If you spend a lot of your time on an activity at which you are highly capable and interested in, then you are likely to be a lot happier and healthier than those people who don't. The same can be said for children.

Here are some further benefits for children who engage in hobbies:

• Children learn to entertain themselves as hobbies keep them focused and busy.
• Boosts self esteem to be involved with an activity that makes a child feel competent.
• Children learn goal setting and decision making.
• Hobbies can teach self discipline, patience and practise.
• More time spent on a hobby means less time spent on digital media. It makes it easier for parents to limit digital media time when their child has a hobby.
• Hobbies can have an educational value and kids develop a hunger for knowledge (to know more about the hobby) without realising it.
• Lazy readers are encouraged due to their interest in their hobby to read more.
• Hobbies can lead to lifetime career choices or lifetime passions
  
• Children with hobbies are more interesting to other children and this improves their interpersonal skills and general personality development. They are also likely to make more friends especially if they join a club where the other children are interested in the same activity or hobby.
• Hobbies can bring parents and children together and strengthen family bonds.
• Working on a hobby gives a child "down time", helps with stress relief, and generally makes a child feel good.
• Children involved with hobbies are less likely to become involved in destructive or unhealthy activities as teenagers, such as turning to alcohol and drugs for entertainment value.

How to figure out what hobby your child may be interested in:

If your child has not yet developed a hobby, try to help him figure out what he is interested in by observing him. Ask him questions about his likes and dislikes. Introduce him to a wide variety of activities and look for the activity in which he is highly capable and shows an intense interest. Once he has decided on a particular hobby show your support by getting involved in the hobby with him, paying for lessons or helping him join a group of children interested in the same hobby.

Hobbies can include:

Colouring and painting, dancing, astronomy, building models, playing an instrument, participating in a sport, reading books, stamp, coin or currency note collecting, rock collecting, photography, gardening, lego building, trading cards, scrapbooking, balloon twisting, needlecrafts, mosaics, pottery and lots more.

About the author:
Cara Mullin, a successful internet entrepreneur, is founder and owner of www.kidzworld.co.za, an online resource directory and magazine for parents.

Posted: 22 September 2010

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