Stories of child prodigies, who began to learn a specific sport as early as age 3, may encourage parents to question whether or not they too should be enrolling their very young children in sport training programs. This raises the issue of neurodevelopmental maturation and readiness of the child to effectively and safely engage in sports, especially competitive sports. This chapter reviews the definition of neurodevelopment, normal child development as relevant to sport participation, and sport readiness. The discussion is limited to typically developing children.
Several broad fundamental principles underlie our understanding of child development (Table 1-1).1–20 In order to effectively engage in and benefit from sport participation, all children and adolescents need to have mastered several fundamental skills.21 Further refinement of skills is necessary for a child and adolescent to move from participation for fun to participation at a competitive level; at this level, skills must be highly developed to such a degree that it will limit who can play competitive sports. Children and adolescents who cannot master fundamental skills or who have other impediments to refining those skills can still be involved in sports activities, but may require special adaptations or equipment.15,22,23
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Neurodevelopment in a broad sense refers to the growth and maturation of the nervous system as well as the sensory and perceptual abilities of the child.6,11,12,18,19,24,25 Normal growth and development is characterized by individual variations in the rate of progression and achievement of milestones, and the sequential nature of this progression. Although largely determined by genetic factors, environmental factors (such as opportunity, nutrition, and social context) also play a significant role in the overall development of a child or adolescent. Capute noted that motor milestones are mostly influenced by the maturation of the neurologic system, whereas social and adaptive skills are influenced largely by environmental factors, such as social expectations, education, and training.18
The term neurodevelopment encompasses various domains, which can be broadly categorized as physical or somatic, neurologic, sensory–perceptual, cognitive, and psychosocial or emotional. Gesell described “streams” of development to include gross motor, fine motor, visual-motor problem solving, expressive language, receptive language, and social and adaptive skills.9,26 Fagard notes that a “skill refers to the proficiency with which an integrated activity is carried out.”27 With increasing levels of maturity, there is an increasing level of integration and interaction among different domains. Although quantitative progress (i.e., number of milestones) in development is more apparent and often measured, qualitative progress (e.g., not only that the child is able to jump or throw, rather how well he or she is able to jump or throw) in motor and developmental skills is equally or more important to sport participation.28–32 Developmental progression and refinement of certain fundamental sport-related tasks (such as catching, throwing, kicking, various other ball-handling skills, and others) naturally occurs over time with advancing age and overall neurodevelopmental maturation and is further enhanced by sports-specific skills training.2,3,4,24,28,31,33–39 Malina refers to increase in size as growth and rate of progress toward a mature state as maturation.20,40,41
It is not unusual to see many infants and toddlers being initiated into sports programs as exemplified by swimming and gymnastics; a crawling race for infants has also been reported.3,41,42 The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that children are not developmentally ready for swimming lessons until after 4 years of age.3,42 Early participation in swimming programs has neither been shown to decrease the later risk of drowning nor does it increase the skill of swimming in children.3,43
Infants attain gross and fine motor skills along a predetermined and sequential path.1,3,4,19,30,44 Attempts at acquisition of specific motor skills by early training usually are not successful.41,45 For example, children must have neuromotor maturation before they can walk, and children who walk earlier than at an “average” age will not necessarily learn other motor skills earlier.
