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The benefits of regular exercise are not limited to adults. Youth athletic programs provide opportunities to improve self-esteem, acquire leadership skills and self-discipline, and develop general fitness and motor skills. Peer socialization is another important, though sometimes overlooked, benefit. Participation, however, is not without injury risk. While acute trauma and rare catastrophic injuries draw much attention, overuse injuries are increasingly common.
Diagnostic and treatment efforts should focus on how the injury
developed and consider issues that are unique to growing athletes. An
understanding of these concepts provides the basis for making specific
injury-prevention recommendations.
Published by About.Com
Dr. Ronald Kamm, director of Sport Psychiatry Associates, in Oakhurst, N.J., told me, "We enacted child labor laws 80 years ago to protect children from all this work. And now basically we're making play into work. And they're working as hard as they used to in the sweat shops, some of them. I'm concerned about it, it's out of hand and kids do need downtime and seasons off and multiple sports. There is the occasional prodigy who just loves the sport and is focused on it, maybe a Tara Lipinski or a Tiger Woods. But most kids do better with many sports. It protects them and they don't get overuse injuries as much and it keeps them from burning out."
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