Sports play a key role in the physical and mental development of children. Although it’s great to see a child succeed in one sport, it’s important to keep their activities in balance. Participation in multiple sports enables children to acquire a knowledge of many movement skills. In addition to this, here are some other good reasons why kids should be encouraged to play several sorts of sports.

Repetitive movements can overstress growing bodies which later on can lead to injuries. With multi-sports, each sport works the body slightly differently. This will lead to fewer overuse injuries. Also, kids who overspecialize in one sport may end up losing interest and eventually give up. Specializing in a sport raises expectations and may put too much pressure on young kids. Having a variety of experiences will keep children interested and motivated, and even make them enjoy sports without any pressure.

Multi-sports also allow kids to experience different roles. Being a goalkeeper in a football team is very different from being a point guard in basketball. Being exposed to baseball develops better hand-eye coordination (协调). Soccer develops better footwork (步法). Volleyball develops jumping and hand-eye coordination. Martial arts develop strength, mobility, and discipline. Swimming develops full-body coordination and strength. The list goes on and on! Participation in multiple sports broadens a child’s developmental social, and situational experience. It opens up opportunities to become a better competitor and a promising athlete — flexible and energetic.

Many sports superstars like Stephen Curry achieved their standing today by playing multiple sports. Curry played basketball but he also played baseball, football, soccer, and everything else in a sports buffet. What worked for Curry, experts say, could work for most of us.

Besides developing a wide range of sports skills, more importantly, multi-sports provide opportunities for children to discover their liking. With the help of the right coaches, sports become fun, inspiring kids’ interests. So if you can’t decide whether your child should focus on one sport or try some different sports, I hope you can make a better decision now.

A number of studies have looked at how family life can affect productivity (生产效率) and satisfaction in the workplace, but there has been surprisingly little research on the influence of leisure activities.

So Ciara Kelly at Sheffield University and co-workers surveyed 129 hobbyists to look at how the time spent on their hobbies shaped their work life. To begin with, the team measured the seriousness of each participant’s hobby, asking them to rate their agreement with statements like ”I regularly train for this activity“, and also assessed how similar the demands of their job and hobby were. Then, each month for seven months, participants recorded how many hours they had devoted to their activity, and completed a scale measuring their belief in their ability to effectively do their job, or their “self-efficacy” (自我效能). They also completed a scale measuring their resilience (适应力) at work.

The researchers found that when participants spent longer than normal doing their leisure activity, their belief in their ability to perform their job increased. But this was only the case when they had a serious hobby that was dissimilar to their job, or when their hobby was similar to their work but they only did it occasionally. When their hobby was both serious and similar to their job, then spending more time on it actually had a detrimental effect, decreasing their self-efficacy.

Why might that be? To maintain a serious hobby, people need to invest significant psychological resources—so if the activity has the same kinds of demands as their work, they may be left tired and unable to perform as well at their job. But if their hobby is quite different from their career, it may not interfere (干预) in the same way but instead help them develop other knowledge and skills that can boost their confidence at work.

Still, the results suggest that companies may want to encourage employees to develop interests outside of work, as long as those activities differ from their day-to-day tasks.

At six years old, Jerry Morrison is already shooting for the stars. “I want to live on another planet,” Jerry told his uncle, Joey Jefferson, at StoryCorps in November.

Jefferson, 29, also fell in love with space at an early age. It started with a spaceship toy his mother gave him when he was a kid. Today he’s a mission operations engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab.

Jefferson, who lives in California, and Jerry, who lives in Florida, meet up a few times a year, and their conversations are always about their shared love for space.

“What kind of planet would you live on?” Jerry asked his uncle at StoryCorps.

“Of course everybody’s going to say Mars, right? Are you going to say Mars?” Jefferson replied.

No, Jerry wants to live much farther from Mars: on an exoplanet (a planet beyond of the solar system) called Kepler452b. NASA announced its discovery of the Earth-like planet in 2015.

“There’re a lot of stars and a lot of exoplanets that we have to find, and so we need people like you to keep doing what you’re doing,” Jefferson told Jerry. Jefferson wants his nephew to not only hold on to his curiosity but also share what he learns with others. And Jerry has already gotten the chance to do that. As a kindergartner last year, he taught a lesson to the fifth graders in his school about the planets of the solar system.

“It was a big opportunity for me,” Jerry said. “I felt so proud.”

Jerry said he learns about space from his uncle. “I learned from you a lot, like more than I could imagine,” Jerry said.

“You’re learning so much by yourself, too, that you’re teaching me as well,” Jefferson said. “And that’s really cool. The more you learn, the more you realize the little things in life we take for granted are the very things that make life possible. So when I look up at the stars, I think about that.”