During the preschool years, from approximately 3 to 5 or 6 years of age, the physical growth slows down compared to infancy and toddlers stages; however, acquisition of basic neuromotor, language, and cognitive skills increase rapidly.25,46 The development of better postural and balance control allows preschoolers to learn how to ride a bicycle without training wheels, catch a small ball thrown from 10 ft away, and use their hands to manipulate objects (such as objects used for drawing and elementary writing skills).4,7,14,19,25,27,39,43,46–48
Children between ages 3 and 4 years can broad jump approximately 1 ft, hop up to six times, and catch a ball against their chest.19 By the end of 4 years, a child can skip on one foot, climb up a jungle gym, throw overhand, and catch a large ball.19 A child can also stand on one foot for up to 5 seconds, kick a ball forward, catch a bounced ball most of the times, and move backward as well as forward with agility.4,7,24,25,43,47–49
By age 5, children have better balance, coordination, body strength, and endurance, although still far less compared with adolescents and adults. By the end of age 5, children can run smoothly, gallop, do a one-foot skip, hop up to nine times on one foot, throw a ball with shift of their bodies, catch a ball with both hands, ride a tricycle well, swing, and do somersaults.17,19,48 By age 6, most children can run, throw a small ball at a target, and hit the target; girls can skip but boys may not. Children by 6 years of age can jump up 1 ft and broad jump up to 3 ft.19 Once children have learned these skills, their continued use results in further refinement.7,50 Throughout childhood, the effects of training and skill development are directly related to age-specific changes in the neuromotor, metabolic, cardiopulmonary, and cognitive/integrative systems.4,7,25,47 Muscular strength and muscular endurance can be improved during the childhood years with the use of higher repetition-moderate load resistance training programs during the initial adaptation period.4,41,43,51,52
During the preschool years, children can remember basic information, recall that information on demand, and answer simple “who” and “what” questions. Their memory is enhanced by visual aides, and they tend to learn from trial and error.7,44 Preschool children generally have short attention spans (5–15 minutes) and poor selective attention; they can distinguish simple similarities and differences and can understand simple analogies; and they can identify the missing parts of familiar objects. Also, they can follow simple rules but will need visual cues and frequent reminders.
Children by age 5 have a vocabulary of approximately 2500 words, and by age 6, it is approximately 5000 words.19 Typically, the speech of a preschooler is 100% intelligible to strangers.14,17,19,53 By age 5, the child can speak sentences of up to five words, use future tense, can name four colors, and count 10 or more objects.19,53 They may still have difficulty understanding words that sound alike but have different or multiple meanings. At this age, the ability to comprehend complex or compound sentences is limited. Coaches and trainers who give multiple instructions may find that many of their young players become lost in the words or get distracted. Children will be better able to follow instructions given using simple sentences combined with visual cues (such as pictures), which demonstrates the expected action. Sentences should be clear, concise, and devoid of words that have multiple or complex meanings. Use of training tapes to teach a skill may be helpful, if the language used matches the words that will be used when directing a particular skill; it is also critical that the words and skills are shown in a way that depicts the actual intended situation or environment. Coaches and parents can begin to teach children how to communicate when the children are frustrated, tired, angry, happy, or excited. This will aid in their overall communication skills development.
Children between the ages 3 and 5 or 6 years are egocentric, and thus they have difficulty taking the view of another person or understanding why they cannot always be first.44,46 They are learning to interact with their environment and engage in cooperative play with other children. By age 6, they play best with children of the same gender. Children learn autonomy and trust through their successes or failures.44,46 Preschoolers are unable to compare their own abilities to that of other children.7,14,19 They may become upset when they lose or may want others to focus only on their performance. They may not understand why one child is allowed more “play” or “demonstration” time, and they usually want their needs met immediately.
At this age children may not have a fully developed capacity for tracking objects or people and judging the velocity of moving objects.7,8,18,19 Children younger than 6 or 7 years are farsighted, and their limited ability to track objects and judge the speed of moving objects is owing to their vision limitation and not owing to a lack of coordination.7,11 In softball, for instance, a pitcher with limited ability to judge velocity might throw the ball too fast. The batter who is accustomed to a slow pitch, but also has a limited ability to track and judge velocity, may be hit in the head because he or she will not be able to determine the trajectory of the ball, process in time this critical information, and then coordinate the movements to pull the body out of the ball’s path.
The ability to understand the sounds they hear is developing rapidly in children in this age range.11,19,25,41 The multiple sounds that occur in most sport environments can be very confusing for a child at this level of development. In a typical setting, a coach or a trainer may be giving the child instructions, while the parent is yelling directions and various members of the audience are also offering advice. Children may have difficulty discriminating which words they should listen to and may become distracted or confused. Other sounds such as those of whistles and bells can simply add to this perceived cacophonous situation. The ability to listen selectively matures as the child grows. All sports require players to listen and comprehend spoken language as well as sounds and to coordinate that information with other events and actions in their specific sports environment.
