Wholesome Activities For Children
Children love to play. That fact is entirely obvious. Children find different things to be fun. Some children love sports. Some children love music. Some children love art. But all children love something. But is that something wholesome?
I have seen how families today rely on television as a hobby. Children sit in front of the TV for hours at a time. Often times the parents are not even monitoring what their children watch.
Even good things can become negative things, such as sports. What I will do is list activities I think can be wholesome, while at the same time can be harmful. Make sure your children lie on the wholesome end of the activity.
1. Sports: Many children love to play sports. All our children played soccer growing up and loved it. Our son also played baseball and for a period of time tried basketball (though he still loved soccer the best). Our children were on both school teams as well as city teams. Here is where you must watch for influence. One time, our son was on a baseball team for the city where the coach would often use swear words and would yell at the umpire. After observing this a couple times we promptly requested he be moved to another team. The city complied with our request and his new team was much better. Also, make sure that teamates do not become a bad influence. Laura was on a soccer team in junior high and one girl was very negative and was starting to make her teamates that way. We talked with the coach and the coach talked with the girl and her parents. She was told that if she continued she would not be allowed to be on the team (I actually talked to a few parents about this girl and all agreed we should talk to the coach). So it is good to have your children participate in sports, but make sure that you are also involved and know what is going on with their teams.
2. Music: Music is another fun activity for children. It also teaches them skills and diligence, furthering the positive effects of being involved. Our daughter Rachel played the flute in high school and loved it. Children also like to listen to music. Here is where you must watch what they listen to. Much of the music today has terrible messages and bad words. You should ensure that your children aren't indoctrinated by this music by listening to it constantly. We only allowed our children to purchase music that we approved of. We usually encouraged them to listen to Christian music, as there are many bands that are Christians and play songs about Christianity and positive things.
3. Art: Art can be anything from drawing to painting to crafting things. Our children all enjoyed making things growing up at different times. I found this to be a very good thing because it keeps them busy working on skills and allows their mind to grow. As our children became teenagers, especially our daughters, we found it was a good spiritual outlet as well as they enjoyed writing poems about God. Where you have to be careful is when they want to study art. Like music, art today can portray very negative messages and can be vulgar or inappropriate. Be wary taking them to art museums (make sure you visit them first yourself).
4. Chores: I felt I should write about chores a little bit. Though not something children do for fun, I feel chores are good. It teaches responsibility from a young age. It is good to have a few chores for them to do daily, as well as weekly when they get older (such as mow the lawn). Often times, we would do the chores with them, to show them that we were not trying to have them work for us, but wanted them to work for the Lord, to have a servants heart.
5. Parties: Parties can be fun. These can range from planned parties to simple get togethers. However, you must be careful that you know who is attending the party, especially during the teenage years. We only allowed our children to attend a party if we knew there was going to be supervision (which we would confirm with the adult supervising), and who would be attending the party (if it was friends from school or church).
6. Dating: When it comes to dating, it is important to date to ensure that you find a spouse who loves the Lord and shares the same values you do. However, I have found that children today like to date because they think it is the hip thing to do. With our children, we did not let them date until they were 16, because we wanted them to date for the right reasons. And when they dated, we always wanted to meet the boy or girl and their family first. We were very careful in this regard (discussed more in the friends section).
There are many activities that children enjoy doing. These are simply a few examples to show how activities can be both good and bad.