler’s Emotional Development At Football
Football will help the emotional development of your toddler but there are also many things that you can do to help during football training. Within this section, we will look at some of the ways that you can help your toddler.
Understanding Your Toddler’s Emotional Response
During football training and in all other areas of your toddlers life, they will experience a multitude of emotions. They will feel joy, frustration and disappointment etc. As an adult, it is important that you acknowledge their emotions and show understanding for why they are feeling how they are feeling.
Be Supportive
If your toddler does get upset at football training, it is important that you reassure them that it is okay and that emotions are a normal part of football. And that challenges are also a normal part of football and that you will be there to support them through their challenges, as well as their triumphs.
Encourage A Positive Mindset
Football for toddlers and young children should always be, first and foremost, fun. You, along with the coaches, should emphasise that effort, perseverance and teamwork are all more important than winning or being great at something straight away. This will help your toddler to develop a positive mindset, helping your child to embrace challenges without fear of failing.
Learning From Challenges
This brings us nicely to our final way in which you can help your toddler – teach them that challenges or setbacks are an opportunity to learn and grow. Setbacks and challenges are not only a part of football but a part of life as a whole. Teaching them this will further help their mindset and the way they approach life’s challenges in a positive way.
How Football Supports Emotional Development in Toddlers
Football will help the emotional development of your toddler by helping them to develop self awareness around their emotions and by helping them to learn how to regulate their emotions. It will also help them to build empathy, motivation and it will help them to develop their social skills.
Football will help your toddler in many ways. We hope you have found our article helpful.
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