These children know their right from their left body parts and can locate the right and left of other people or objects.46 They can also locate themselves in relation to other objects.46 They have a better orientation of their bodies in space, but may not be able to control the intensity and trajectory of a gross motor action.7,8 They may throw a ball to another child, but at a velocity that is too fast and results in the other child being hurt when the ball hits him. Or the child may kick at a soccer ball, but the aim is off and he or she kicks another child. A child who runs toward a base may trip and fall in an attempt to beat the ball to the baseman.
The act of catching a ball is an example of complex motor planning that involves temporal sequencing, body awareness, eye–hand coordination, and visual–spatial skills.4,31,33,38,39 Children at this age will do better if they are told where the ball will be thrown (i.e., saying and demonstrating: “I am going to throw the ball to you; I will throw it to your chest area; hold your hands up to your chest.”) The adult throws a medium-sized ball slowly using exaggerated movements to allow the child time to mentally process and coordinate visual, mental, and gross motor skills; the child also needs time to estimate the temporal sequence, judge the velocity of the ball, determine body position, move arms and hands to the chest, and grasp the ball as it reaches the appropriate distance to his or her body. By following these multiple tasks, the child has just performed the complex motor function of catching. With practice, the child can learn to catch a ball thrown toward other body parts from a distance of up to 10 ft.2
By age 5 or 6, most children can remember simple rules and play games that require only simple decision-making skills.7,8,44,46 Their ability to generalize rules to different aspects of a sport activity other than the context in which it was learned is limited or even nonexistent. Children at the concrete–operational stage of cognitive development only understand clear and concise information. Children younger than 6 to 8 years do not always understand the purpose or competitive nature of a game even though they know and understand the basic rules.7,8,44,46
For example, these children will all swarm around a soccer ball to kick it, because they know that is what you are suppose to do. However, they may not understand that they are to engage in a cooperative effort with their peers to move the ball down the field to score points by kicking the ball between their opponent team’s goal posts. This form of “beehive” soccer is frustrating to coaches and parents, but it is actually normal behavior for children at this level of cognitivedevelopment.8,26,41 All the physical skill and knowledge of the game can be thwarted by a player’s stage of cognitive development. If one player kicks the ball in an unanticipated direction, another player may not be able to engage in rapid decision making needed to change his or her position or process a strategy to compensate for this unexpected event. Changes in the demands of the sport during a game or a season will most likely result in chaos; these children are less likely to be able to change their performance to meet the “new” competitive requirements of their game.8 It is best to encourage participation in a variety of different activities that allow preschool age children to practice, refine skills, and have fun.47 In order to establish the best learning environment for these children, it is important to focus on cooperation and socialization abilities as well as learn critical thinking and perceptual motor skills.8,47
Preschool children need to engage in activities that allow them to travel (i.e., hop, skip, run, slide, crawl, creep, slither, and climb) in different directions and on different surfaces (i.e., flat, inclined, wavy, wet, and dry).47 They also need to exercise postural control and balance (i.e., head stands and hanging).47 Preschool children should experience what it feels like to be out of balance and in balance, they need to move their bodies up and down in space while out of contact with the ground (i.e., jumping, hopping, skipping, bouncing, and leaping), and they need to experience different forms of contorting their bodies (i.e., turning, spinning, rolling, twisting, tumbling, gesturing, bending, stretching, and reaching).47 It is important for them to learn about directionality (i.e., up, down, sideways, backward, and forward) and different temporal sequences (i.e., going quickly or slowly, fast or slow, and moving one’s body in time to different forms of music as well as different rhythms or sound patterns).44,46,47
Children need to experience a variety of shapes of objects through the visual memory, symbolic memory, linguistic, kinesthetic, and proprioceptive properties of each shape (i.e., round, oval, square, thin, twisted, and straight).47 Also, they should experience physical properties of objects (especially sports objects such as bats, ball, hockey sticks, or rackets) and experience a variety of concepts and actions (such as strong versus weak, heavy versus light, smooth versus rough or bumpy, smoothly verses jerkily, push verses pull, and receive versus send). Each of these repeated experiences will integrate over time and provide children with foundational skills that will allow them to overcome physical and mental challenges of various sports. These experiences will also help children develop confidence in their ability to perform skills necessary for most sport participation and possibly prevent the development of the fear of being struck by a ball.7,8,47
