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Sometimes you need answers to the little everyday things that parents encounter. And sometimes, you just need someone to encourage you through all of the craziness and challenges of parenthood. Welcome to Parent-ish, a blog from the experts at Children's Mercy.
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Category: Sports
How to keep youth sports fun
This just in: Kids like to have fun. It shouldn’t be news, but in the current competition-crazy culture of youth sports, it is. “Fun” is the key idea parents should remember from the new State of Play Kansas City, a report and study by the Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program and a broad group of KC-area youth sports advocates (including Children’s Mercy Kansas City).
The power of adaptive sports
Staying active benefits all children, but for kids with physical or cognitive differences, sports can be a game-changer for their overall wellness.
Winning tips for interacting with coaches
If you're raising an adolescent athlete, you're juggling a lot - practice and game schedules, uniform laundry, snacks and hydration, not to mention relationships with your kid's coaches. Managing those relationships is one of the many parts of parenthood that wasn't in the playbook. Luckily, we can help you get in the game.
Sleep for health and sports performance
An overlooked recovery strategy that is vital in supporting both a student-athlete’s health and sport performance, is sleep. Student-athletes should sleep between 9 and 11 hours per night to reach their peak athletic performance.
Sports concussions: 5 things parents should know
When parents think about sports concussions, football immediately comes to mind. Some parents may argue whether kids should even play football because of the risk. But it’s not just football, concussions are relatively common in other contact sports (soccer, basketball, lacrosse, hockey and wrestling) as well. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 10 percent of all contact sport athletes sustain concussions yearly.
Preventing heat-related illness for student-athletes
Preparing for the return of school sports can any student-athlete excited, but during these hot summer months as the temperatures continue to rise, it’s important to be aware of heat-related illnesses. You don’t have to just be a football player doing 2-a-day outdoor workouts to be affected by heat stroke and heat-related illnesses. Anyone can be at risk. Here are some steps to help keep your student-athlete safe from the heat.
Ways to help teen athletes through mistakes and losses
Sports and athletics expose our kids to great things like teamwork, discipline, an active lifestyle and many other positives. But, our young athletes are also going to experience mistakes and losses. Those can be a little scary.
Sports and mental health: What we can learn from Simone Biles
USA gymnast, Simone Biles, withdrew from the Olympic team final competition on July 27 due to a medical reason that was later clarified as a mental health issue. This decision has brought mental health in sports to the forefront of the world stage, yet again, and it is sparking conversations, which is a good thing and much needed.
Why kids should be more than one-sport athletes
When we’re talking about student-athletes, there’s typically two camps of thinking. One camp thinks kids need to become experts in their chosen sport. I’m firmly in the other camp of having kids play in multiple sports, time for free play and having an offseason. Here's why.
Returning to play: indoor sports
As our climate seasons change, so do our sport seasons. With the onset of cooler temperatures, indoor sports are starting to gear up. Typically, this transition is not much of an issue, but as we know 2020 has not been the standard by any means.
Returning to play
Since the COVID-19 pandemic has become part of our landscape, the virus has proven to serve as another variable for parents to consider when making decisions involving their kids. This is especially true in the youth sports world.
Sports and mental wellness: 8 things parents need to know
Being a teenager can be a complex time in life. The teen years are a time of tremendous growth, change, challenges and self-discovery. Sports can create amazing opportunities for growth for a teen, and at the same time sports also introduces its own unique set of challenges.