The Impact of Physical Activities on My Childhood - Essay Sample

Introduction

Early physical activity and sports experiences are an important part of personal development. They affect child development not just from a physical perspective but through the mental aspect as well. These activities affected a significant part of my childhood. A critical self-reflection of my childhood will show that these physical activities were either directly or indirectly related to my age, race, social class, family, neighborhood, social class, and even ethnicity. I will discuss the source of the ideas, their influence on the patterns of my experiences, and the emotions that accompanied them. Through this self-reflection, I will reveal how the factors related to gender and social class influenced my experiences from my childhood to the present. Finally, I will discuss my parent's contributions to my physical activity and sports participation.

Early Experiences

My early experiences of playing sports and games go back to when I was six years old. I had an obsession with acrobatics. Every time my friends and I were in the school playground, we would be in some corner of the field doing somersaults. On the other hand, as a girl from a middle-class family, my family expected me to get an education, go to college and get a good job that would enable me to fend for myself. It was the same case, my neighborhood, and so it was rare to find anybody taking an interest in sports activities. Most of the girls from the neighborhood would be playing with dolls when they were not in school. It was very rare to see a girl taking part in sporting or physical activity.

Source of Ideas

As a six-year-old girl from India, I watched the 2004 Olympics in Greece as girls did backflips, and performed acrobatics with thousands of people cheering for them. The girls displayed some level of confidence that I never thought possible. They trusted their bodies, their minds, and themselves to do the right thing when the time comes. As they walked and did, flips on the pole, they trusted their feet to execute the perfect landing. As for me, doing a forward flip without knowing whether I would land on my feet showed confidence in oneself. Through these experiences, I learned to take a leap of faith.

Effects of Gender and Social Class

Issues such as gender, ethnicity, and social class played various roles in my physical activity experiences. As a girl, it was very hard to convince some of my friends to join me in my sporting activities. Acrobatics were physical activities that they associated with boys. They found these activities to be very vigorous and masculine for their taste. Instead, they preferred taking part in the activities and games that they saw other women in their environment doing. Child rearing, cleaning, washing, and cooking. However, my social status was a big boost because it ensured that I had access to some facilities and amenities that are not available to other low-class citizens.

For instance, I would spend a great part of my afterschool hours trying to perfect my flips while some other children from lower-income backgrounds would be trying to make an extra income for their parents by doing odd jobs such as cleaning. Furthermore, it was because of my social class that ended up taking an interest in acrobatics in the first place, because we could afford a television. Some families were too poor to afford a television or television subscription that would allow them to view the Olympics. Therefore, my social class was a contributory factor in more than one way.

Parents Participation

My parents positively contributed to my physical activity in many ways. When my father got noticed my interest in acrobatics and gymnastics, he made a point of taking me to park every weekend for me to get a chance to do my flips at the bouncing castle. The bouncing castle was very good for my physical activity because it enabled me to try out new things without the fear of injuring myself. However, my mother was a little bit concerned about my safety and kept discouraging me from doing flips on hard ground. She feared that I would break a bone during one of my flips. She is also the one that pushed my father to take me to the park during weekends when he was not working.

Regardless, there is a difference between the support I got from my mother and the one I got from my father. My father never showed any reservations about my physical activities. Now that I think of it, it seems that he knew that I would lose interest in it as time goes. As for my mother, she reservations were not on my physical activities but rather on the field of acrobatics. She would even ask to buy me football balls and tennis balls, in an interest to get me to take an interest in a different sport. She found acrobatics to be too risky, and she was worried that I would eventually break a bone in my body. Not that she was wrong because only a year later, after the Olympics, I broke my left arm while trying to perform a backflip. Since then, she never allowed me to do acrobatics unless on a mattress or a bouncing castle.