So we want to encourage your child, obviously, to play as many sports as they can, and we’re talking about kids, young teenagers, adolescents. We do a lot of injury prevention and performance enhancement here at Tulsa Spine and Rehab, and we want your child to play as many different sports because we’re trying to develop an athlete. A lot of times we see early specialization with kids and I think it’s to their detriment. They develop the same motor patterns, they’re doing the same thing over and over, so we want your child playing basketball, running, hopping, jumping, skipping, and soccer, baseball, whatever the case may be.
So early on, we want your kids playing multiple sports, and as they get a little bit older, 13, 14, 15, that’s when they can start to specialize. And a lot of kids will find that one or two sports is what they really enjoy, maybe what they’re really good at, and at that point, you can start to specialize and get them focusing on one sport. So it’s important that you remember as a parent, get your kids active. We want them doing things, but more importantly, we want to prevent injury. And a lot of times we can do that by developing little athletes with lots of different motor patterns.
