Share your tips on encouraging your children to learn new skills with the England and Wales Cricket Board - £300 voucher to be won! NOW CLOSED

[EmmaMumsnet]

As we know, children are constantly acquiring new skills and the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) are now launching their All Stars Cricket initiative, to ensure that children are learning sport and social skills across the UK. To help celebrate this, they’d love to hear your tips on how you encourage your DCs to always be learning new skills.

Here’s what the ECB have to say: ‘All Stars Cricket is a brand new initiative from the England and Wales Cricket Board aimed at providing children aged 5 to 8 with a great first experience in cricket. The programme is delivered across England and Wales at over 1,500 fully accredited All Stars Cricket centres. It is a fun and active way to develop your child’s skills, and through our 8-week programme they will learn lots – as well as make new friends – in a safe and inclusive environment. All girls and boys are welcome, and each registered child will receive a pack of cricket goodies including a cricket bat, ball, backpack, water bottle, personalised shirt and cap to keep so that they can continue their love of cricket when they go home.’

So how do you inspire your DC to start learning a new skill, and make sure they persevere and don’t give up? Do you make sure your kids join teams and group activities where they can be motivated by their peers? Or maybe they’re encouraged to keep trying by you always making sure to attend their events and competitions?

Whatever your techniques for making your kids feel like they can do anything if they keep practicing, share them with ECB in the thread below for your chance to win a £300 voucher of your choice (from a list).

Thanks and good luck,

MNHQ

Standard Insight T&Cs Apply

DOn't push them, but if the dc show an interest it's a great excuse to but a new bat and ball :-D we love a family game of cricket. DS birthday is at height of summer so we often hold a sports picnic in local park, everyone wears trainers and we play cricket, footie, rounders, rugby, everything.
It's worth finding out about local clubs and wander in to see what they're about.

Encouragement and praise for perseverence. I also think you don't have to be any good at something to find it fun, and so allowing children to follow what takes their fancy

My daughter played cricket at school and loved it! We have signed DD 3 and DS 4 up to little batters in the summer! They cant wait

I always encourage my sons to try new activities and we usually have a "show and tell" at home where they can show us what they've been doing and talk about what they like/aren't keen on. It seems to work!

Fortunately there's a huge variety of clubs at the DCs school so we encourage them to try as many as they can fit in (and we can afford). They are still young so like to do what their friends are doing which is a good way to get them to try new things. Try to be open-minded, positive and encouraging about giving new things a go.

We give dd the option to try lots of organised activities. We also do things together. It's all about making it fun and praising the effort.

I look for things that my ds enjoys and try to help him follow that enjoyment. It can be hard to recognise when it's something you personally hated - like cross country running, which would have equalled misery for me as a child, but ds really loves it! In general when younger ds liked doing things his friends were at, at the right time of day. I still regret forcing him to go to swimming lessons for two terms as he was always exhausted afterwards and we used to have big rows - he didn't even really progress much, he learned far more in one week on holiday when we were able to swim every day. He still would never choose to go swimming in a pool, but when older often goes to the river with all his friends and enjoys a good swim there.

I do feel that watching a big range of sports is a good way to realise what fun is out there. Having cricket on terrestrial TV would really help more lads and lasses be interested in playing the game.

We use lots of praise and positive reinforcement to encourage new skills. We're careful not to put pressure on our daughter though and celebrate attempts as well as results

My kids really haven't shown an interest in sports despite me encouraging and giving them opportunities to try them. I've realised you really can't push it if the interest isn't there as everyone ends up miserable. I still hope that they will eventually find 'their' thing as I do think being active is important.

DS absolutely loves all sports so needs no encouragement at all to try them out!
The thing that really helps him persevere is having good role models. He pretty much taught himself to ride his bike after a BMXer came into school to do a demo. He just wanted to be like that cool guy who could do all the tricks!
He's football mad and has lots of football idols.
I think seeing what an expert can do really gives him the incentive to keep practising his own skills.

