Children Need to Play and Compete

Ryan S. Steinberg
Professor Foreman
English Honors
4 September 2002
Children Need to Play, and Compete
Equally as important as the concepts taught in school, competitive sports for young children fuel the fundamental objectives for psychological growth and development. Jessica Statsky’s, “Children Need to Play, Not Compete,” raises controversy about children ages six to twelve and sports. According to Statsky these children are too young to participate in contact sports such as Peewee Football or Little League baseball.
Sports educate little kids with the necessary social skills that they will use for life. Physical activities for youngsters play both a positive and negative psychological role teaching the necessary roughness to succeed later on. Sometimes, parents are not mentally mature enough to handle the stresses of a ball game, especially the humiliation of defeat. Attempts at changing the scoring system have failed to make sports noncompetitive. Buffer...