# Competition, winning and losing

**How should we handle 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.

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.

- Area: Play, activities and enrichment
- Evidence: Evidence leans one way
- Best settled: School age
- First published: 2026-10-03
- Last updated: 2026-10-05
- Page: https://www.raisingyourchild.com/topics/play-activities-and-enrichment--competition-winning-and-losing

## Competition, winning and losing: what are the options?

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:

- [AAP, 2019](https://www.healthychildren.org/English/news/Pages/AAP-Encourages-Organized-Sports.aspx)
- [AAP, 2024](https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/153/2/e2023065129/196435/Overuse-Injuries-Overtraining-and-Burnout-in-Young)

## 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?

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General information, not medical advice. Two parents can each answer this and compare: https://www.raisingyourchild.com/explore?cat=play-activities-and-enrichment&topic=play-activities-and-enrichment--competition-winning-and-losing