It’s pretty obvious that hobbies, interests, and activities are good for kids. It’s so obvious that you wouldn’t think we’d need to support such a belief with research. Nevertheless, research has been done and ‘surprise, surprise’ the results were that ‘hobbies, interests, and activities are good for kids’.
Drilling down a bit deeper, we can say that participation in cultural, religious, sporting and other recreational activities make an important contribution to the intellectual, emotional, physical, social and spiritual development of children and young people.
Schools are a really important place where children and young people can discover new interests they might like to pursue. Inside and outside the classroom, schools introduce kids to all kinds of intellectual, social, cultural, spiritual and sporting pursuits they could make a part of their lives. We recently conducted some research into what our chaplains do in their day-to-day work in schools, and we found that they were significantly involved in things like school sport, sports coaching, music programs, student leadership development, school camps, excursions and a broad range of other activities. In these ways, chaplains help schools to help kids to find out about hobbies, interests and activities that they might like to make a part of their life.
We will be sharing the results of this research with you once it is in a user friendly format.
Chaplains also connect children and young people to activities outside of school through their local religious and community networks. Many chaplains have good relationships with local churches and their youth groups, and when appropriate, can refer children and young people to the social, emotional and spiritual activities that these groups provide. SU QLD also runs a broad range of camps and holiday programs that chaplains can link kids up with, and these programs also provide valuable social, emotional and spiritual support for children and young people.
And of course, one of the great advantages of involvement in a number of hobbies, interests and activities is that there are often people like chaplains, coaches, teachers, youth workers and volunteers involved, who can play an important role in promoting good things in the lives of the kids they work with. This, as I have said in other articles, is a great protective factor for children and young people, one that chaplains embody in this, and other parts of their role.