The Weaknesses of Children's Sports, Part 3

The Problem of Comparisons

Most Americans agree with former President Gerald Ford who believed that “there are few things more important to a country’s growth and well-being than competitive athletics.” But is competitive athletics an unqualified blessing for all children? Unfortunately not.

Sports repeatedly expose children to comparisons, revealing who can throw farther, kick harder, run faster, score more points, etc. One sports psychologist believes these constant comparisons can be especially damaging to the child who frequently ends up on the bottom: The important point is that many children engage in intense competition over extended periods of time with similar consequences being repeated over and over again. It is this repetition that makes developmental considerations relevant. Childhood is a time in which to develop the confidence of being able to do a job well. When a child regularly experiences negative comparisons, it may lead to feeling incompetent or unworthy.

Yet, you might ask, Isn’t sports just one area of a child’s life? Can’t poor performers in sports raise their confidence in other activities? Some do—but many do not. The problem is that few other activities are so observable to parents and peers. Novelist James Michener, even though he was making A’s in school, noted: I can’t recall a single instance in which any member of my community gave me any accolades for such accomplishment. In [my town] all that mattered was sports, and even today across America things are not much different.

A partial solution to the problem of comparisons is to measure a child’s performance against her past performances—the time she runs a race, the number of jumps she makes in a rope-jumping time trial, the number of times she kicks a ball in a soccer game, the number of rebounds she makes in a basketball game. If you keep individual statistics for your child, you will help her feel good when she has improved her performance.

Furthermore, the emphasis given to comparative differences will often determine how children are affected. Another sports psychologist explains: Unless you give everyone the same kind of trophy, you’re telling the loser, “You’re different from the winner.” But children know who the better ball players are. To give out trophies simply accentuates this difference. It makes the youngster who doesn’t have talent feel even less capable, and it give a distorted perspective to the child who gets the higher trophy.

Eventually children must use these comparative differences in positive ways—e.g., to push themselves to become better or to determine that their gifts lie elsewhere. In the meantime, we adults must protect the weaker athletes from being crushed by what they observe.