Are competitive sports good for kids?

Are competitive sports good for kids?

What are competitive sports?

Sports is not beating each other (including its literal meaning as well) in whatever way possible. Getting off the blocks before others do so you reach the finish line first. Jumping high and winning by playing with disabled people. Injuring the best bowler by thumping his head with your bat and then scoring a century. This is not sport.

Winning at any cost – Winning by any means: This is the rule of the jungle. The human race invented sport. At least modern sport – not its remnants seen today. The major difference between the rule of the jungle and the rule of sport, IS rules! There is no rule in the jungle. You win somehow. If not you die.

In sport you have rules, ethics and traditions. Invented rules. Rules which every player has to abide by. No exceptions. Then you have ethics. You can break them, but… nah, better not. And traditions, which you are proud of.

However the desire to beat someone, the primary driving force of the life in jungle, still remains in sports. If there is no physical opponent, you at least have your previous recording to beat. Like solitaire. Hence almost every sport is competitive.

Now the good thing a sport does is it imposes rules, ethics and traditions on the player, the observer, the judge and the trainer. You want to beat the other person (or your own previous performance) but you have to do it while taking care not to break rules. Not being unethical. Not destroying the traditions of the sport.

This is how sport induces discipline in the individual: Having to play by the rules. Real discipline, in its true meaning, is one of the greatest gifts a child can be bestowed with. Real discipline is not walking timidly with your head down one behind the other in a long line, but your ability to tame your own self.

Other gifts sports can give a child are many: assertiveness

Yes! They are good for my kid!!

No! They are not good for my kid!!

Conclusion