Do you try to soften the blow when your kid comes up a loser?
In England, kiddie soccer league officials are doing their part to placate sensitive tykes when one team of mini athletes trounces another.
To avoid the tears that tend to fall when one group of kids royally embarrasses their peers, Telford Junior league in Shropshire has not been publishing the actual score of its soccer games. League officials say that in heavy defeats, the score reads: 1-0, 0-1 or 0-0, in order to protect the welfare of its young players.
As you can imagine, the policy is being heavily criticized by some parents who want the real results to be published regardless of whether their kid is on the losing team. One dad went as far as calling the league’s decision a “disgrace” and a “disservice” to kids who are taught to tell the truth and lose gracefully.
For their part, the league is maintaining its position. An official with the group says that after a series of events, including one game where a young goalkeeper cried for more than an hour after 20 goals got by him, it simply didn’t make sense to print blowouts.
“When results are in double figures it does nobody any good to print that,” a league official told news reporters. “Whoever wins still gets the result and the one which wins the most games wins the league.”
I can’t bear to see my kid cry when she loses a game, event or even a sock, but I’m not sure lying about a score is really the key to minimizing embarrassment. If you’re going to go as far as fudging the actual results, perhaps it would make more sense to simply call the game when the other team scores so many points that it would be physically impossible to make up the difference.
What do you make of the scoring brouhaha?
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