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Leisure

 

Leisure and Recreation is an area that has a crucial importance for the development of individual identity. Young people must be allowed during a leisure to strengthen their self-esteem, be aware of themselves and their abilities. By actively participating in certain activities, they get skills that enable them to achieve the objectives.

 

What they like to do in their free time?

  • hang out with friends and thus, meet their social aspect;

  • watching TV;

  • listen to music;

  • play video games or surfing the internet;

  • they learn;

  • thinking about a boy or a girl;

  • hang out in a bar or a disco;

  • sport;

  • help parents;

  • reading magazines.

 

Why is leisure time important for youngsters?

According to research among young people there is more "passive activity", ie watching TV, etc. Physical activities that were popular before the emergence of mass media are not attractive anymore. This is weakening the body's resistance, the less fitness, the less well-developed work habits for physical labor are.

 

With children and adolescents, movement and playing sports is especially important for healthy growth and development because it helps to build and maintain healthy bones, muscles and joints, control weight and help to the effective functioning of the heart and lungs. It has a positive influence on the development of a healthy personality, eliminating harmful habits such as alcohol, tobacco, drugs.

 

Leisure activities help young people to express themselves even in a different way and to develop their self-esteem. It is important not to be too busy with such activities, as sometimes too much activity is a result of fear of not being successful in school and often against excessive ambitions of parents. Children and adolescents should find leisure activities that will not be an additional burden, but they will be a joy and fun, and they will relax.

 

Modern society emphasizes the importance of spending quality leisure time while nonetheless set of traps appear in a relation to leisure activities:

  • indiscriminate television viewing;

  • obsession with games;

  • swelling in virtual worlds;

  • excessive preoccupation with leisure activities, which is leading to stress;

  • overkill with physical activities because of a dedicated body sculpting;

  • inequality and exclusion; a distinction between those young people who can afford leisure activities and those who because of the poor material situation can not afford this and therefore, feel disadvantaged.

 

What are youth centers ?

These are day centers, enable young people to creatively and quality spend free time and gives them opportunities to experience success, build positive self-esteem and socializing with their peers. Some of them are successfully operating in Slovenia.

 

How could Leisure connect generations ?

Of course, it is not always necessary to spend our free time only with our peers. There are many activities that young people can do together with elderly, either with their parents or grandparents:

  • joint cycling;

  • sharing knowledge; young people can learn elderly of computer literacy, elderly, perhaps craft skills;

  • sharecropping of garden;

  • play board games;

  • singing; elderly can teach the songs they sang in their youth;

  • sharing memories with the grandparents.

 

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