WINNING AND SELF-ESTEEM: 
Is winning in sports more important than your child’s self-esteem?

Sports have been an integral part of the school program and important in most people's lives for many centuries. Being active and having good health are synonymous. Teamwork, the rewards of self-discipline, how to rise above failure and doing your best are some of the important qualities a person can learn through sports.

While school sports programs have declined in popularity, the interest in sports as a nation is at an all-time high. We have moved from Monday night football as the weekly sporting event to having sports on television twenty four hours a day. Millions of dollars a week are spent on sporting bets. Billions of dollars a year go to the salaries of sport's heroes. Clearly, America is obsessed with sports and in particular, with winning at sports.

The effect on our children is tremendous; some children have no time with one or both parents who are locked to the television set on a daily basis. More important from my perspective as a child advocate, is the huge increase in parental concern towards their child being on a winning team. Winning has become more important than how you play the game --or that you can play a game to do your best and have fun.

As a parent, you teach most by what you model. A child who does not know how the world works, emulates any and all adults, especially in the definition of how to use personal power. Ask yourself these questions about the modeling you are doing around sports:

1. How do you act when a player on your favorite team makes a mistake?  (Could your child assume you feel the same way when he/she makes a mistake in sports?)
   

2. How do you act when your favorite sports team loses a game?
   

3. How do you act when your child's sports team loses a game?
   

4. How do you respond when you are playing catch with your child and you make a mistake? How about when your child makes a mistake?
   

5. How do you respond when your child isn't interested in a sport?

Children need to feel valued at all times. When a parent confuses value with being angry or disappointed, the child's self-esteem is damaged. A child needs to feel capable; able to do something well. Many children carry scars into adulthood because they couldn't be the sports hero their parent wanted them to be. It is essential that we, as parents, remember that the score of today's game will soon be forgotten --the way we treat our child lasts a life time.

A family that enjoys sports, keeps winning in perspective and is always focused on enhancing individual self-esteem, build bridges between each other that will last forever. Here are some guidelines for parents and coaches in regard to sports:

A GUIDE FOR PARENTS AND COACHES/SPORTS

1. Let children have their own feelings, especially about losing.
   

2. It's OK to feel disappointed or angry. Keep the importance of winning in proper perspective.
   

3. Learn to appropriately vent your anger. Yelling at a child in front of his/her peers is very demoralizing and harmful.
   

4. Teach a child how to do learn from a mistake  without any  guilt or remorse attached.
   

5. Don't yell at children; they can't hear you when you are screaming at them.
   

6. Along with sportsmanship, what you are really teaching is compassion, kindness and respect. 
   

7. Sports are to be enjoyed.
   

8. Winning isn't everything.
   

9. Fifty years from now, no one will remember what the score of today's game was --  but a child may carry the scar of unthinking parents or coaches with him or her the rest of that child's life. 
   

10. Teach children to be winners in life over being a winner of today's game.
    

11. Children who love sports will participate in them their entire lives. Good health and being active go hand-in-hand.
    

12. You are the architect of a human being's life.

Copyright (C) Sandy Spurgeon McDaniel, 2000