Music Lessons vs. Sports for Kids: Exploring the Pros and Cons

Nov 30, 2023

3 min read

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Parents often find themselves faced with the dilemma of choosing the right extracurricular activities for their children. Sports and music lessons stand out as popular activities, offering unique benefits and opportunities for growth. Deciding between the two can be challenging. You might be wondering just what are the pros and cons of sports and music lessons?

Sports:

Pros:

Physical Fitness and Health: Sports promote physical fitness, agility and overall well-being. Engaging in sports helps children develop coordination, strength, and endurance.
Teamwork and Social Skills: Being part of a team teaches children the value of teamwork, collaboration, and sportsmanship. It also helps build social skills and helps them learn how to work towards a common goal.
Time Management and Discipline: Sports often come with a structured schedule, teaching kids the importance of time management and commitment. They learn to balance academics, sports, and other activities, instilling discipline from a young age.

Cons:

Risk of Injuries: Participation in sports comes with the risk of injuries. Accidents can still happen, leading to potential physical setbacks.
Pressure and Competition: Intense competition in sports might lead to stress and pressure on children to perform exceptionally well. This pressure can sometimes diminish the enjoyment and fun aspect of the activity.
Burn Out: Heavy sports schedules often lead to burn out and exhaustion for kids. Practice, games, tournaments and travel time all lead to long days and nights for young kids and often get in the way of school work and unstructured play time.

Music Lessons:

Pros:

Enhanced Brain Development: Music education has been linked to improved cognitive skills, including language development, mathematical abilities, and spatial intelligence. Music stimulates all parts of the brain and fosters increased cognitive development.
Creativity and Emotional Expression: Music lessons encourage creativity and self-expression. They provide a platform for children to explore emotions, develop artistic skills, and find their unique voice.
Discipline and Persistence: Learning an instrument requires consistent practice and dedication. Through music lessons, children learn the value of perseverance, patience, and discipline and other focused skills.

Cons:

Time Commitment and Practice: Mastering a musical instrument demands regular practice, which might be time-consuming and demanding busy parents. Finding the balance between practice and other activities can be challenging.
Cost of Instruments and Lessons: Music lessons often involve higher expenses with instruments and lessons.
Solo Pursuit vs. Group Dynamics: Music lessons can be more individualistic. Some kids find joy in practicing music on their own while other kids struggle with self-motivation and solo practicing outside of lesson time.

Sports and music lessons offer valuable life lessons and developmental benefits for children. The choice ultimately depends on the interests, abilities, and preferences of the child. Some children thrive in a team sports environment, while others may find their passion and fulfillment through music. It’s essential for parents to consider their child’s enjoyment and goals when making this decision. Music skills build academic achievement, self-awareness, cognitive and emotional development. Music also helps to develop problem solving and time management skills which help keep kids find the path to success. This can pay off for college seniors in college scholarships for both music and non-music related fields of study.

Aim for Balance

Ideally, if your child is interested in music and sports we suggest that they try to do both with balance. Choose one instrument to study and one sport to play. This allows time for kids to have unstructured play time for emotional processing and the ability to better handle stress.

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music works academy beatrice Heather Korn director

Heather Korn is a master teaching artist with a career of over 25 years teaching music students. She prepares young students for professional careers in music and the arts. She owns and operates Music Works Academy in Beatrice, Nebraska.

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