Family Anatomy » sports

Anatomy of Three Things (Episode 83)

Dr. Brian MacDonald C. Psych. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:22:12 +0000

Doctors Brian and Giuseppe talk about three recent stories from familyanatomy.com, including:

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Website of the Week: Savvy Moms

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Note: Posts on Family Anatomy are for education only. If you need to talk to someone about family or mental health issues, you can get a referral from your family doctor.

© Dr. Brian MacDonald C. Psych. for Family Anatomy, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: body image, self-esteem, sports, stress
Note: Posts on Family Anatomy are for education only, and are not intended to replace professional or medical advice. If you need to talk to someone about family or mental health issues, you can get a referral from your family doctor.

Kids in Sports, Part 5: Can sports help shy kids to make friends?

Dr. Brian MacDonald C. Psych. — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 11:19:07 +0000

Regular readers know that I’m a big believer in extracurricular activities for kids with social difficulties – having a supervised activity in an area of interest, with clear expectations and rules, can be an excellent opportunity to practice social skills and to reduce anxiety… and when you think about extracurriculars, chances are, you’re thinking about organized sports. Previous research has linked sports participation to improved self-esteem and peer relationships, along with decreased anxiety. There is even some evidence that involvement in sports is related to a reduction in aggression in boys, but data about the impact of sports on kids with different interpersonal styles is limited. Leanne Findlay and Robert Coplan from Carleton University investigated the effect of sports participation on shy kids in a 2008 study in the Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science.(...)
Read the rest of Kids in Sports, Part 5: Can sports help shy kids to make friends? (501 words)

© Dr. Brian MacDonald C. Psych. for Family Anatomy, 2009. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anxiety, Children, shyness, sports
Note: Posts on Family Anatomy are for education only, and are not intended to replace professional or medical advice. If you need to talk to someone about family or mental health issues, you can get a referral from your family doctor.

Kids in Sports, Part 4: How do youth sports affect parents?

Dr. Brian MacDonald C. Psych. — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 10:10:27 +0000

I’m not a very sporty parent – I was never very athletic as a kid – but I signed my kids up for all kinds of sports. I hoped they would learn not only about the activities themselves, but about teamwork and coping with losing. I also thought that playing on teams might lead to increased confidence in other areas of my kids’ lives. Researchers at Purdue University recently found that youth sport participation has an impact on parents, too.

Travis Dorsch and his colleagues interviewed 26 parents in detail about the impact of their kids’ participation in sports; their work is published in the August issue of the Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology. They heard some expected comments – about the financial sacrifices and time required for kids to play on a team – but parents also described changes in their thoughts, feelings, and behaviours related to the sport. Parents who had not participated in sports themselves became more interested, or began to learn more about the activity by playing with their child. They became invested in the sport and their child’s performance – sometimes they had to make an effort to change their “bleacher behaviour.” Some participants described increased communication and improvements in the parent-child relationship, including opportunities to get to know the child’s friends. Others talked about social connections with parents of their child’s team-mates. Some parents felt that they had to prepare themselves emotionally for the time when their child would lose interest in the sport. Of course, negative comments were heard about having kids in sports as well, but these seemed to occur less frequently than the positive ones.(...)
Read the rest of Kids in Sports, Part 4: How do youth sports affect parents? (350 words)

© Dr. Brian MacDonald C. Psych. for Family Anatomy, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Children, Parents, Relationships, sports, teenagers
Note: Posts on Family Anatomy are for education only, and are not intended to replace professional or medical advice. If you need to talk to someone about family or mental health issues, you can get a referral from your family doctor.

Kids in Sports, Part 3: What Promotes Sportspersonship?

Dr. Giuseppe Spezzano C. Psych. — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 11:02:29 +0000

When parents sign their children up to participate in sports, one of their hopes is that their child will learn to be a “good sport”. Unfortunately, this lesson is not always taught due to either a coach who has not been properly trained or a parent-spectator who displays negative behaviours. Many of us have had good and not so good experiences in this respect.

