Is it important for children to learn about winning and losing?

MMy friend’s parents coached youth sports teams in the 1990s, so they have a lot of anecdotes about how kids deal with winning and losing. Two cousins ​​from separate football teams were so competitive that the one who lost refused the post-match high-five and instead retreated to some nearby bushes to cry. A little girl kicked opponents with her skates while playing hockey; another refused to pass because her father gave her money for every goal she scored. One boy, when his team lost, lay flat on the ice and simply wouldn’t get up.

There is general consensus that youth sports not only improve fitness, but also teach valuable life skills such as teamwork and discipline. Winning and losing are especially important because they prepare children for the setbacks and challenges they will face in adult life.

Expert opinions on this topic are not uniform, but many agree with this general logic. “The winning and losing experiences are crucial,” says Dr. Billy Garvey, a developmental and behavioral pediatrician and author of Ten Things I Wish You Knew about Your Child’s Mental Health.. For children, especially those aged five to 12, learning to deal with the ups and downs of competition is a springboard to stable self-esteem and resilience, he tells me.

Garvey has a three-year-old daughter who, he says, is extremely competitive. “When she loses, I make sure to connect with her and validate her frustration, anger, or feeling that it’s unfair,” he says. Once she calms down, he adds, “I can help her learn the lesson of losing by saying something like, ‘See how happy your little brother Charlie is that he won?’ I bet that feels good for him.’”

“Disappointment should always be met with unconditional love and support,” says Garvey. When children are buoyed by losses, they benefit psychologically from understanding that their worth is not dependent on their performance, and that their efforts and growth are more important than winning, he says. Meanwhile, winning can be a “real opportunity to feel proud of oneself if that effort has been successful.”

Jordan Lund has three children under the age of eight and coaches youth hockey, baseball and soccer in Squamish, British Columbia, Canada. He agrees that children need to experience competition, although a gentle approach is essential. “Children like to be challenged,” he says. “They have the fire and spirit within them to support the success of their teammates and achieve things themselves.”

Lund’s teams don’t yet use scores or rankings, but he believes it’s important for children to learn about winning and losing, provided coaches create a psychologically safe environment. That means not yelling at kids to “look alive” or embarrassing those who mess up a play. “Some of the coaches we had in the 80s weren’t very aware of that,” Lund recalls.

YThe environment of youth sports can often be shaped by a different set of values ​​– one that places achievement and victory above all else. Some experts argue that youth sports, once a space for fun and personal development, has increasingly become a high-stakes arena in recent decades, where children are treated like miniature professional athletes.

“Sports as a whole is becoming more and more competitive,” says Jaclyn Ellis, a Chicago-based mental performance coach who works with athletes in their teens and older. “It is becoming increasingly difficult for athletes to accept failure because the pressure to perform is so great, even at a young age.” Ellis also notes this in junior leagues, where parents of children who show early interest or skill in a particular sport can guide their child down a path of specialization and intense training, hoping it will lead to college scholarships and a career.

Ellis says over-attributing to the binary win/lose theory is called “all-or-nothing thinking,” she says. “It’s very black and white, but usually performance isn’t all good or bad – there’s a lot of gray area.”

Rigid thinking can make losing a threat to a player’s sense of self, as well as make winning joyless. Ellis described the body language of a 14-year-old soccer player after a successful game. “She scored a goal and walked back, shoulders slumped, and her coach said, ‘What, no celebration?’ and she just said, ‘Well, my job is to score a goal. Why should I celebrate that?’” says Ellis.

For perfectionists, this mentality can make them reluctant to even try unless they are confident they can succeed flawlessly. “What does that teach us?” Ellis asks. “We are not willing to get out of our comfort zone, not even willing to try.”

Ellis uses cognitive behavioral therapy techniques to help young athletes understand that their worth is not dependent on perfect results. “We’re trying to rewire the brain so it understands that ‘all or nothing’ thinking is detrimental to your mind and performance,” she says. Instead, she encourages young athletes to embrace challenges and imperfections, and help them understand that growth is not found in winning or losing, but in having a positive attitude and mental flexibility.

This “cultural obsession with winning” or “professionalization” of youth sports is one reason why kids lose enthusiasm for sports, says Ryan Snelgrove, professor of sport and recreation management at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.

This is evident from data from the Aspen Institute Play projectthe percentage of American children aged six to 12 who regularly played a team sport fell from 45% in 2008 to 37% in 2021 – a trend mirrored in countries such as Canada, England and Australia. A 2024 report from the American Academy of Pediatrics, 70% of children stop playing sports by age 13, often citing that they simply stop having fun.

“Kids say, ‘I stopped playing because I’m not having fun anymore,’” says Snelgrove. When Amanda Visek, a sports scientist and associate professor at George Washington University, asked children to list and rank factors that make sports fun, the win came in at 48th. She found that children valued “doing your best,” “getting playing time,” and bonding with teammates.

Snelgrove has examined efforts to make youth sports more inclusive and increase participation. About a decade ago, Ontario Soccer and Canada Soccer launched player development strategies that eliminated scoring and rankings for children under 12, with the goal of shifting the focus from winning to skill development, cooperation and fun – the reason why the teams of parents and coach Lund do not do that. Do not use scores and rankings.

Not everyone supports this shift. “A silent majority of people are generally indifferent in the sense that they understand the value of not always keeping score when focusing on other components. And then there are people who would like to see a little more competition,” says Lund.

SSome parents worry that taking away the focus on winning undermines the lessons in emotional strength and sportsmanship, Snelgrove says. “We have a lot of character-building social goals for youth sports,” he says, “but they’re a bit disconnected from what developmental psychologists say is appropriate for kids under 12, which is focusing primarily on fun and developing of cooperative skills. skills.”

“Sports is becoming a battleground in the culture wars,” Snelgrove adds. Debates about the value of participation trophies often reflect broader societal concerns about giving children the opportunity to develop courage. For example, in 2023, Republican senators from North Carolina introduced legislation to introduce a nationwide ban on youth sports prizes “based solely on participation”. In 2018, when USA Hockey shifted its focus from scoring and rankings to junior players, there was – intentionally – little fuss. “When you challenge (people’s) beliefs, they run with it pretty quickly,” said Ken Martel, senior director of player and coach development at USA Hockey.

Martel says USA Hockey is seeing growing registration rates for youth players increased 12% between 2009 and 2022. In the eight-year-olds and under category, registrations increased by 94%. Football, meanwhile, has emerged as the most popular sports with Canadian children. It’s not possible to say how de-emphasizing scoring has affected these numbers, but it apparently hasn’t hurt.

Such participation trends also cannot tell whether non-scoring sports are actually robbing children of valuable life experience. But adult experiences rarely fall into a neat win-or-lose binary. Instead, as Ellis says, it’s often about navigating complex gray areas – nuanced scenarios that go far beyond the simplicity of victory and defeat. If eliminating the specter of a win-at-all-costs mentality helps more young athletes find joy in challenge and play, it can also better prepare them to adapt even when things don’t go as planned.