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Teach Your Children Good Sportsmanship

Good sportsmanship involves more than not cheating, yelling or lashing out; it's about showing good self-esteem, learning from adversity and feeling like a winner even when the score says you've lost.

The role of sports probably will change for your children as they get older. Children use sports as a way to compare their skills with others and to socially adapt. But as children get older, parents must realize that children's behaviours ultimately reflect what kind of win-or-lose mentality they have been exposed to at home. When a child's objective starts to change from just having fun to wanting to be the best, he or she will need to learn there is a gift in losing, just like there is a gift in winning.

Multiple studies have shown that parents directly influence the way children handle winning and losing. Here are some tips to help give your children the gift of playing sports with a smile.

Want to win, but don't hate to lose. It's OK for winning to be the primary objective, but it's important to explain losing as well. Everyone wants to win, but at one time or another, everyone loses. Use your child's favourite sports hero as an example; show how that hero used the experience of losing as motivation to become a champion.
Embrace mistakes. Everyone — from elite athletes to young children — makes silly mistakes on the playing field. The key to making this a lesson in good sportsmanship is to show constructively how people make mistakes, even if they aren't aware of it.
Use examples. When you see specific examples of good and bad sportsmanship (such as not arguing a call or laughing at the other team), point them out to your children, and explain why each example is good or bad. Tell your children that maintaining emotional control is one of the biggest factors in being a good sport and in building positive self-esteem.

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