Fitness and Self Esteem For Our Daughters

Children and adolescents often have multiple motives for playing organized sports. "Having fun" rated as the most important motive for both boys and girls. Other primary reasons that children play organized sports typically include improving skills, being with friends, becoming physically fit, liking the challenges and experiencing success (Weiss & Petlichkoff, 1989). A recent diverse, nationwide survey of ten thousand boys and girls ages ten to 18 found that when asked about their reasons for playing their best school sport, girls rated “to have fun” first, followed by “to stay in shape,” “to get exercise” and “to improve skills” as their next most important reasons (Ewing & Seefeldt, 1989).

“The Wilson Report: Moms, Dads, Daughters and Sports” (1988) also found that girls who participate in sports most often report fun as their major motive, with physical, health and social factors frequently mentioned. The majority of motives cited, and certainly the most important motives, are intrinsic or internally-based, rather than extrinsic or externally-based. Only limited research is available on motives for exercise, as opposed to competitive sport involvement, in youngsters (Rowland, 1990), though one study of junior high-school students revealed that girls exercised primarily because they wanted to look better whereas boys wanted to have fun!

The primary reason girls engaged in physical activity was to have fun, followed by positive health benefits. Numerous studies have found a positive relationship between physical activity and self-esteem. Girls who felt most confident about themselves and their abilities were more likely to participate in physical activities at higher levels than girls who felt less confident. Younger girls derived positive self- esteem through challenge, achievement in sports, risk-taking experiences and skill development, while older girls cited these sources of self-esteem as well as gaining esteem from the approval of others and through a belief that girls are capable of playing sports well.

Exercise programs, particularly weight and strength training, can enhance the self-concepts of adolescent female participants as well (Gill, 1993). For example, Brown and Harrison (1986) found that participation in a 12-week program of weight training significantly enhanced self-concept in both younger and older girls and women.

Another study examined the use of competitive and cooperative physical fitness programs with high-school girls (Marsh & Peart, 1988). Both the competitive and cooperative programs resulted in enhanced physical fitness; however, the cooperative program enhanced physical ability self-concept and physical appearance self-concept, while the competitive program lowered them. The competitiveness of physical education programs was one of the more negative aspects of the experience for girls. Girls just want to have fun!

Love and Self Esteem

"Whosoever shall receive one of such children in my name, receiveth me: and whosoever shall receive me, receiveth not me, but him that sent me." Mark 9:37 (King James Version)

If a child feels loved she or he is far more likely to feel safe and secure. To have healthy self esteem and eventually succeed in this lifetime. How can we share more love with our children? How can we show our children we love them? Those three words are easy to say. And just maybe we can supplement the verbal assurance with acts of love! Sometimes actions really do speak louder than words!

“Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth.” — 1 John 3:18

Communication is essential to the expression of love and indeed to life itself. Where there is love, there must be communication, because love can never be passive and inactive. Love inevitably expresses itself and moves out toward others. When communication breaks down, love is blocked.

A brief story of 2 families.

In one, the parents helped their children work through their difficulties with each other, thus assuming a shared, two-way dialogue and responsibility for what happened between them. In late teenhood, each child in turn became a person in his own right who had achieved a relatively mature, congenial, and loving relation with every other member of the family.

In the second family, the parents could not face the conflicts inevitable to human nature in a growing family, and pretended a quality of relationship that did not exist between them. When their children became late teen-agers and older, a smoldering antagonism existed between them which occasionally broke out in venomous quarrels. The parents of this second family had not assumed any shared or 2-way responsibility for the content of their family life, with the result that the interaction between the growing person and his environment was not creative.

One objective of love is to provide a relationship of firmness and tolerance within which a child may become autonomous and acquire a sense of self-control, self-esteem, and relationship with others. Otherwise he may suffer loss of confidence in himself and become skeptical of others, a result which can be the fruit of either restrictive discipline or unstructured freedom.

One key outcome of a healthy love enables our children to emerge with such a power of being as a person that they shall be able to face the complexities, pressures, deprivations, and dangers of modern life. Our aim is to help the child become a responsible participant in the crucial issues of life, and to preserve his integrity as a deciding person. The answer to his questions, Who am I? and Who are you?, will then be: I am what I will, and you are what you will!