Child Development Within Competitive Sports

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and develop than to win a trophy or two. The skills and lessons learned from loses and improving from the losses is something that a trophy or medal could never compare to.

The war and partnership mindsets are very similar to the achievement motivation. These are two types of motivations that competition can bring to children playing sports, again whichever mindset the coach or parent chooses to focus on will be the mindset more enforced in the child’s mind. In the war mindset it is used to separate the best from the worst, to see who can succeed and be the winners and the ones who can’t keep up, the losers. This may be a good tactic for higher level sports but using this for children just brings the negativity from competition instead of the positivity. The partnership mindset is using the opponent to push and challenge in hopes of creating growth. This is a more realistic preparation for children of what’s to come in the real world with the emphasis on growth and development. I like this partnership mindset because it shows your opponent is there, he wants to beat you, you want to beat him, but you want to grow and learn from either your win or loss. It’s a way to push and challenge children past their mental limits.

Personally for me I had a caring supporting family life when it came to sports. My family never got me down after a loss and always praised and congratulates me on a win. I think because of this I gained a good sense of sportsmanship and was a pretty fair good loser as well as I was a good winner. My case is a little odd though because even though I had this supportive environment throughout my sports career I have had a huge drive and taste to win. I love to win! When I play things I play to win! I can get really competitive over the smallest silliest things and I have realized that it is a good and bad trait. This contradicts my research because children with the supportive environment played sports for fun and placed less importance on winning. I think a portion of a person’s sportsmanship and the reason they play the sport largely depends on personality just as much as it depends on the child’s upbringing.

In our society are values and goals are all skewed. Parents think by teaching their kids to do whatever it takes to win that they will become a successful person in life. This may happen, but they will not have the character and positive aspects that a child developed through a task oriented partnership mindset would have. Winning isn’t everything and as a society as a whole we need to change our outlook on competition and how we treat it. Treating each pee-wee football game as the super bowl is not going to help the kids, it’s going to embarrass them and they’ll get the idea that it is okay to get crazy over competition.

It is difficult to gain all the positivity that competitive sports offer at the young child level. There are many outside influences that can affect whether a child plays for enjoyment or his mind is pushed and shaped to have a win at all cost mindset. Implementing the achievement motivation and the partnership mindsets are steps in the right direction, but sometimes it isn’t enough. The parents have one of the biggest roles in shaping their child and if they want that child to be a successful positive impact on society using these steps can lead to their child being a positive influence on and off the field. Overall, competitive sports is a great way to tailor and help children develop positively to help prepare them for what the real world brings but, if competition is not addressed and taught correctly it can have the opposite results.

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