He really wants to try cricket...shame this scheme is only up to 8 as he's 9

some kids need a push.not helicopter parenting push but some kids are shy and need more support and for you to almost tell them to do something so they feel they can becsue they don't feel they are good enough to do certain things.so take the lead take uncertainty away
never push.never make winning a must just a bonus
always go and watch.
always talk to them openly about teams,rivals,supporting other.
do all sorts of stuff with them too to get them interested in anything and everything;never compare them to borther or sister or friends.

My dd started cricket in year four and now plays for two county teams, a women's team, two boys teams and our local men's thirds team, she is 14! Cricket is our life. Little dd has just started playing for our local boys team and I am involved in signing little ones up for All stars in my local club!

We adore cricket now and it really does rule our summers but it's brilliant and big dd has got so much out of it, as well as being really awesome at it!

We try to let DS try anything he is interested in but with no pressure. I really believe in giving things a go at least once and we spend a lot of time out and about as a family doing new things. We praise the effort rather than winning or losing and try to leave a 'get out' clause if he really isn't enjoying it.

I have always encouraged my DDs to sign up for things and done what I can to get them to different clubs/hobbies. It's not always easy being a working mum in a rural area, some clubs are just not possible to get to after school when their bus doesn't get to our village until 430 and they can't get home from after-school activities unless I'm available to taxi them.

They have both started a lot of different clubs/hobbies, including swimming, violin, drama, Brownies, rugby, football, etc. over the years. They haven't stuck to all of them, but I do insist they give things a fair go before giving up.

The more skills and hobbies they commit to each week, the less chores they have to do! We have a chart monitoring chores and they can do lots of things to get their tasks reduced - going to bed early, doing well in school, practicing piano or going to sports clubs. It's a good way to keep them focused, motivated and eager to learn new skills without being a "pushy parent".

Dh never let them win when he played anything with them, so now they're older and actually can beat him they're thrilled by their achievement!

I inspire my children by talking about the hobby they are interested in, also by showing them youtube videos

I try to encourage a broad range of activities but I never make them do something if they don't want to.

Mine do outside of school activities/hobbies - I actively encourage this but it is always at their request, things they want to do. You can't live your life through your kids - they need to want to do these things. I encourage them to work towards badges/awards in their chosen field as I think it's good for them to see progress and feel a sense of achievement.

Let my kids try whatever they fancy. If they don't enjoy it then we don't continue. They do lots of different sports and activities.

I don't push them. I let them try lots of different things - affordability is key for me. Some of that is dictated by what is available locally. If my kids sign up to something they have to complete the block they have signed up for (& I have paid for) but I don't force them to keep doing something they don't like.

I don't force them to do competitions. I have activities I enjoy that I do not want to do competitively - why would my kids be different? My youngest for example is learning to dive at a site that produces future olympians. They run a brilliant non-competitive diving programme - fantastic coaches (who also teach the competitive divers), cheap, lots of little targets for them to reach, but no pressure. My son loves it and does extra skills training in it etc - why would it need to be competitive? (And that looks a whole different ball game).

Let them try any sport if they enjoy it why not.

My sons newest skill is blending sounds to read. He is a little behind on his reading [hes 4, August baby so one of the youngest in his class]. However, we have reading time every night, we thought of different ways to help him develop his confidence and learn how to blend simple sounds. We encouraged him to use his fingers to count the different sounds in a word. Simple words like 'dog'. This is what did it for him, and now hes doing so well with his reading! I think patience and active encouragement goes a long way. However, I personally wouldn't act disappointed or anything if my child wasn't doing something I wanted. I think that is unhelpful and makes them struggle more then they would have! be positive with them, but don't make them feel like they are letting anyone down! [their children, how could they!!?]

We encourage them to try things and do whatever hobbies or sports that they enjoy. We do not push them to do anything. If they want to try something we will help them and take an interest.

My approach is to just sign them up for courses and see what sticks. I have never wanted to be the type of mum who forces her child to take courses that they don't like but we do have a rule, they gave to try it before deciding that they don't like it.