title: Concepts of neurodevelopment in sports activity for adolescents.
abstract: This article highlights comments on this question for both teenager and parent, focusing on key underlying concepts as neurodevelopment and sports readiness. Issues regarding neurodevelopment in adolescent sports are considered in this article. Understanding the neurodevelopment of the Adolescent Athlete and how this development impacts sports participation is critical for clinicians to provide parents, coaches, and sports organizers with valuable information about how to select activities for their children that will have a positive impact on their overall growth and development as well as optimize their benefit from sports play. Stories of child prodigies who began to learn a specific sport before age three stimulate parents to question whether or not they also should be enrolling their very young children in such aggressive training programs. Physicians and health care sports professionals should provide information to other professionals and parents about issues related to successful sports participation of the pediatric athlete, both as a child and as an adolescent.
authors.affiliation: Pediatrics & Human Development, Michigan State University, Kalamazoo Center for Medical Studies, Michigan, USA.
authors.forename: Donald E
authors.initials: DE
authors.lastname: Greydanus
authors.forename: Helen D
authors.initials: HD
authors.lastname: Pratt
authors.forename: Dilip R
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Patel
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D041923:Adolescent Development; D001265:Athletic Injuries / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000209:etiology; D002490:Central Nervous System / Q000254:growth & development* / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D013177:Sports / Q000502:physiology* / Q000523:psychology