In 2007, Researchers from the University of Minnesota, University of Missouri and University of Notre Dame studied the social and personal influences on youth sportspersonship. Close to 700 kids from fifth to eight grade were studied. There were several key findings from the report. Using self-report measures, the researchers found that from fifth to eight grade the level of unsportspersonlike behaviour steadily increased. This is problematic as it suggests that the sports culture kids grow up in teaches them to be more unsportspersonlike as they age. The study also found that coaches, teammates, parents and spectators all exert an influence on the display of sportspersonlike behaviour. (...)
Read the rest of Kids in Sports, Part 3: What Promotes Sportspersonship? (284 words)

© Dr. Giuseppe Spezzano C. Psych. for Family Anatomy, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Children, coaches, Parents, sports
Note: Posts on Family Anatomy are for education only, and are not intended to replace professional or medical advice. If you need to talk to someone about family or mental health issues, you can get a referral from your family doctor.

Kids in Sports, Part 2: Anatomy of Sports

Dr. Brian MacDonald C. Psych. — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 12:09:28 +0000

Doctors Brian and Giuseppe talk about the impact of sports on their own kids, along with what the research says.

Are competitive sports OK for young kids?

How does playing sports affect the development of self-confidence and other skills?

How can coaches help kids to feel satisfied about their performance?

Find out what we think in this week’s episode!

Listen here:

… or right click here to save the episode for later.

You can also get your free podcast subscription in iTunes. If you use iTunes, you can leave a review!
Website of the Week: Positive Coaching Alliance

Leave us a comment, or you can e-mail suggestions or questions to info@familyanatomy.com. Vote for The Family Anatomy Podcast at Podcast Alley and for the blog at Blogger’s Choice!

Note: Posts on Family Anatomy are for education only. If you need to talk to someone about family or mental health issues, you can get a referral from your family doctor.

© Dr. Brian MacDonald C. Psych. for Family Anatomy, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Children, competition, Development, sports
Note: Posts on Family Anatomy are for education only, and are not intended to replace professional or medical advice. If you need to talk to someone about family or mental health issues, you can get a referral from your family doctor.

Kids in Sports, Part 1: Why it Matters

Dr. Giuseppe Spezzano C. Psych. — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 17:00:40 +0000

This week at Family Anatomy, we have decided to post articles about kids and sports. In the first part of this series, we’ll examine why kids’ sports matter.

Most people define sport as an athletic activity that involves rules, physical skill development, and competition. Sport can certainly be seen as a pleasant distraction for fans, although for those who engage in it, it is much more. As the definition suggests, development of physical skill is one of a number of interrelated benefits that sports brings to its participants. Sport can bring you in touch with your body and its capacities and limitations. Becoming aware of your developing skills can also be a source of pride and disappointment. Mastering the skills necessary to do a particular sport well can be an important experiential reservoir for self-esteem. Sport is always a relational exercise as well. Being in competition with others involves deft and subtle interpersonal negotiations related to how people treat one another in victory and defeat. While most parents place their kids in sports simply for the fun of it, when it is closely examined, it is clearly that and much more.(...)
Read the rest of Kids in Sports, Part 1: Why it Matters (286 words)

© Dr. Giuseppe Spezzano C. Psych. for Family Anatomy, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Children, self-esteem, sports
Note: Posts on Family Anatomy are for education only, and are not intended to replace professional or medical advice. If you need to talk to someone about family or mental health issues, you can get a referral from your family doctor.

Study Examines Association of Movie Smoking Exposure and Team Sport Participation With Youths Becoming Established Smokers

Dr. Brian MacDonald C. Psych. — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:01:55 +0000

CHICAGO – Participating in team sports is associated with a reduced likelihood of youths becoming established smokers, according to a report in the July issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. However, exposure to movie smoking appears to be associated with an increased risk of established smoking in both team sport participants and nonparticipants.

Past studies suggest that there is a direct association between movie smoking exposure and youth smoking initiation, with 30 percent to 50 percent of adolescents’ smoking initiation attributed to movie smoking exposure, according to background information in the article. “Movie smoking exposure appears to increase the risk of smoking initiation by enhancing adolescents’ perceived benefits of smoking and making them more susceptible to peer influences,” the authors write.

