Unusual Sports To Engage Your Kids' Minds As Well As Their Bodies

One of the hardest things about being a parent is trying to find ways to keep your kids engaged. This can be especially tough when they're on vacation from school, and they're not using as much energy on a day to day basis. Because of this, it's incredibly easy for your kids to start developing some pretty serious cabin fever. However, there are things that you can do, and one of the very best is to find a sport that your kids can engage with. Of course, a lot of kids aren't that interested in the standard sports available to them. With that in mind, here are a few slightly more unusual sports they might want to try.

Wrestling

Now, before you say anything, don't worry! You're probably thinking of the kind of wrestling that you see on TV, but that's not the case. No one is going to be advocating that your child get into cage matches or wallop someone with a folded chair. The kind of wrestling that I mean here is the kind that much more closely resembles what the ancient Greeks would have considered wrestling. It allows young people to channel any energy and aggression in a safe way that also requires a great deal of focus and understanding. Not only that but, aside from things like wrestling doublets, there's nowhere near as much equipment to buy as there would be for a sport like Football. After all, most of the hard work will be done with their bare hands.  

Ping-Pong

Of course, not all sports are games of pure strength. Many of them are more about quick reflexes and the ability to make decisions on the fly. Few sports reflect this more than ping-pong. A lot of people don't take it all that seriously, thinking of it as some kind of lesser alternative to tennis, but if you watch people actually playing it, there's a remarkable elegance and beauty to the speed at which people move around the table. Not only that but it really does offer a serious physical workout that leaves you pretty exhausted by the end of a match. There are few sports that provide such a great balance between mental and physical exercise. If your child seems to have a mind that's always rushing around at high speed, this might well be the ideal sport for them.

One of the very best things about having some kind of sport to engage in is that it offers your kids an outlet for their energy in a structured way. As much as it might not always seem like it, most kids actually really do want and need structure in the things that they do. Otherwise, it's far easier for them to just not bother doing things and laze around all the time. Sure that might sound appealing to them at first, but it doesn't take long before it starts to wear thin and leave them itching to do something more productive with their time.









Disclosure:  This is a contributed post.