By the middle years (6–10 or 11years) most children have established adult walking patterns.11,25,54 There is a synergistic cooperation of the physiologic, neurologic, and musculoskeletal systems that allows children at this level of development to adopt a walking frequency to optimize physiologic cost, symmetry, and stability.54
Physical growth is fairly steady during the elementary school years; gender differences in height and weight are less noticeable than in later developmental stages.11,25 At this stage children also develop the initial awareness of more effectively and efficiently using their gross motor functions. Gender differences are noted in certain motor tasks during middle years.2,7,28,30,31,36,37,55 As with most fundamental physical skills, boys at this age have a slight advantage in explosive power needed for actions such as vertical jump, long jump, running speed, and throwing for distance. Girls learn to strike objects, jump, kick, and throw later than boys; but they learn to hop, skip, and catch a little earlier than boys.30,31 Girls have the advantage of having better balance than boys at this stage of development.30,31 By age 7, children show interest in learning to bat and to pitch and can pedal a bicycle well.19,48,53 By age 8, the motor movements are more graceful and rhythmic, and children begin to learn soccer or baseball.17,53 By age 9, they can engage in vigorous physical activities, participate in team play, catch a fly ball, and can balance on one foot for at least 15 seconds; they like to wrestle, play ball, and be part of a team.17,19,30,31,48,53
By age 10 or 11, most children have mastered all fundamental motor skills.4,7,8,19,25,41 Hitting a baseball or tennis ball and shooting a basketball are examples of skills that are easiest to learn at this age. Aerobic and anaerobic capacities increase steadily during middle childhood but are still quite limited compared to adolescents. Children now can perform other sophisticated motor functions such as overarm throwing and overhead striking as employed in tennis.8,56
As children mature, they will continue to experience improvement in their posture, balance, and reaction times with practice. The refinement of these skills may be influenced by many factors, including somatotype, gender, training, and motivation; this makes age predictions for a specific child as “ready” to participate in all sports a difficult task.5,8,23,30,41,43,57,58
Children at this age have considerable difficulty with futuristic thinking; they see things as here and now, right or wrong, and black or white.17,19,44,46,59 Discussions about morality and future consequences of current behavior are useless. They engage in magicalthinking and may believe they have unique powers that will protect them from harm.46,53 These children cannot think through the consequences of their actions to know that jumping from a high place may result in serious injury, for example, mimicking wrestling stunts seen on television; thus, children believe they have same abilities as these highly trained athletes. Their attention spans are longer now, but they may still be easily distracted. They can plan and execute simple motors sequences.
There is further development of memory and rapid decision making; they can understand the intent of instructions given and can follow directions.8,46 Critical thinking and problem-solving skills are further developed during the middle years.19,44,46,53 They can apply factual knowledge to familiar situations but may not be able to extrapolate that knowledge to unique or new situations. They are beginning to understand the purpose of the rules they learned earlier. Judgment and decision making improve significantly by the end of the middle years.26,60 They can adopt another person’s spatial perspective much better. Children at this age clearly recognize differences between personal performance and the performance or skill of others.23 They accurately discriminate between those children that are popular and those who are not. They begin to identify those children who are “smart” and those who are “dumb.”23 They are now very aware of their body image.44,46,61
Use of complex language skills increases considerably during the middle years. By now children can give complex directions to others and have the cognitive ability to understand a broader range of words and their symbolic use.19,23,48,53 They understand words with multiple, similar, and different meanings. Children who have mastered age-appropriate language skills will have a better chance of understanding and articulating sports instructions. Language is used as part of the socialization environment in sports to transmit rules or instructions, to praise, and to critisize.
At this stage children are developing a sense of right or wrong and usually like to play by the rules; they become upset with peers who do not follow the rules.2,26,44,46,60 They are able to follow limits set by others. During these middle years, children enjoy playing organized games and delight in peer comparisons of athletic prowess. Children at this age generally know it is not okay to make fun of other players. They are now better able to control their anger or hurt feelings when they cannot get their own way. Those children with more advanced skills may not yet understand that their “gifts” may be time limited; some in fact become less motivated to learn and practice to refine those skills.23
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