Anna M. Adachi-Mejia, Ph.D., of Hood Center for Children and Families, Dartmouth Medical School, Lebanon, N.H., and colleagues analyzed data from school- and telephone-based surveys that assessed movie smoking exposure and team sports participation in 2,048 youths from September 1999 through November 1999 and February 2006 through February 2007. Baseline movie smoking exposure was reported when respondents were ages 9 to 14 and team sport participation was assessed at ages 16 to 21 at follow-up. Movie smoking exposure was classified in quartiles with 0 to 522 smoking occurrences for the first quartile, 523 to 947 for the second, 948 to 1,649 for the third and 1,650 to 5,308 for the fourth.(...)
Read the rest of Study Examines Association of Movie Smoking Exposure and Team Sport Participation With Youths Becoming Established Smokers (355 words)

© Dr. Brian MacDonald C. Psych. for Family Anatomy, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: extracurriculars, movies, smoking, sports, teenagers
Note: Posts on Family Anatomy are for education only, and are not intended to replace professional or medical advice. If you need to talk to someone about family or mental health issues, you can get a referral from your family doctor.

FA057 – Anatomy of Three Things, Part 8

Dr. Brian MacDonald C. Psych. — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 01:55:14 +0000

Doctors Brian and Giuseppe discuss three recent stories on familyanatomy.com:

Listen here:

You can get your free podcast subscription in iTunes. If you use iTunes, you can leave a review!

Leave us a comment, or you can e-mail suggestions or questions to info@familyanatomy.com. You can call and leave us a message at (267) 415-4877. Or use Skype: our Skype ID is familyanatomy.

Note: Posts on Family Anatomy are for education only. If you need to talk to someone about family or mental health issues, you can get a referral from your family doctor.

© Dr. Brian MacDonald C. Psych. for Family Anatomy, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anti-psychotic, behavior, Children, employment, medication, Parenting Tips, Preschoolers, sports, suicide, Teens
Note: Posts on Family Anatomy are for education only, and are not intended to replace professional or medical advice. If you need to talk to someone about family or mental health issues, you can get a referral from your family doctor.

It IS whether you win or lose

Dr. Brian MacDonald C. Psych. — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 15:26:48 +0000

There are a few questions that parents often ask. One is, “Should I let my child win when we play games together?” The answer really depends on what you want your child to learn from gameplay, but it’s usually a “no.” This response is based on my own experience as a therapist and as a parent – I haven’t looked for any research on the topic, but I feel strongly that it’s important for kids to learn how to be good losers as well as good winners. Every child will lose a game at some point, and when parents play with their kids, there is an opportunity to help them cope with disappointment that they’ll experience on the soccer field, at the rink, or on the basketball court.

(...)
Read the rest of It IS whether you win or lose (375 words)

© Dr. Brian MacDonald C. Psych. for Family Anatomy, 2009. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Children, Preschoolers, sports
Note: Posts on Family Anatomy are for education only, and are not intended to replace professional or medical advice. If you need to talk to someone about family or mental health issues, you can get a referral from your family doctor.

Are sports enough?

Dr. Brian MacDonald C. Psych. — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:27:24 +0000

We’ve talked quite a bit on the Family Anatomy show about the importance of extracurricular activities. Research shows that participation on teams can have a positive impact on school performance and can increase a student’s feeling of connectedness to their school, reducing the likelihood that they’ll drop out. I often recommend these activities for kids who are having social difficulties because it places them in a supervised setting with clear expectations and rules in a group of kids with a shared interest. A study in the new issue of Developmental Psychology looked at the impact of various extracurriculars on a range of areas: academic performance, self-confidence, social connections, aggression/rule breaking, and caring for others. They found that participation in sports produced more positive results than little or no involvement in activities. Interestingly, sports plus other activities produced the best results.

(...)
Read the rest of Are sports enough? (285 words)

© Dr. Brian MacDonald C. Psych. for Family Anatomy, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: All Ages, extracurricular, sports
Note: Posts on Family Anatomy are for education only, and are not intended to replace professional or medical advice. If you need to talk to someone about family or mental health issues, you can get a referral from your family doctor.