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We started our first soccer experience this year with our 5 year old daughter. I was surprised to find out that they don’t keep score at all, at this age it’s not a huge deal. My question is, at what age do they start keeping score? My 5 year old pays attention to how many games of Candy Land she wins, so it’s not a lack of a competitive edge for the age. I am a strong supporter of good sportsmanship and positive cheering, but I also strongly believe that competition helps drive us to improve. It teaches us how to win and lose gracefully and can be a good lesson in self-control when we don’t like the outcome of our game. I worry that when everything is “for fun” we settle for mediocrity in skill and that we don’t teach our kids at a young age that things don’t always go our way; that sometimes, someone else comes out on top. I believe that sports are an excellent place to teach our kids how to deal with the frustration of losing and to teach them how to celebrate positively without “hot-dogging”. I’ve found that I have to start teaching my kids things early; listening the first time, using please and thank you, and being kind to other people; so it makes me think that learning the art of winning and losing graciously should be taught early also.

I have really enjoyed our first year of soccer and am glad that at the U6 level it is fairly laid-back and unstructured. I hope to see that as the kids get older part of the fun includes some competition and teaching our kids how to be good winners and good losers.