Competition, winning and losing
How you handle competition: avoiding it when young, focusing on participation and fun, keeping score but praising effort, or treating winning as important.
How should we handle competition, winning and losing?
In short: Parents choose between 4 main approaches: Avoid competitive settings young; Participation and fun; Keep score, emphasize effort; Winning matters. Evidence: evidence leans one way. Research or guidance points in a direction, but it's thin, small or correlational. Best settled: school age.
- Evidence
- Evidence leans one way
- Best settled
- School age
- Part of
- Learning & the wider world
Competition, winning and losing: what are the options?
Parents usually land on one of these 4 approaches.
1. Avoid competitive settings young
You keep a young child out of competitive activities.
2. Participation and fun
The child takes part for enjoyment, and results are played down.
3. Keep score, emphasize effort
Scores are kept and you praise effort over outcome.
4. Winning matters
You teach the child that winning is important.
Competition, winning and losing: what does the evidence say?
Evidence leans one way. Research or guidance points in a direction, but it's thin, small or correlational.
The AAP's 2019 clinical report urges families to make enjoyment, not winning, the ultimate goal of youth sports, to let the interest start with the child, to give positive support without pressure, and to help children sample different sports. Its later report on overuse injuries and burnout adds that young athletes should have at least one to two days off a week and two to three months a year away from a given sport. Reasons children quit are commonly reported as lack of fun and too much emphasis on winning, though the figures circulating (such as 70% dropping out by 13) come from secondary and advocacy sources I could not trace to a primary study
Sources
What else is worth knowing?
Children meet winning and losing in games, sport and school. Parents differ in how much they stress results. How you react on the sidelines teaches as much as what you say.
Questions to ask each other
- How did our parents handle winning and losing?
- What do we say after a loss?
- When does competition stop being fun?
More in Play, activities and enrichment
First published 2026-10-03. Last updated 2026-10-05. General information, not medical advice.