Being Competitive

March 28, 2011

Spring is coming and with it, team sports.  Did you know that children are not born with a competitive urge?  They learn it.  In fact, children don’t begin to compete with or compare their skills to others until around 5 years of age.  In addition, most children don’t work well as a “team player” until about 10 or 11 years of age.  But that doesn’t mean that being competitive is negative.  Competition can teach children many things including: how to handle loss, how to set goals, to develop their skills, to try out different roles, to learn the rules of the game, to learn how to perform before a group, to develop problem-solving skills and to learn to work with others.   Key factors when looking at competition are a child’s temperament, culture, talent and the age of the child — all of these factors affect how a child handles competition.  In the upcoming weeks, we’ll examine more information about the advantages & disadvantages of competition.

Filed under: Character Traits