Tips For Teaching Young Kids
January 10, 2018 at 5:27 p.m.
By Roger Grossman-
Either way, over my nearly 50 years of playing sports and watching others play, I have come to some conclusions about how to get young people off to good starts and pointed in the right direction for later in their lives.
I want to share with you some of the things that I have discovered.
Understand, I do not have any formal training or education in the field of childhood physical development. What I am sharing with you are just a few ‘tricks’ that can help your kids. Also understand that these are things that every parent should do with their kids – all of them – for boys and girls, whether or not the parents played sports, or like sports, or think their kids will like sports, or play sports, or be any good in sports.
Just trust me. I think you will see what I am talking about.
One of the first things you can do to help develop your kids hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills involves the simplest of devices – a balloon.
When they are old enough to toddle, get a balloon and blow it up to about the size of a basketball. It doesn’t have to be a special balloon, except that you don’t want one covered with a shiny mylar covering. Let the kids play with it. It’s soft, it’s squishy so it’s easy for them to hold and it’s probably a bright color so they are naturally drawn to it.
As they become better with their hands and more mobile, use balloons to kick and play catch. Kicking a balloon won’t hurt their feet, they can kick it and see results but they won’t kick it very far. That means they don’t have to chase it very far to kick it again.
Playing catch with a balloon is something I feel very strongly about. Think about it, we try to make them play catch with balls that are soft but move really fast (for them anyway) and are brought down by gravity. They don’t catch it very well, and they give up.
A blown up balloon is affected by gravity at a much lower rate. So when you throw it to a child to catch, it moves in slow motion compared to a regular or stuffed ball. It’s easy for them to catch with their hands, and when they miss it, it doesn’t hurt.
Another mistake that we parents make happens when we are trying to teach them how to hit a ball with a bat.
You can envision it, can’t you?: a 72-degree day in mid-May, a couple of clouds floating around in an otherwise spectacular sky, and a parent and their son or daughter in the backyard working on hitting the ball. The parent tells the child to “stay right there, OK,” then backs up a few steps and throws the ball underhanded toward the batter. Most of the time, the batter swings and misses, all while never moving their eyes away from the pitcher.
The parent picks up the ball and restarts the process. They spend more time walking behind the batter to get the ball (or chasing it when the batter throws it wildly behind the pitcher), getting the batter to stand still and to hold the bat correctly while the pitcher backs into place again.
The only time a young hitter actually makes contact with the ball in those backyard batting practice sessions is when the pitcher throws the ball just right and hits the bat with the ball.
Can I make a suggestion? Let them hit off a tee when they are first learning to swing a bat.
For $20 on Amazon, you can buy a plastic batting tee set which gets you a softball-sized ball, a plastic bat, and a tee plugged into a plastic home plate.
By using the hitting tee, the child swings the bat at a stationary object. It means their chance of hitting the ball in their first few swings goes up significantly, which means they will gain confidence in that skill and they will want to do it again.
The tee also means they always know where to stand, and you can spend more time showing them how to stand and how to hold the bat. Then let them do the rest. Let them swing, and if they miss the ball and hit the tee, don’t make too big of a deal about it.
Make sure the tee is below shoulder level. If you have to, have your little slugger stand on something wide, sturdy and stable so the ball is not too high.
And you can also use it inside. My little Oliver got one for Christmas, and I draped a blanket over the treadmill so he can hit the ball into it all winter long and on rainy spring and summer days.
One last tip.
For little basketball players, it’s ok to start the hoop at a height where they can drop the ball into the basket. It’s good to have them see the ball going into the basket for the same reasons mentioned above.
But don’t leave it there. Once they’ve shown they like to shoot the ball, move it up to where they have to go up on their tip toes, and then to where they have to release the ball to make it go into the basket.
In all of it, it’s OK for your kids to fail occasionally while they are learning these skills. No one succeeds in everything in their lives, and so you establish real-life expectations in your kids at an important age.
These things are not expensive, they don’t take up a lot of space, they aren’t hard to set up, and they are things you can and should be doing with your children or grandchildren.
Try these with the kids in your lives. I think you’ll see why I find them so important.
