Good Sportsmanship Is Not The Handshake

The handshake is the part everyone can see, which is exactly why it is the part that teaches your child the least.

What is good sportsmanship actually?

Most of how to teach good sportsmanship to kids gets reduced to a line at the end of a game. Say good game. Shake hands. Do not sulk. All of it is about composure at the final whistle, performed for the adults watching.

But a child can shake a hand and still be keeping score of who wronged them. Sportsmanship is not the handshake. It is everything that happens before anyone thinks to look.

Where does it actually get built?

In the parts of the game nobody is grading.

It is following the rules when no one is looking. It is jogging over to a teammate who missed the catch instead of putting your hands on your head. It is clapping just as loudly when somebody else scores as you would for yourself. It is meeting an opponent who is trying to intimidate you and neither shrinking nor puffing up, just standing where you are.

None of that shows up on a scoreboard. All of it is the actual skill.

Why do children learn it from what they see, not what they are told?

Because sportsmanship is not information. A child already knows they are supposed to be a good sport. They have been told a hundred times. What they do not have is a picture of what it looks like from the inside, in the moment, when they are tired and it is close and it would feel very good to say something sharp.

Telling gives a child a rule. Showing gives a child a person. Only one of those is portable to a Saturday morning when you are not there.

What should I stop rewarding?

Watch what you celebrate on the ride home. If the only thing that gets your energy is the goal, a child learns quickly that the goal is the part that counts. Praise the quiet things out loud, the pass they made, the teammate they picked up, the call they did not argue. What you name is what they will build.

How does a story teach this better than a talk?

A story lets a child watch someone hold the line in a moment they have not lived yet, so when they do live it, it is not the first time they have seen it done. 

Bennett arrives early. He looks around the locker room to see who has what they need. He plays hard and follows the rules with nobody watching. He holds his ground against an opponent who tries to make himself look bigger. He wins a close one. And then he walks straight over to that opponent, holds out his paw, and says good game, quietly, because he means it and not because anyone asked him to.

Then the field empties, the lights go down, and Bennett goes home and stays exactly who he was. That is the lesson, and it lands in a way no parking lot conversation ever has.

Comment BENNETT and we will send you the FREE digital edition of After the Applause, so your child sees it before they have to do it.