Latest News
E-Editions
Either way, over my nearly 50 years of playing sports and watching others play, I have come to some conclusions about how to get young people off to good starts and pointed in the right direction for later in their lives.
I want to share with you some of the things that I have discovered.
Understand, I do not have any formal training or education in the field of childhood physical development. What I am sharing with you are just a few ‘tricks’ that can help your kids. Also understand that these are things that every parent should do with their kids – all of them – for boys and girls, whether or not the parents played sports, or like sports, or think their kids will like sports, or play sports, or be any good in sports.
Just trust me. I think you will see what I am talking about.
One of the first things you can do to help develop your kids hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills involves the simplest of devices – a balloon.
When they are old enough to toddle, get a balloon and blow it up to about the size of a basketball. It doesn’t have to be a special balloon, except that you don’t want one covered with a shiny mylar covering. Let the kids play with it. It’s soft, it’s squishy so it’s easy for them to hold and it’s probably a bright color so they are naturally drawn to it.
As they become better with their hands and more mobile, use balloons to kick and play catch. Kicking a balloon won’t hurt their feet, they can kick it and see results but they won’t kick it very far. That means they don’t have to chase it very far to kick it again.
Playing catch with a balloon is something I feel very strongly about. Think about it, we try to make them play catch with balls that are soft but move really fast (for them anyway) and are brought down by gravity. They don’t catch it very well, and they give up.
A blown up balloon is affected by gravity at a much lower rate. So when you throw it to a child to catch, it moves in slow motion compared to a regular or stuffed ball. It’s easy for them to catch with their hands, and when they miss it, it doesn’t hurt.
Another mistake that we parents make happens when we are trying to teach them how to hit a ball with a bat.
You can envision it, can’t you?: a 72-degree day in mid-May, a couple of clouds floating around in an otherwise spectacular sky, and a parent and their son or daughter in the backyard working on hitting the ball. The parent tells the child to “stay right there, OK,” then backs up a few steps and throws the ball underhanded toward the batter. Most of the time, the batter swings and misses, all while never moving their eyes away from the pitcher.
The parent picks up the ball and restarts the process. They spend more time walking behind the batter to get the ball (or chasing it when the batter throws it wildly behind the pitcher), getting the batter to stand still and to hold the bat correctly while the pitcher backs into place again.
The only time a young hitter actually makes contact with the ball in those backyard batting practice sessions is when the pitcher throws the ball just right and hits the bat with the ball.
Can I make a suggestion? Let them hit off a tee when they are first learning to swing a bat.
For $20 on Amazon, you can buy a plastic batting tee set which gets you a softball-sized ball, a plastic bat, and a tee plugged into a plastic home plate.
By using the hitting tee, the child swings the bat at a stationary object. It means their chance of hitting the ball in their first few swings goes up significantly, which means they will gain confidence in that skill and they will want to do it again.
The tee also means they always know where to stand, and you can spend more time showing them how to stand and how to hold the bat. Then let them do the rest. Let them swing, and if they miss the ball and hit the tee, don’t make too big of a deal about it.
Make sure the tee is below shoulder level. If you have to, have your little slugger stand on something wide, sturdy and stable so the ball is not too high.
And you can also use it inside. My little Oliver got one for Christmas, and I draped a blanket over the treadmill so he can hit the ball into it all winter long and on rainy spring and summer days.
One last tip.
For little basketball players, it’s ok to start the hoop at a height where they can drop the ball into the basket. It’s good to have them see the ball going into the basket for the same reasons mentioned above.
But don’t leave it there. Once they’ve shown they like to shoot the ball, move it up to where they have to go up on their tip toes, and then to where they have to release the ball to make it go into the basket.
In all of it, it’s OK for your kids to fail occasionally while they are learning these skills. No one succeeds in everything in their lives, and so you establish real-life expectations in your kids at an important age.
These things are not expensive, they don’t take up a lot of space, they aren’t hard to set up, and they are things you can and should be doing with your children or grandchildren.
Try these with the kids in your lives. I think you’ll see why I find them so important.
Have a news tip? Email info@whitewaterpublications.com or Call/Text 360-922-3092
e-Edition
Local Events